16th Annual GW China Conference

Friday, April 26th, 2024,
Lindner Family Commons, 1957 E St NW

The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to announce the 16th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations which took place Friday, April 26th, 2024 at the Elliott School of International Affairs. This conference was co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER). Breakfast, lunch, and light refreshments will be provided.

Conference Agenda:

8:30-9:00 a.m. – Breakfast and Registration
9:00-9:15 a.m. – Welcome Remarks

  • IIEP Director Remi Jedwab

9:15-10:00 a.m. Keynote Address

  • Sonali Jain-Chandra (IMF)

10:00-11:15 a.m. – Panel 1: China’s Domestic Economy

  • Chair: Chao Wei (IIEP)
  • Shaoda Wang (Chicago-Booth)
  • Yang Fang (Dallas Fed)
  • Shanjun Li (Cornell and NBER)

11:15-11:30 a.m. – Coffee break
11:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m. – Panel 2: Technological Competition and Decoupling

  • Chair: Jeffrey Ding (IIEP)
  • Yeling Tan (Oxford)
  • Roselyn Hsueh (Temple)
  • Ling Chen (Johns Hopkins)

12:45-1:45 p.m. – Lunch
1:45-3:00 – Panel 3: The Belt and Road Initiative After 10 Years

  • Chair: Stephen Kaplan (IIEP)
  • Rebecca Ray (Boston University)
  • Muyang Chen (Peking and IIEP)
  • Charles Kenny (Center for Global Development)
  • Discussant: Miles Kahler (American University and Council on Foreign Relations)

3:00-3:15 p.m. – Coffee Break
3:15-4:30 p.m. – Panel 4: Trade and U.S.-China Relations

  • Chair: Maggie Chen (IIEP)
  • Michele Ruta (IMF)
  • Jeff Schott (Peterson Institute)
  • Michael Plummer (JHU)
  • Discussant: Judy Dean (Brandeis and IIEP)

4:30 p.m. – Closing Remarks

About the Keynote Speaker

Sonali Jain-Chandra is Division Chief and Mission Chief for China at the International Monetary Fund’s Asia and Pacific Department. She has wide-ranging country experience at the IMF, having worked on China, India, Hong Kong SAR, Korea, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Nepal and Bhutan. She was also a member of the Regional Studies Division, and has authored many chapters of the IMF publication, Regional Economic Outlook. She previously worked in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department on vulnerabilities in emerging markets and advanced economies. Ms. Jain-Chandra’s research interests and publications have mainly focused on labor markets, capital flows, international banking linkages, and financial inclusion and deepening. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University, a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, and a B.A. in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

GWU’s 15th Annual China Conference

Friday, April 7, 2023,
9:00 am – 4:15 pm ET
Lindner Family Commons, 1957 E St NW

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to announce the 15th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations will take place on Friday, April 7th, 2023 at the Elliott School of International Affairs. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER). Breakfast, lunch, and light refreshments will be provided.

Conference Agenda:

8:30-9:00 a.m. – Breakfast and Registration

9:00-9:15 a.m. – Welcome Remarks

  • IIEP Director Remi Jedwab
  • Elliott School Dean Alyssa Ayres

9:15-10:00 a.m. – Keynote Address – “The Study of China’s Political Economy: Our Evolving Analytical Agenda” 

  • Harry Harding (UVA, National Chengchi University, and Center for Asia Pacific Resilience and Innovation – CAPRi)

10:00-11:15 a.m. – Panel 1: The State and the Political System in China

  • Bruce Dickson (GWU)
  • Meg Rithmire (Harvard)
  • Yuhua Wang (Harvard)

11:15-11:30 a.m. – Coffee break

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. – Panel 2: Autocracy, Movement, and Development in Chinese History and Today

  • Yasheng Huang (MIT)
  • Suqin Ge (Virginia Tech)

12:30-1:30 p.m. – Lunch

1:30-2:45 p.m. – Panel 3: Trade War and a Race of Industrial Policy

  • Chad Bown (Peterson Institute)
  • Lee Branstetter (CMU)
  • Jennifer Hillman (Georgetown)

2:45-3:00 p.m. – Coffee break

3:00-4:15 p.m. – Panel 4: The Past, Present, and Future of U.S.-China Relations

  • Harry Harding (UVA, National Chengchi University, and Center for Asia Pacific Resilience and Innovation – CAPRi)
  • Michael Lampton (JHU)
  • David Shambaugh (GWU)

4:15 p.m. – Closing Remarks

 About the Keynote Speaker

Harry Harding is Yushan Scholar and University Chair Professor in the College of Social Science at National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan and University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he is also a Faculty Senior Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. He has previously held visiting or adjunct appointments at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the University of Washington, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Sydney, the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and National Cheng Chi University.

Harding served as the founding dean of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy between 2009 and 2014. Before joining the Batten School, he held faculty appointments at Swarthmore College and Stanford University, founded the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. From 1995 to 2005 he was Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and from 2005 to 2007 was Director of Research and Analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory and consulting firm based in New York. He has served on the boards of several educational and non-profit institutions, as well as on the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Science and Technology and the U.S. Defense Policy Board.

Harding is the author of Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976; China’s Second Revolution: Reform After Mao; A Fragile Relationship: the United States and China Since 1972; and the chapter on the Cultural Revolution in The Cambridge History of China. He is also the editor or co-editor of China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s; Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade; and The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know. He is presently writing a book on the history of the US-China relationship from the Clinton Administration to the Trump Administration, with the working title A Broken Engagement: the United States and China from Partners to Competitors.

Harding received his B.A. from Princeton and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford. He is an elected member of the Cosmos Club, The Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong; and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise

Friday, December 9th, 2022,
10:30 am – 12:00 pm EST
Zoom

This event will feature the chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego, Susan Shirk, to discuss her new book, “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.

For decades, China’s rise to power was characterized by its reassurance that this rise would be peaceful. Then, as Susan L. Shirk, shows in this sobering, clear-eyed account of China today, something changed.

For three decades after Mao’s death in 1976, China’s leaders adopted a restrained approach to foreign policy. They determined that any threat to their power, and that of the Chinese Communist Party, came not from abroad but from within—a conclusion cemented by the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. To facilitate the country’s inexorable economic ascendence, and to prevent a backlash, they reassured the outside world of China’s peaceful intentions.

Then, as Susan Shirk shows in this illuminating, disturbing, and utterly persuasive new book, something changed. China went from fragile superpower to global heavyweight, threatening Taiwan as well as its neighbors in the South China Sea, tightening its grip on Hong Kong, and openly challenging the United States for preeminence not just economically and technologically but militarily. China began to overreach. Combining her decades of research and experience, Shirk, one of the world’s most respected experts on Chinese politics, argues that we are now fully embroiled in a new cold war.

To explain what happened, Shirk pries open the “black box” of China’s political system and looks at what derailed its peaceful rise. As she shows, the shift toward confrontation began in the mid-2000s under the mild-mannered Hu Jintao, first among equals in a collective leadership. As China’s economy boomed, especially after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, Hu and the other leaders lost restraint, abetting aggression toward the outside world and unchecked domestic social control. When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he capitalized on widespread official corruption and open splits in the leadership to make the case for more concentrated power at the top. In the decade following, and to the present day—the eve of the 20th CCP Congress when he intends to claim a third term—he has accumulated greater power than any leader since Mao. Those who implement Xi’s directives compete to outdo one another, provoking an even greater global backlash and stoking jingoism within China on a scale not seen since the Cultural Revolution.

Here is a devastatingly lucid portrait of China today. Shirk’s extensive interviews and meticulous analysis reveal the dynamics driving overreach. To counter it, she argues, the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, can make is to overreact. Understanding the domestic roots of China’s actions will enable us to avoid the mistakes that could lead to war.

Speaker:

Susan Shirk is a research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center. She is one of the most influential experts working on U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics. She is also director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).

Susan Shirk first visited China in 1971 and has been teaching, researching and engaging China diplomatically ever since. From 1997-2000, Dr. Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.

Dr. Huang has testified before U.S. congressional committees many times and regularly is consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues and China. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a board member of the Institute of Global Health (Georgia). In 2012, InsideJersey listed him as one of the “20 Brainiest People in New Jersey.” He previously was a research associate at the National Asia Research Program, a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, an associate fellow at the Asia Society, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA from Fudan University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

The CCP 20th Party Congress and China’s Road Ahead

Friday, 4th November, 2022

In Person Only

Critical questions about China’s future have swirled around the CCP’s 20th Party Congress: What will Xi Jinping’s third term mean for Chinese domestic politics? What are China’s intentions for Taiwan? How will the party manage slowing economic growth along with mounting demographic and environmental problems? The Sigur Center for Asian Studies will host a half-day congress where leading experts from GW’s distinguished China faculty and top scholars from other institutions seek to address these questions. The event was in person only and open to the general public. Brief presentations were followed by extended opportunities for Q&A with the audience.

 

Introductory Remarks: 12:30-12:45 PM

Gregg Brazinsky, Director Sigur Center for Asian Studies

 

Domestic Politics: 12:45-2:15 PM

Moderator: Gregg Brazinsky (GWU)

Panelists: Bruce Dickson (GWU), Iza Ding (University of Pittsburgh), Jeff Ding (GWU)

 

International Relations: 2:30-4:00 PM

Moderator: Deepa Ollapally (GWU)

Panelists: David Shambaugh (GWU), Patricia Kim (Brookings Institution), Robert Sutter (GWU)

 

Economic Policy: 4:15-5:45 PM

Moderator: Steven Suranovic (GWU)

Panelists: Maggie Chen (GWU), David Dollar (Brookings Institution), Stephen Kaplan (GWU)

China’s rebranding campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic: How successful is it?

Friday, April 22, 2022, 

9:30-11 a.m. ET

Lindner Family Commons (in-person) and via Zoom

At this event Dr. Yanzhong Huang will examine China’s efforts to improve its international image and project global influence by looking at three key aspects of the campaign 1) the efforts to promote China’s pandemic response model; 2) its efforts to frame itself as a leader in the provision of global public goods; and 3) its efforts to dispute the Covid-19 origins.

Speaker:

Dr. Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance roundtable series. He is also a professor and the director of global health studies at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where he developed the first academic concentration among U.S. professional schools of international affairs that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.

Dr. Huang has written extensively on China and global health. He is the author of Governing Health in Contemporary China (2013) and Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State (2020). He has also published numerous reports, journal articles, and book chapters, including articles in Survival, Foreign Affairs, Public Health, Bioterrorism and Biosecurity, and China Leadership Monitor, as well as opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the South China Morning Post, among others. In 2006, he co-authored the first scholarly article that systematically examined China’s soft power.

Dr. Huang has testified before U.S. congressional committees many times and regularly is consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues and China. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a board member of the Institute of Global Health (Georgia). In 2012, InsideJersey listed him as one of the “20 Brainiest People in New Jersey.” He previously was a research associate at the National Asia Research Program, a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, an associate fellow at the Asia Society, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA from Fudan University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Discussants:

Dr. Zoë McLaren is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and an Affiliate of the Health Econometrics and Data Group at York University. Dr. McLaren is a health economist whose research informs health and economic policy to combat infectious disease epidemics including HIV, tuberculosis and COVID19 in the United States and abroad. She develops rigorous applied statistical approaches to answer important policy questions using real-world data. Her work builds the evidence base in three key research areas: (1) the impact of health and economic policies to fight HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and COVID-19 globally, (2) the relationship between access to health resources and economic outcomes, and (3) the causes of persistent poverty. Dr. McLaren was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Economics from the University of Michigan and her B.A. from Dartmouth College.

 
Joan Kaufman is the NY–based Senior Director for Academic Programs for the Schwarzman Scholars Program. She is Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University where she teaches on global health policy.  Dr. Kaufman is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations.   An expert on both China and global health policy, she was the Director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia (Beijing) from 2012-2016 and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. From 2002-2010 she was based at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where she founded and directed the AIDS Public Policy Project.   She was Distinguished Scientist, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of the Master Program in Health Policy and Management at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management from 2003-2012.    She was selected as a Radcliffe fellow in residence at Harvard from 2001-2002. She has lived and worked in China for 15 years since 1980 for the United Nations (1980-1984) the Ford Foundation (1996-2001), as the China Team Leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (2002-2012), and Columbia University (2012-2016).   She holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, as well as a MA and BA cum laude in Chinese Studies. She serves on the Advisory Boards for Sup China, Uplift International, and several Chinese NGOs, has consulted for many foundations and international organizations and has published widely on global health policy, HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, reproductive health, population, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society with a focus on China.
 
 
This event is part of our China conference series and is cosponsored by the Sigur Center and GW-CIBER.

Looking for Balanced Growth in China: Insights from the latest IMF Staff report

Friday, March 4th, 2022
9:30 – 11:00 a.m. ET
via Zoom

The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the fourth event in the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference will take place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).

China’s recovery is well advanced—but it lacks balance and momentum has slowed, reflecting the rapid withdrawal of fiscal support, lagging consumption amid recurrent COVID-19 outbreaks despite a successful vaccination campaign, and slowing real estate investment following policy efforts to reduce leverage in the property sector. Regulatory measures targeting the technology sector, intended to enhance competition, consumer privacy, and data governance, have increased policy uncertainty. China’s climate strategy has begun to take shape with the release of detailed action plans. Productivity growth is declining as decoupling pressures are increasing, while a stalling of key structural reforms and rebalancing are delaying the transition to “high-quality”—balanced, inclusive and green—growth.

China rebounded strongly from the pandemic, but growth is losing momentum while remaining overly dependent on support from investment and exports. This imperils the nation’s long-sought transition to sustained high-quality growth that’s balanced, inclusive and green.

While China’s many challenges have no easy answer, the key message of the IMF’s annual Article IV review of the economy is that rebalancing toward a more consumption-based model will boost growth prospects in the short term and deliver high-quality expansion in the long run. Importantly, it will also help bring the country closer to achieving its climate goal of carbon neutrality before 2060.

About the Speakers:

Picture of Helge BergerHelge Berger is an Assistant Director in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department. He is also an adjunct professor of monetary economics at Free University of Berlin. He was educated in Munich, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. and the venia legendi for economics. Previously, he taught at Princeton University as a John Foster Dulles Visiting Lecturer, helped to coordinate the Munich-based CESifo network as its research director, and served as full professor (tenured) at Free University Berlin. At the IMF, he has worked in the Research and European Departments.

 

Picture of Wenjie ChenWenjie Chen is a senior economist on the IMF’s China team. Prior to that, she worked in the Research Department, where she was part of the World Economic Outlook team. She has also worked in the African Department on South Africa and South Sudan. Before joining the IMF, Wenjie worked as a professor at George Washington University School of Business and Elliott School of International Affairs. She received her MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan.

 

About the Discussant:

Picture of Chao WeiChao Wei is an associate professor of economics at the George Washington University who previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the 2010-2011 Economic Policy Fellow at the Congressional Budget Office. Her primary research areas are: Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, Financial Economics, China Economy, and Energy and Environmental Economics. She has published papers, including at the top journal of the economics field, on the impact of energy price shocks on the stock market, the effect of personal and corporate income taxes on asset returns, and the endogenous determination of gasoline use and vehicle fuel efficiency. Her recent research focuses on the relationship between family structure and parental human capital investment, marital and labor supply behaviors of older adults, and the trade-off between stimulus and environmental objectives in the green stimulus programs. She holds degrees from Fudan University (BA), Columbia University (M.A.) and Stanford University (Ph.D.).

About the Moderator:

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

14th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Relations

Virtual Conference Series

Beginning October 15, 2021

via Webex

Schedule of Events

Friday, October 15, 2021: Did U.S. Politicians Expect the China Shock?

Moderator: Maggie Chen

Dr. Bingjing Li (University of Hong Kong)

James Feigenbaum (Boston University)

Friday, November 5, 2021: One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi

Moderator: Barbara Stallings

Edwin Lai (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Masahiro Kawai (University of Tokyo and ERINA)

Friday, November 19, 2021: How is the Roll Out of Digital RMB Changing the Financial System in China and Abroad?

Jun Qian (Fudan University)

Martin Chorzempa (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Friday, March 4th, 2022: Looking for Balanced Growth in China: Insights from the latest IMF Staff report

                              Moderator: Jay Shambaugh

                              Helge Berger (IMF)

                              Wenjie Chen (IMF)

Friday, April 1, 2022: U.S.-China Tension

Bo Sun (Federal Reserve Board)

Friday, April 22, 2022: China’s rebranding campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic: How successful is it?

                              Yanzhong Huang (Council on Foreign Relations)

                              Zoë McLaren (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

                              Joan Kaufman (Harvard Medical School)

Friday, April 22, 2022: China’s Irreconcilable Choices on Ukraine

                             Evan A. Feigenbaum (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

                             Michael Moore (George Washington University)

An archive of all previous Annual Conferences on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations is available here.

For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

Cosponsored by:

Did U.S. Politicians Expect the China Shock?

Friday, October 15th, 2021
9:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

 

The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference takes place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).

In the two decades straddling China’s WTO accession, the China Shock, i.e. the rapid trade integration of China in the early 2000’s, has had a profound economic impact across U.S. regions. It is now both an internationally litigated issue and the casus belli for a global trade war. Were its consequences unexpected? Did U.S. politicians have imperfect information about the extent of China Shock’s repercussions in their district at the time when they voted on China’s Normal Trade Relations status? Or did they have accurate expectations, yet placed a relatively low weight on the subconstituencies that ended up being adversely affected?

In this inaugural event, HKU’s Bingjing Li discussed how information sets, expectations, and preferences of U.S. politicians are fundamental, but unobserved determinants of their policy choices in regards to the China Shock. Prof. Li applies a moment inequality approach designed to deliver unbiased estimates under weak informational assumptions on the information sets of members of Congress. Employing repeated roll call votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on China’s Normal Trade Relations status, she formally tests what information politicians had at the time of their decision and consistently estimates the weights that constituent interests, ideology, and other factors had in congressional votes. She will show how assuming perfect foresight of the shocks biases the role of constituent interests and how standard proxies to modeling politician’s expectations bias the estimation. She cannot reject that politicians could predict the initial China Shock in the early 1990’s, but not around 2000, when China started entering new sectors, and find a moderate role of constituent interests, compared to ideology. Overall, she will show how U.S. legislators appeared to have had accurate information on the China Shock, but did not place substantial weight on its adverse consequences.

Boston University’s James Feigenbaum served as a discussant and IIEP’s Maggie Chen moderated with an introduction from IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh.

About the Speaker:

Picture of Bingjing LiDr. Bingjing Li is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research fields are international trade and applied microeconomics. Using both micro data and quantitative models, her works focus on understanding the interactions of international trade with development and political economy factors, and their consequences.

 

 

About the Discussant:

Picture of James FeigenbaumJames Feigenbaum is an Assistant Professor in the Boston University Department of Economics. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER in the Development of the American Economy program and a Junior Faculty Fellow at BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing. James studies economic history, labor economics, and political economy. His research interests include understanding the effects of economic shocks on politics and politicians. Prof. Feigenbaum received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University and his B.A. with High Honors in Economics and Mathematics from Wesleyan University.

About the Moderator:

Picture of Maggie ChenMaggie Chen is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has served as Director of GW’s Institute for International Economic Policy and worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank and a consultant for the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Professor Chen’s research areas include multinational firms, international trade, and regional trade agreements. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. She is a co-editor of Economic Inquiry and an associate editor of Economic Modeling.

Introduction by:

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

China Conference Sponsors

One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi

Friday, November 5th, 2021
9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

This was the second event in the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference takes place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).

This event featured HKU’s Edwin Lai to discuss his recent book titled “One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi.” The Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) Representative Director Dr. Masahiro Kawai provided discussant remarks. In this book, Edwin Lai discusses economic analysis of the future of the international monetary system and the USD, and the rising importance of the RMB. He points out the unsustainability of the dollar standard in the long run, that China has unique incentives to internationalize its currency, and how Hong Kong plays an important role. He explains the real reasons for China to internationalize its currency, including using external commitments to force financial sector reforms (‘daobi’ in Chinese). His book applies economic theories accessible to laymen to establish that financial development and openness are crucial for RMB internationalization to succeed, and that greater exchange rate volatility is inevitable due to the ‘open-economy trilemma’. Employing the ‘gravity model’, the book predicts quantitatively that the RMB is likely to be a distant third payment currency after the USD and the euro, but surpassing the Japanese yen in the next decade.

IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh and Elliott School Vice Dean James Foster provided welcome and introductory remarks. Barbara Stallings moderated the event. James Foster introducde Edwin Lai and Barbara Stallings introduced Dr. Masahiro Kawai.

About the Speaker:

Picture of Edwin LaiEdwin Lai is Professor of Economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since July 2009, and later jointly appointed as the Director of the Center for Economic Development and jointly appointed as Professor in the Division of Public Policy. He was Senior Research Economist and Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas of the Federal Reserve System of the USA, from August 2007 to June 2009. Before that he was Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong and Associate Professor at Singapore Management University. His main research areas are international economics, industrial organization, growth and internationalization of renminbi. He is a leading scholar in the study of intellectual property rights in the global economy. He has published in American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of International Economics and other highly respected journals in economics.

Prof. Lai has been a consultant to the World Bank, visiting scholar/fellow with Boston University, Princeton University, Kobe University, CESifo (University of Munich), Hitotsubashi University, and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. He is Associate Editor of Review of International Economics (Wiley Publisher), a Fellow of the CESifo Research Network (U of Munich), and a board member of Asia-Pacific Trade Seminars (APTS) Group. He obtained his B.Sc. in engineering from the University of Hong Kong of Science and Technology and A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

About the Discussant:

Picture of Masahiro KawaiDr. Masahiro Kawai is the Representative Director of the Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) in Niigata, Japan. While teaching Asian finance at the University of Tokyo as Professor Emeritus, he also serves as a Councilor of the Bank of Japan, a Senior Fellow of the Policy Research Institute of Japan’s Finance Ministry, and a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Japan Forum on International Relations. Dr. Kawai has published numerous books and articles on open-economy macroeconomics, economic and financial globalization, regional economic integration in Asia, and the international monetary system. He co-edited a book with Barry Eichengreen, entitled Renminbi Internationalization: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

Previously, Dr. Kawai held positions as: Dean of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Institute; Special Advisor to the ADB President in charge of regional economic cooperation and integration; Deputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs and President of the Policy Research Institute of Japan’s Ministry of Finance; Chief Economist for the World Bank’s East Asia and the Pacific Region; a Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo and an Associate Professor of Economics at The Johns Hopkins University; and a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

He graduated with his B.A. degree in Economics from the University of Tokyo’s Economics Department. He earned his M.S. degree in Statistics and Ph.D. degree in Economics from Stanford University.

About the Moderator:

Picture of Barbara StallingsBarbara Stallings is William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University. Before arriving at Brown in 2002, she was director of the Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile (1993–2002), and professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1977–1993). She has doctorates in economics (University of Cambridge) and in political science (Stanford University) and is a specialist in development economics, with an emphasis on development strategies and international finance. In addition, she works on issues of economic relations between Asia and Latin America and comparisons between the two regions. Her recent books are Innovation and Inclusion in Latin America: Strategies to Avoid the Middle Income Trap (2016) and Promoting Development: The Political Economy of East Asian Foreign Aid (2017). Her most recent book, Dependency in the Twenty-First Century?: The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations (2020), was selected as one of Foreign Affairs’ best books of 2020. She has taught at various universities in China and elsewhere in Asia; currently she is a distinguished visiting professor at the Schwarzman Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Welcome and Introductory Remarks:

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

Picture of James FosterJames E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Vice Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

Emerging Trade Battlefield with China: Export Competition and Firms’ Coping Strategies

October 2019

Yao Pan, Katariina Nilsson Hakkala

IIEP working paper 2019-14

Abstract: This paper analyzes how intensified Chinese export competition affects the exports and product ranges of Western firms. Using a novel identification strategy that exploits changes in Chinese export policies, we find that Chinese export competition reduces aggregate product level exports of Finland. Firm-level analysis using administrative data further shows that Chinese competition leads to substantial price cuts to retain market shares, especially for homogeneous products. In addition, we also discover that firms respond to the increased level of Chinese export competition by dropping their marginal products. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of export competition with China for developed countries.

Keywords: Trade Flows, Export Competition, Firm-level, Product Mix, China

JEL Classification: F14, F61, L25