Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas

Friday, April 30, 2021
9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

The Institute for International Economic Policy and the GW Elliott School of International Affairs Book Launch Series was pleased to invite you to a book launch discussion of Prof. Stephen B. Kaplan’s Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas (Cambridge University Press).

China’s overseas financing is a distinct form of “patient capital” that marshals the country’s vast domestic resources to create commercial opportunities internationally. Its long-term risk tolerance and lack of policy conditionality has allowed developing economies to sidestep the fiscal austerity tendencies of Western markets and multilaterals. Professor Stephen B. Kaplan will discuss his new book, Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas, which examines China’s state-led capitalism, and the costs and benefits of state versus market approaches to development. In the talk, Professor Kaplan explores how patient capital affects national-level governance across the Americas and beyond, including how Chinese leaders might react to developing nation’s ongoing struggles with debt and dependency.

The book launch was also part of our 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. The conference took place as a virtual series. This conference was co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the GW Center for International Business Education and Research, the Latin American & Hemispheric Studies Program (LAHSP) at GW, the GW Department of Political Science, and the Elliott School Book Launch Series.

Meet the Speaker:

Stephen Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.

Professor Kaplan joined the GWU faculty in the fall of 2010 after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University and his Ph.D at Yale University. While at Yale, Kaplan also worked as a researcher for former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Prior to his doctoral studies, Professor Kaplan was a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, writing extensively on developing country economics, global financial market developments, and emerging market crises from 1998 to 2003.

Meet the Discussants:

Picture of Carol WiseProfessor Carol Wise, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California (USC), has written widely on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in the Latin American region. Wise is author of the book, Dragonomics: How Latin America is Maximizing (or Missing Out) on China’s International Development Strategy (Yale University Press, 2020), which received USC’s Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2021 and the Luciano Tomassini 2021 Award-Honorable Mention for the Best Book on International Relations from the Latin American Studies Association. Professor Wise’s most recent journal articles include: “Playing both Sides of the Pacific: Latin America’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China,” Pacific Affairs (2016); “Conceptualizing China-Latin America Relations in the 21 st Century” (with Victoria Chonn Ching), The Pacific Review (2017); and, “International Trade Norms in the Age of Covid-19” (with Nicolas Albertoni), Fudan Humanities and Social Science Journal (2020). Professor Wise has held Fulbright Grants to Canada, Mexico, and Peru. She is a member of the core social science faculty at Renmin University’s annual International Summer Program, Beijing. In 2019, Wise was the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair in the Czech Republic. Her latest research compares the political economy of development in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe.

Picture of Roselyn HsuehRoselyn Hsueh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she codirects the Certificate in Political Economy. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Global Scholar Award for research in India, Mexico, and Russia. Her next book, Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism: Sectoral Pathways to Globalization in China, India, and Russia, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She is the author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (Cornell, 2011), and scholarly articles and book chapters. BBC World News, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and other media outlets have featured her research. She has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and consulted for The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Hsueh has served as a Global Order Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, member of the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, and Residential Research Faculty Fellow at U.C. Berkeley. She also lectured as a Visiting Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. She held the Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Southern California and conducted international fieldwork in China, Japan, and Taiwan as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and David L. Boren National Security Fellow. She earned her B.A. and doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Meet the Moderator: 

Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and  International Affairs, and Co- 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’s Outward Investments: State Capitalism or Capital Flight?

Friday, March 5, 2021
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
via Webex

The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. The conference took place as a virtual series. The conference was co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.

In this event, Professor Meg Rithmire discussed the nature of China’s outward investments. Deborah Brautigam (JHU-SAIS) and Stephen Kaplan (GWU) provided discussant remarks. IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh moderated the discussion.

Global observers are increasingly focused on China’s “state capitalism” and its implications for trading partners and host countries. Disentangling the strategic and commercial motives for Chinese firms abroad is not straightforward, and some of Chinese companies’ global efforts subvert, rather than execute, the Chinese state’s strategic goals. In this talk, based on research on the changing role of the state in China’s economy and the internationalization of Chinese capital over the last decade, I characterize China’s approach to globalization as a series of campaigns and experiments with constant adjustments and focus on the reach and limits of the Chinese party-state.

Meet the Presenter:

Picture of Meg RithmireMeg Rithmire is F. Warren MacFarlan associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. A new project, for which Meg conducted fieldwork in Asia 2016-2017, investigates the relationship between capital and the state and globalization in Asia. The project focuses on a comparison of China, Malaysia, and Indonesia from the early 1980s to the present. The research has two components; first, examining how governments attempt to discipline business and when those efforts succeed and, second, how business adapts to different methods of state control.

Meet the Discussants:

Stephen KaplanStephen B. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.

 

 

Picture of Dr. brautigamA leading expert on China in Africa, Professor Brautigam is the author of Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2010; Chinese version published by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press) and Chinese Aid and African Development: Exporting Green Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 1998). She is also co-editor of Taxation and State-Building: Capacity and Consent(Cambridge University Press, 2008) as well as numerous articles published in academic journals and public affairs media. Professor Brautigam regularly advises international agencies and governments on China-Africa economic engagement.

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. Professor Shambaugh’s area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities.
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. He 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, Shambaugh taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. Shambaugh 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.