East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Coup-Proofing to Victory: Military Effectiveness

and the Puzzle of Nationalist China, 1937-1949″

Kevin Weng

UChicago Political Science PhD Student

Feb 20, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstract

Conventional wisdom argues that the militaries of autocratic regimes engaged in coup-proofing are, on average, less effective at fighting conventional wars. However, such theories fail to account for the empirical puzzle of Nationalist China, which managed to sustain a surprisingly effective war effort against Imperial Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. I argue that – contrary to existing theories which point to coup-proofing and military politicization as the primary determinants of battlefield (in)effectiveness – variations in the military performance of the National Revolutionary Army can be traced back to the Guomindang government’s shifting dependence on either land rents or customs duties & foreign financing. By developing the extractive infrastructure which allowed for an expansion of the land tax, the Guomindang increased the logistical capacities of the Nationalist state, which in turn led to enhanced battlefield effectiveness. In contrast, a re-orientation towards depending on customs collections and American Lend-Lease aid during the later stages of the war led to a more limited logistical network, thereby reducing battlefield effectiveness. To demonstrate my argument’s claims, I rely on historical process-tracing of the National Revolutionary Army’s military campaigns from 1937-1949, while drawing upon archival evidence collected from the Second Historical Archives of China, Academia Historica, The Hoover Archives, & the U.S. National Archives.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“China’s ‘Airpocalypse’ and its Political Impact”

Anna Lisa Ahlers

Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Society and Politics

Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages

University of Oslo

Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago

Feb 6, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstract

For about a decade now air pollution is the most hotly debated environmental problem in Chinese society. The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the huge winter smog events of 2012/13 in Northeastern cities marked a watershed in communication about this problem. Concern about the health effects of heavy air pollution has become a fact of life for Chinese urbanites but did also fuel demands for political solutions. In 2013 the government issued an action plan for air pollution control (which was recently renewed) and declared a high-profile war on environmental pollution a year later, introducing some harsh new measures and sweeping monitoring of their implementation. China’s newfound “authoritarian environmentalism” in fact seems to have yielded significant results already, as even Greenpeace admits, and average annual urban air pollution has been on the decline in recent years. How has this turnaround in Chinese environmental politics, which was largely ineffective for decades, been possible and what are its main features?

In my talk, I will draw some preliminary conclusions concerning the political impact of China’s “airpocalypse”, based on almost five years of research in an international and interdisciplinary project team (AIRBORNE, hosted at the University of Oslo – more). I argue that the smog experience turns out to have been a trigger for overall changes in environmental governance in China, especially at the interfaces of political authorities, science, media and the general public. I will present some examples of these – sometimes rather surprising – new governance mechanisms, their background and effects. Last but not least, the apparent return of extreme smog events this winter also calls into question the government’s preferred narrative, and I will outline some of the current questions that warrant further research on this topic.

* Subscribe to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Japan’s Peace Constitution:

the Prospect for Revision from a Historical Perspective”

Taeju Kim

UChicago Department of History

Jan 16, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstract

Along with heightening international uncertainty due to the rise of China, intensifying economic competition, and surging nationalism in Northeast Asia, Japanese policymakers and the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have endeavored to revise the Peace Constitution. The constitution established by the U.S. Occupation government after WWII permanently “renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” To many Japanese conservatives, this foreign-imposed constitution embodied their nation’s shameful defeat and lost sovereignty. Accordingly, revising the constitution represented a way to recover national pride and honor and become an independent, autonomous country with its own armed forces. These conservatives believed that such an action would allow Japan to strengthen its relationship with the U.S., balance out China, and address other security threats in the region. Although conservative politics in Japan seemingly existed in a consensual agreement, my research instead demonstrates how the Peace Constitution came to the center of a conservative ideology that promoted liberal economic modernization and national security in postwar Japanese-American relations during the 1960s. In contrast to hardline conservatives, a group of moderate conservative social scientists and policy specialists defended the Peace Constitution in an attempt to re-conceptualize Japan’s experience of WWII, liberal economic modernity, and its national sovereignty and security. In the face of overwhelming American material superiority in the Cold War, these moderate conservative academics supported the Peace Constitution as a way of enabling Japan to appropriate American power and ideology, while simultaneously justifying the role of the American military in an anti-colonial context. This dependent autonomy came to be at the heart of the Japanese idea of realism. In an effort to reintegrate fragmented Japanese society, the moderates used the Peace Constitution to coopt the leftist logic of anti-colonialism, while collaborating with the state as members of the Advisory Board to the Prime Minister of Japan to promote a project of national modernization based on their scientific knowledge of management.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Legality in Contemporary Chinese Politics”

Tom Ginsburg

University of Chicago Law School

Nov 21, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

About the Presenter

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department.  He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789, that runs the award-winning Constitute website.  His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018, with Aziz Huq), and his other books include Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory (2015) (with Nuno Garoupa); The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009) (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton), which won the best book award from Comparative Democratization Section of American Political Science Association; and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), winner of the C. Herman Pritchett Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.  He currently serves a senior advisor on Constitution Building to International IDEA.

Abstract

The picture of Chinese law that many Western scholars and commentators portray is an increasingly bleak one: since the mid-2000s, China has been retreating from legal reform back into unchecked authoritarianism. This article argues that, much to the contrary, Chinese politics have in fact become substantially more law-oriented over the past five years. The Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping has indeed centralized power and control to an almost unprecedented extent, but it has done this in a highly legalistic way, empowering courts against other state and Party entities, insisting on legal professionalism, and bringing political powers that were formerly the exclusive possession of the Party under legal authorization and regulation. In fact, nowhere is this “legalism” more powerfully expressed than in the 2018 amendments to the Chinese Constitution, which show that, even if China is indeed deepening its dictatorship, it is nonetheless doing so through harnessing the organizational and legitimizing capacities of law, rather than circumventing it.

We argue that both top-down political considerations and bottom-up social demand are driving this recent turn towards legality: first, as a purely instrumental matter, governing China in a centralized, top-down manner requires a strong commitment to bureaucratic legalization. The sheer size of the country and its population creates severe principal-agent and resource allocation problems that force central authorities to either recognize some version of de-facto federalism, or to combat local corruption and abuse through rigorous law enforcement. With the recent political turn away from decentralized administration, the Party leadership must pursue the latter strategy of investing in legality. Second, and perhaps more interestingly, the Chinese population increasingly seems to attach significant amounts of sociopolitical legitimacy to law and legality. As a result, empowering legal institutions and positioning the Party leadership as a champion of legality against traditional bureaucratic corruption has been a major source of both personal status and popular political legitimacy.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Personal Ties, Meritocracy, and China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign” 

Peter Lorentzen

University of San Francisco

Nov 13, TUE 12:30-1:50 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Joint Session with the CPW

A light lunch will be provided

About the Presenter

Peter Lorentzen is an assistant professor in the Economics Department of the University of San Francisco. His research primarily concerns the politics and economics of development and governance, with a focus on China. His articles have been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the China Quarterly, Genetics in Medicine, the Journal of Economic Growth, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Modern China, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and World Development. He received his PhD in Business Administration from Stanford University. His webpage is www.peterlorentzen.com.

Abstract of the Paper

We examine empirically the targeting and motivations of the first phase of China’s anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping (2012-2015). Combining data on officials’ personal networks revealed during the campaign with biographical and economic data, we find evidence that the campaign indeed targeted corruption. In addition, individuals, networks, and geographic regions that departed sharply from meritocratic governance practices appear to have been a primary target, with higher rates of indictment. This is consistent with the party’s own claim that the crackdown was designed to reduce corruption and strengthen party-led meritocracy. However, individuals with personal ties to Xi Jinping appear to be exempt from investigation while, individuals with ties to the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee had no special protection. These findings supporting the perception that the crackdown was also intended to consolidate political power in Xi’s hands.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

This event is sponsored by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences 

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Understanding Chinese Opinion Leaders’

Political Stances: What Does Democracy Mean in China?”

Yinxian Zhang

PhD Candidate, UChicago Sociology

Nov 7, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstract

How would China’s public sphere function if China were democratized as it currently stands? This paper investigates the political values of Chinese opinion leaders, particularly their perceptions of liberal democracy, as they are the major players in the Chinese public sphere. I examine the variation in opinion leader perceptions and explore its implications for the potential cleavages in the political development of China. Combining computational methods and qualitative analysis, I examine a large-scale dataset of 4 million users’ social network ties and 1.28 million social media posts. I find that opinion leaders diverged between a pro-democracy pro-reform ideology and an anti-democracy nationalist/Maoist ideology. However, the pro-democracy ideology was the dominant value embraced by up to three fourths of the opinion leaders, and it effectively constrained the conservative and authoritarian values. As a result, nationalist and Maoist ideologies were subject to a legitimacy crisis. Moreover, even among the pro-democracy opinion leaders, people had different perceptions of liberal democracy, particularly about whether democracy should be pursued as an end in itself, or as a means to other public goods. If China were democratized today, we could expect to see political cleavages arise from such variation in people’s agendas and priorities.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

MA Session

“Interplay between Online Media and Environmental Protest in Rural China: 

Case Studies Based on Cancer Villages.”

Fangzhu Lu

“The Pattern of Political Trust and Redistributive Preferences:

Theory and Evidence from the Chinese Context”

Lingnan He

“Beyond the Patron-Client Relationship: Private Entrepreneur’s 

Political Entitlement and Elastic Capitalism in Post-socialist China”

Chengzuo Tang

Oct 31, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstracts

Fangzhu Lu:

China’s meteoric rise on the global economic stage has garnered the attention of both domestic and overseas media. So, too, have the serious and worrying environmental pollution rises. It is commonly believed that the increase of cancer cases in Chinese rural areas has a strong relationship with the deterioration of local environment, especially the industrial pollution. However, figuring out the environmental causes of cancer victims has been a long and difficult process, and the available evidence whether villagers’ cancer are results of the exposure to local environmental pollutants is not that easy to collect. Based on a documentary review of selected online news reports and news comments during the past 8 years, this paper aims to study the interactions between the online media activism, environmental governance and environmental collective actions based on case studies of cancer villages.

Lingnan He:

Despite the existence of a large body of theoretical literature on political trust, empirical work has failed to reach a consensus on its implications for individual attitudes toward redistribution. In this paper, I propose and test a number of hypotheses on the relationship between political trust and preferences for redistribution in the context of contemporary China. First, in authoritarian contexts, diffuse trust—i.e., trust directed at the overall governmental system—and specific trust—i.e., trust regarding particular policy outcomes—should have opposing effects on an individual’s observed preference for redistribution. Specifically, the former should be associated with reduced preference for redistribution, and the latter should be positively associated with the preference for redistribution. Second, uniform trusters and uniform distrusters—individuals who demonstrate either indiscriminately high or low levels of trust towards political institutions and policies—should generally exhibit a lower preference for governmental redistribution efforts compared to other citizens. Evidence from the WVS and the CGSS offers initial support for these predictions.

Chengzuo Tang:

The existing literature has frequently claimed, in the capitalist transformation of socialist regime, the market success of private entrepreneur largely relies on the political connection to bureaucratic power—especially through its dominant form of the “patron-client” relationship between individual businessman and official. However, what if the private entrepreneur transcends the state-market boundary, and attains the institutional authority in the formal policymaking domain? By addressing China’s distinctive experience of capitalist transformation among the major post-socialist regimes,

this research project illustrates the empirical foundation as well as discusses the theoretical implication of the rising economic elite’s political entitlement in the formal institution. With the analytical focus on how the private entrepreneur might venture to organize strategically and act collectively in the institutional process for commercial ends, the original concept of the “elastic capitalism” is particularly contended as a theoretical alternative.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

*Faculty Sponsors: Xi Song (Sociology), xisong@uchicago.edu; Dali Yang (Political Science), daliyang@uchicago.edu

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“Anchoring an Alliance: Explaining Southeast Asian Balancing Behavior Against China After 1945”

Bonnie Chan

PhD Candidate, UChicago Political Science

Oct 24, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Pizza will be provided

Abstract

Under what circumstances would a group of small and medium states balance against a large threat? Despite China’s exponential economic growth in the past few decades and its growing ambition in the South China Sea, there has not been a concerted regional effort to contain China. I posit that because of the asymmetry of power among states in Asia, there exists a peculiar sort of collective action problem – deterrence from external balancing becomes a threshold public good. The implication is that no one state has an incentive to start a balancing coalition even if all of China’s neighbors would prefer joining one. To solve the collective action problem, I argue that the commitment of an extra-regional great power is necessary. To test my theory, I examine how changes in American commitment to various Southeast Asian states during the Cold War and after the Cold War influenced what actions Southeast Asian leaders took to balance against the rising regional threat of each period.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Faculty Sponsors:

Xi Song (Sociology), xisong@uchicago.edu

Dali Yang (Political Science), daliyang@uchicago.edu

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“After the Deluge: Deleveraging and the challenge of cleaning up China’s debt problems”

Dinny McMahon, Paulson Institute

Oct 17, Wed 12:00-1:30 pm

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Light refreshments will be provided

Abstract

In the wake of the global financial crisis the pace of debt accumulation in the Chinese economy rapidly accelerated. A decade on, China’s financial authorities are now in the midst of cleaning up the waste, excess, and risk that built up in the country’s financial system as a result. This talk will look at how Beijing is approaching the clean-up, how it differs from the last time Beijing faced major debt problems, and what current efforts are trying to achieve.

About the Presenter

Dinny McMahon spent ten years as a financial journalist in China, including six years in Beijing with The Wall Street Journal, and four years with Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai, where he also contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2015, he left China and The Wall Street Journal to take up a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a think tank in Washington DC, where he wrote China’s Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle. He is currently a fellow at MacroPolo, the Paulson Institute’s think tank, where he writes about China’s efforts to clean up its financial system.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

Faculty Sponsors:

Xi Song (Sociology), xisong@uchicago.edu

Dali Yang (Political Science), daliyang@uchicago.edu

Dingxin Zhao (Sociology), dzhao@uchicago.edu

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

“中国政法领域研究的热点问题评说 (Comment on Hot Issues in China’s Political and Legal Research)”

童之伟, East China University of Political Science and Law

*The main language of the session is Chinese*

Oct 5, Fri 4:00-5:30 pm

Pick 319, 5828 South University Ave.

Light refreshments will be provided

About the Presenter

Tong Zhiwei, Ph.D in Law (1994, Wuhan University), is a Professor of Law at the East China University of Political Science and Law. He is also the president of the Shanghai Constitutional Law Society and one of the vice presidents of  China Constitutional Law Society. He has published many articles and books on jurisprudence and constitutional law, including Constitutional Reforms in Contemporary China (City University of Hong Kong Press, 2016), Forms of State Structure (Peking University Press, second edition, 2015), and Right, Power, and Faquanism:A Practical Legal Theory from Contemporary China (Brill 2018).

This workshop features interdisciplinary scholarship addressing topics relating to social, political, economic as well as cultural matters and issues in East Asia. Our presenters come from various disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, history, etc. The goal of this workshop is to foster communication and collaboration among students and scholars whose interest lies in East Asia at the University of Chicago and in the wider East Asian Studies community.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Jongyoon Baik: baikjongyoon@uchicago.edu and Ji Xue: jixue@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

Faculty Sponsors:

Xi Song (Sociology), xisong@uchicago.edu

Dali Yang (Political Science), daliyang@uchicago.edu

Dingxin Zhao (Sociology), dzhao@uchicago.edu

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.