Worsening Sino-Japan relations centered on the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is more about domestic Chinese politics and international geo-politics than history. A powerful nationalistic China feels it deserves a China-centric Asia, but the US-Japan alliance constitutes a major obstacle. The islands dispute is provides China with leverage to re-orient Japan's security thinking toward the accommodation of Chinese power as well as to sow discord in the US-Japan alliance. David Arase...

"The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win" From the former Financial Times Beijing bureau chief, a balanced and far-seeing analysis of the emerging competition between China and the United States that will dominate twenty-first-century world affairs—an inside account of Beijing's quest for influence and an explanation of how America can come out on top. The structure of global politics is shifting rapidly. After decades of rising, China has...

We all know that the U.S. imports over $400 billion dollars of clothing, toys, computers and other manufactured goods from China every year. Less well known is that the U.S.'s biggest export to China is our trash and scrap. Though the distance between your household recycling bin and the Chinese countryside might seem vast, you would be surprised at how quickly your empty yogurt container made that trip last year. This will be an informal, picture guided tour of the Chinese scrap economy, aka...

As China navigates the murky waters of a “third way” with liberal economic policies under a strict political regime, the surprising battleground for China’s future emerges in the country’s highest rated television network—China Central Television, or CCTV. With 16 internationally broadcast channels and over 1.2 billion viewers, CCTV is a powerhouse in conveying Chinese news and entertainment. The hybrid nature of the network has also transformed it into an unexpected site of discourse in a...

President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China held a major meeting in June at Sunnylands, the historic Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage, California. The meeting was hailed as "the most important meeting between an American president and a Chinese leader in 40 years, since Nixon and Mao." However, the meeting also drew widely disparate coverage in the domestic and international press and became the focus of attention in the popular culture in both nations.

Paul Gillis was a partner with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, one of the "big four" accounting firms, for twenty-eight years. He first went to China sixteen years ago to help the company build its business there and subsequently became a professor at Peking University, where he's taught for six years. Gillis edits the widely-read China Accounting Blog and is frequently consulted by the business press. His book on how the Big Four came to dominate the accounting business in China and the push back...

Through a series of absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, two of today's foremost specialists on China provide a panoramic narrative of the nation's ascent from imperial doormat to global economic powerhouse in Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century (Random House). Author Orville Schell, author of many books, studied Chinese history at Harvard and Berkeley and has written for many publications, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker,...

Professor Tang has researched institutional analysis and design, common-pool resource governance, economic development, and environmental policy. He also has expertise in organizational commitment and microcredit. He is the author of Institutions and Collective Action: Self-Governance in Irrigation (ICS Press, 1992) and has been published in numerous journals, including Comparative Politics, Economic Development Quarterly, Environment and Planning A, Governance, Human Ecology, Harvard...

Mikkal E. Herberg is Research Director of NBR's Energy Security Program. He is also a senior lecturer on international and Asian energy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Previously, Mr. Herberg spent 20 years in the oil industry in Strategic Planning roles for ARCO, where from 1997 to 2000 was Director for Global Energy and Economics, responsible for worldwide energy, economic, and political analysis. He also headed...

Highly renowned international documentary filmmaker, Bregtje van der Haak, of VPRO (Dutch Television), discusses her most recent documentary, "DNA Dreams." This film documents the undertaking of Chinese scientists who are attempting to analyze and potentially clone the DNA of 2,000 highly gifted children. China has been on the forefront of cloning research and technology, and the implications of their projects are far reaching. "DNA Dreams" poses the questions: What if we could identify...

What is the writer's place in China today? What should it be? What responsibilities does a writer have to readers? To the state? To art? To moral principle? China's two recent Nobel Prize winners, Liu Xiaobo for peace, and Mo Yan for literature, offer some contrasting answers. About the Speaker Perry Link is among the top American scholars of Chinese culture. He previously taught at UCLA and Princeton and now holds the Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University...

A panel discussion with Janet Yang (producer of Joy Luck Club and Shanghai Calling), Daniel Hsia (writer and director of Shanghai Calling), Bennett Pozil (Executive VP of EastWest Bank), and Chris Fenton (President of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group) on the globalization of Hollywood. Panelists: Janet Yang, Producer Throughout her life, Yang has distinguished herself by serving as a cultural ambassador, whether by bringing the creative and business worlds together, or by bridging...

Citizens of nations across the globe cannot help but notice the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy in recent years. This country, the famous "workshop of the world," appears on the front page of major newspapers on a daily basis. But, while many have focused on China's politics, economic development, and social changes, few have considered how much influence China has in regional and international affairs. Is China trying to establish itself a global power, a challenger to the United...

James Baker served as President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State from 1989 until 1992 - a period of tumultuous change around the world, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the first Gulf War, and the Tiananmen Square crisis in China. In an interview with USCI's Mike Chinoy, Baker spoke about the current challenges facing the U.S.-China relationship.

As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to "see the world"and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for...

Across the globe, China is more engaged than ever before. We see this in trade and investment, security and anti-piracy patrols, cultural and educational exchanges, participation in international organizations, and much more. For a discussion of China's foreign policy objectives and the current state of its relations with North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe USCI hosted three of the country's most experienced diplomats, Ambassadors Lu Fengding, Mei Ping, and Zhou Gang. Lu...

Born in Toronto, Canada, Ryan Pyle spent his early years close to home. After obtaining a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto in 2001, Ryan realized a life long dream and traveled to China on an exploratory mission. In 2002 Ryan moved to China permanently and in 2003 began taking freelance newspaper and magazine assignments. In 2004 Ryan became a regular contributor to the New York Times. In 2009 Ryan was listed by PDN Magazine as one of the top 30 emerging...

Covering an historic arc that reaches from the Cultural Revolution to the 2008 Olympic Games, Alison Friedman looks at how China is searching for a new globalized contemporary identity through music, dance and theater. Examples of artists navigating this search include world-famous classical musicians like Lang Lang and Tan Dun as well as less well-known underground 'Chinese indie' musicians such as Xiao He and the performing artist collective ZuHe Niao. Ms. Friedman also addresses how...

Shanghai Calling was screened at the USC Ray Stark Family Theatre on February 8, 2013, followed by a discussion with producer Janet Yang. Synopsis Shanghai Calling is a romantic comedy about modern-day American immigrants in an unfamiliar land. When an ambitious New York attorney is sent to Shanghai on assignment, he immediately stumbles into a legal mess that could spell the end of his career. But with help from a beautiful relocation specialist, a well-connected foreign businessman, a...

China is one of the lenses WuDunn and Kristof use to highlight issues affecting women and girls in their book, Half the Sky. Issues that Chinese women face include a lack of investment in education in poor rural areas, gender imbalance due to forced or sex-selective abortions, and discrimination in the workplace. Yet the authors also use China to illustrate the vast improvements that have been made for women over time and their consequent effects. The knowledge that Sheryl WuDunn and...

For many years, China's government organizations led the effort to bring about a "reverse brain drain." However, while 400,000 students have returned, the top 20% of its expatriate talent has remained abroad. To resolve this problem, in 2002-2003, the Organization Department of the CCP expanded its portfolio from "managing cadres" to managing "talent." Yet, these early efforts did not "bring back the best." However, since 2008, largely under the leadership of Li Yuanchao, director of the...

During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving secular fairs, devoted exclusively to trade with no religious content of any kind, were suppressed. However, once China embarked on its path of free market reform and openness, secular commodity...

An artist paints landscapes of faraway places that she cannot identify in order to find her place in the global economy. A migrant worker sorts recyclables and thinks deeply about the soul of his country, while a Taoist mystic struggles to keep his traditions alive. An entrepreneur capitalizes on a growing car culture by trying to convince people not to buy cars. And a 90-year-old woman remembers how the oldest neighborhoods of her city used to be. These are the exciting and saddening,...

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is the top Asia hand in the Obama administration. He is one of the architects of the "Pivot", the administration's effort to move the center of gravity of American foreign policy to the Asia-Pacific. He has been a key interlocutor with China at a time of increasingly strained relations between Washington and Beijing, and has also been deeply involved in efforts to address mounting regional tensions, most notably in the East China...