| China’s Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Record in Foreign Development |
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Julia C. Strauss, Ph.D. – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies |
Friday February 28, 2020
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Dampeer Room
Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” is as massive as it is controversial. The overland Silk Road Economic Belt involves railways, energy pipelines, highways and other projects westward through former Soviet Republics and southward to Pakistan and to Southeast Asia. The Maritime Silk Road would develop ports along the Indian Ocean from Southeast Asia to East Africa and parts of Europe. More than sixty countries are involved, with estimated investment by China alone (before inevitable cost-overruns) of well over $1 trillion by 2017.
The partnerships involved, however, largely involve not grants but low-interest loans and use of Chinese firms. Some participating countries now owe in the range of 20% of GDP to China. Governments seek the support but there has also been pushback – not just from potential rivals like the United States or Japan, but in partner countries where citizens fear corruption, debt, and Chinese influence. Even the benefits to China are not entirely clear: for example, closer economic links between western China and the Muslim nations to its west could create political risks for the regime – a concern that may help explain current repression.
So how are we to understand China’s policies and their likely results? Professor Strauss has edited volumes on both China’s investments in Africa and in Latin America. She joins us to offer perspectives based on both China’s behavior and the experience of those partner nations.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Julia C. Strauss joined the faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1994, and currently serves as Professor of Chinese Politics. From 2002 – 2011 she also served as editor of The China Quarterly. Professor Strauss earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992 and has published widely on 20th century state building and institutional development in China and Taiwan. This includes her new book, State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well as her previous Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford University Press, 1998). She co-edited, with Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa (I.B. Tauris, 2007). As part of her work with The China Quarterly, Professor Strauss also co-edited special volumes on China and Africa, China and Latin America, Gender in contemporary China, The History of the People’s Republic, and Culture in the Contemporary PRC.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
March 6: The Racial Geography of Cleveland Heights. With Jessica A. Kelley, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology.
March 13: Spring Break
March 20: Taking Away the Car Keys (from seniors). With Weidi Qin, MSW, MPH, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
March 27: China’s Tibet Dilemma at a Crossroads. With Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ph.D., John Reynolds Harkness Professor in Anthropology and Co-Director, Center for Research on Tibet.
April 3: Creating Army Officers for the 21st Century. With Lt. Col. Brian Ferguson, Professor of Military Science, John Carroll University.
April 10: What’s the Beef? The Controversy Over Health Effects of Red Meat. With Hope Barkoukis, Ph.D., Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor in Wellness and Preventive Care and Chair, Department of Nutrition.
April 17: Targeted Assassinations, and Other Red or Not-So-Red Lines. With Shannon French, Ph.D., Inamori Professor of Ethics and Director, Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence.
April 24: Regulating Content of Online Platforms. With Raymond Ku, J.D., Professor and Laura B. Chisholm Distinguished Research Scholar, CWRU School of Law. |
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February 23, 2020
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Upcoming Events
Building the Post-1949 State in China and Taiwan
A Global Currents Discussion with Julia Strauss, Ph.D., Professor of Chinese Politics, SOAS, University of London, Thursday February 27, 2020, 4:00 p.m., Tinkham Veale University Center, Room 134, 11038 Bellflower Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106. This program is made possible by the generosity of Ms. Eloise Briskin. Refreshments will be provided.
Building a new state is hard. A governing apparatus must be built, a populace convinced (not always willingly!) and a sense of what the state is and how it should act must make it intelligible to both its agents and citizens or subjects. How a state is built shapes its future – and is shaped by the past. Professor Strauss shows how somewhat similar challenges and inherited understandings led to both commonalities and differences in how authority was consolidated on both sides of the Straits. That has lessons for understanding both China and state-building.
Julia C. Strauss joined the faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1994, and currently serves as Professor of Chinese Politics. From 2002 – 2011 she also served as editor of The China Quarterly. Professor Strauss earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992 and has published widely on 20th century state building and institutional development in China and Taiwan. This includes her new book, State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well as her previous Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford University Press, 1998). She co-edited, with Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa (I.B. Tauris, 2007).
The Twilight of Judicial Independence
The Frank J. Battisti Memorial Lecture. A discussion with Charles G. Geyh, J.D., John F. Kimberling Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Thursday February 27, 2020, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m., Moot Courtroom (A59), CWRU School of Law, 11075 East Blvd, Cleveland, OH 44106.
Judicial independence has been a defining feature of the American Constitutional landscape for centuries. The architecture of judicial independence, however, has never been fully explained or understood. As long as the foundations of judicial independence have remained sound and the structure has been adequate to support the weight of episodic attacks, there has been no pressing need to fully understand why or how. But that is changing due to developments that are variously cyclical, sustained, and sudden.
These developments threaten the future of an independent judiciary in arguably unprecedented ways, and counsel the need for a deeper, and more systemic evaluation of judicial independence and its vulnerabilities.
This lecture will examine the three-tiered architecture of judicial independence, before turning to how that architecture emerged and evolved over the course of four periods in history. The lecture will also show how judicial independence norms began to erode in the mid-twentieth century, and how, in the last three years, specific constitutional conventions that have protected judicial independence for generations, have begun to collapse. The speaker will conclude with thoughts on why independence remains essential to the role of the judiciary in American government, and how it can be rescued and defended.
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