Talks from the Hoover Institution

Dollars, Digital Currency, and 120 Years of Chinese Central Banking

Dollars, Digital Currency, and 120 Years of Chinese Central Banking

Thursday, December 10, 2020
Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Over 120 years of Chinese central banking history suggests that China’s central banks and adjacent financial institutions have served primarily as instruments of the state’s development agenda—though that agenda was defined and redefined by the Qing, Nationalist, and Communist regimes. In light of this history, China’s digital currency is bound to be yet another solution to the long-standing Chinese elite agenda of “development politics” and resisting foreign domination. Yes, DCEP will be used to sanction dissidents and allow the CCP to evade US sanctions. But, like predecessor institutions, DCEP’s larger mission will be to raise the technological sophistication of the domestic economy and to guarantee the state’s ability to mobilize these resources. Combined with AI, big data, ubiquitous connectivity, and the almost complete digitization of economic activity, DCEP will allow the Chinese state to see and manage its society and economy to a previously unfathomable degree.

Manny Rincon-Cruz is a researcher at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he helped launch and currently serves as the executive director of the History Working Group.  His research focuses on various aspects of monetary history, Chinese history, and network science. He has written about the social networks of power in the history of the American presidency, the role of collegial networks in the promotion or demotion of Chinese political elites, and is currently working on modeling the spread of the Nazi party in its first three years. Since January 2020, he has been working to better understand the spread and containment of COVID-19, whether in Taiwan or the US. He nonetheless remains keenly interested in how digital technology is transforming both our public sphere and our monetary systems, here and abroad.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY WORKING GROUP

https://www.hoover.org/research-teams/history-working-group  

This interview is part of the History Working Group Seminar Series. A central piece of the History Working Group is the seminar series, which is hosted in partnership with the Hoover Library & Archives. The seminar series was launched in the fall of 2019, and thus far has included six talks from Hoover research fellows, visiting scholars, and Stanford faculty. The seminars provide outside experts with an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on their work. While the lunch seminars have grown in reputation, they have been purposefully kept small in order to ensure that the discussion retains a good seminar atmosphere.

Great Decisions: America in the World: Session 3: Tsars, Trade, and T-Cells

Great Decisions: America in the World: Session 3: Tsars, Trade, and T-Cells

Thursday, December 10, 2020

The Hoover Institution hosts Great Decisions: America in the World on November 16, November 18, and December 10, 2020. The topic on December 10 for Session 3 is Tsars, Trade, and T-Cells.

The session features Michael McFaul, Lucy Shapiro and John B. Taylor. Michael Auslin moderates the discussion.

Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Era

The Hoover Institution hosts Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Era on Tuesday, December 8, 2020 from 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. PDT.

During the Ma Ying-jeou presidency in Taiwan (2008-2016), confrontations over relations with the People’s Republic of China stressed the country’s institutions, leading to a political crisis. Nevertheless, as documented in Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan, a new book edited by Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, its democracy proved to be resilient. In this discussion, several of the book’s contributors will reflect on the politics of this era, and what subsequent developments tell us about the enduring strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan’s democracy.

This lecture is part of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.

Featured Speakers

Szu-yin Ho
Graduate Institute of Strategic and International Affairs, Tamkang University

Austin Horng-en Wang
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Isaac Shih-hao Huang
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science, National Chengchi University

Moderated by

Kharis Templeman
Program Manager of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific

Introduction by

Larry Diamond
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution 
Director of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific

Structural Adjustment as Development

Structural Adjustment as Development

Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Structural Adjustment Programs are commonly understood to refer to the conditional lending programs promoted by the World Bank and the IMF during the 1980s and 1990s, that aimed to downsize the state sector and encourage "Washington Consensus" economic governance standards across the Global South. This lecture argues that structural adjustment was in fact a much more ambitious project that began immediately in the wake of the colonial era, and that encompassed anti-Third World politics, the strategic use of debt crises to impose liberalizations, the application of shock therapies applied to ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe, and even the austerity programs applied in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The history of structural adjustment is thus a cipher for the march and triumph of neoliberalism. However, as the neoliberal era now draws to a close, we can see that the unintended albeit ironic consequence has been China's decision to pursue a radical trade surplus strategy that has deindustrialize the West.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY WORKING GROUP

https://www.hoover.org/research-teams/history-working-group  

This interview is part of the History Working Group Seminar Series. A central piece of the History Working Group is the seminar series, which is hosted in partnership with the Hoover Library & Archives. The seminar series was launched in the fall of 2019, and thus far has included six talks from Hoover research fellows, visiting scholars, and Stanford faculty. The seminars provide outside experts with an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on their work. While the lunch seminars have grown in reputation, they have been purposefully kept small in order to ensure that the discussion retains a good seminar atmosphere.

Impacts Of Government-Sponsored Programs

Impacts Of Government-Sponsored Programs

Thursday, December 3, 2020
Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution presents an online virtual speaker series based on the scholarly research and commentary written by Hoover fellows participating in the Human Prosperity Project on Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism. This project objectively investigates the historical record to assess the consequences for human welfare, individual liberty, and interactions between nations of various economic systems ranging from pure socialism to free-market capitalism. Each session will include thoughtful and informed analysis from our top scholars.

FEATURING
John F. Cogan is the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a faculty member in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University.

Joshua D. Rauh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. 

For more information on this initiative, click here - https://www.hoover.org/research-teams/human-prosperity-project-socialism-and-free-market-capitalism 

To view the upcoming events, click here - https://www.hoover.org/research/human-prosperity-project-socialism-and-free-market-capitalism-speaker-series 

 

Broken Promises: Historical Lessons on How Not to Govern the Uyghur Homeland

Broken Promises: Historical Lessons on How Not to Govern the Uyghur Homeland

Thursday, December 3, 2020
Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Xinjiang is a Muslim-majority region in northwest China, and its autochthonous Uyghur people are very different from China’s Han majority in terms of culture, language, and religion. Since 2016, China’s leadership has shifted its governing strategy in Xinjiang from economic development to cultural assimilation, citing the threat allegedly posed by Islam. A new system of reeducation camps, disappearances, and political imprisonment has now been widely reported in global media. This new policy is reminiscent of the last campaign of cultural assimilation undertaken in the region. From 1877 to 1907, Neo-Confucian activists from Hunan province attempted to turn 'Muslims into Confucians' and transform this alien border region into a familiar province of China proper. The result, however, was neither stability nor assimilation, but greater resentment, violence, and alienation. This talk explores the ramifications of that historical 'civilizing project' in terms of its effects on economy, sexual relations, and the creation of a deeper and more hostile ethnic consciousness. It reflects on the remarkable parallels with the program undertaken today in terms of its underlying logics and its social effects, and on the persistent idea of the 'broken promises' in the Uyghur relationship with China-based states.

Eric Schluessel is an assistant professor at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. His research concerns the social history of Xinjiang and China in the nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. Prof. Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana, was recently a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and spent the 2019-2020 academic year on a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His publications include Land of Strangers (Columbia, 2020), An Introduction to Chaghatay (2018), and several articles on Uyghur and Chinese affairs past and present. He received his PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY WORKING GROUP

https://www.hoover.org/research-teams/history-working-group  

This interview is part of the History Working Group Seminar Series. A central piece of the History Working Group is the seminar series, which is hosted in partnership with the Hoover Library & Archives. The seminar series was launched in the fall of 2019, and thus far has included six talks from Hoover research fellows, visiting scholars, and Stanford faculty. The seminars provide outside experts with an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on their work. While the lunch seminars have grown in reputation, they have been purposefully kept small in order to ensure that the discussion retains a good seminar atmosphere.

Lee Ohanian Answers Your Questions On Sweden and Socialism

Hoover Institution senior fellow Lee Ohanian answers frequently asked questions from his video "Sweden's Experiment with Socialism." Is Sweden socialist? Is "democratic socialism" different from "socialism?" Listen to find out.

One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World

One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World

Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Most discussion of China’s One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR) focuses on overseas infrastructure projects. But the initiative is also a campaign of ideas to buttress Xi Jinping’s personality cult and entrench his domestic control. Discussing a chapter from his new book, Eyck Freymann of the University of Oxford shows how Chinese-language propaganda use historical analogies to explain and justify the OBOR scheme. Their subtext is that Xi Jinping is the spiritual heir to Han Wudi, one of the most glorious emperors in Chinese history. OBOR’s true objective is to restore a model of world order from centuries past, when foreign emissaries would travel to Beijing and prostrate themselves at the feet of the Chinese emperor, offering gifts in exchange for political protection.

Eyck Freymann is the author of One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard University Press 2020) and a doctoral candidate in Area Studies at the University of Oxford. He previously worked as a research assistant at Harvard University and at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Global Center in Beijing. He holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Henry Scholar, and an AM and AB cum laude from Harvard.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY WORKING GROUP
https://www.hoover.org/research-teams/history-working-group 

This interview is part of the History Working Group Seminar Series. A central piece of the History Working Group is the seminar series, which is hosted in partnership with the Hoover Library & Archives. The seminar series was launched in the fall of 2019, and thus far has included six talks from Hoover research fellows, visiting scholars, and Stanford faculty. The seminars provide outside experts with an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on their work. While the lunch seminars have grown in reputation, they have been purposefully kept small in order to ensure that the discussion retains a good seminar atmosphere.

Lessons Learned: European Values Vs Islamism

Lessons Learned: European Values Vs  Islamism

Thursday, November 19, 2020
Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Assita Kanko, MEP and Ayaan Hirsi Ali discussed Lessons Learned: European Values vs. Islamism on Thursday, November 19, 2020.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and founder of the AHA Foundation. She served as a Member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006. While in Parliament, she focused on furthering the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society, and on defending the rights of Muslim women.

Assita Kanko is an elected member of the European Parliament, a published author, columnist and human rights activist. In 2019 she was elected to represent the New Flemish Alliance as a Belgian MEP. She is a member of the Parliament’s delegation for EU-US relations, and its committees on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs; Foreign Affairs; Human Rights; Security and Defence. As a politician her work has led to the adoption of the Parliament’s first ever resolution entirely focused on ending the practice of FGM; something she herself survived as a child at age 5 in Burkina Faso.

For more information go to: https://www.hoover.org/publications/capital-conversations 

Great Decisions: America in the World: Session 2: Strategic Stability

Great Decisions: America in the World: Session 2: Strategic Stability

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The Hoover Institution is hosting Great Decisions: America in the World on November 16, November 18, and December 11, 2020. The topic on November 18 for Session 2 is Strategic Stability.

This session features Larry Diamond, Niall Ferguson, and Victor Davis Hanson. Michael Auslin moderates the discussion.