EVENT DETAILS

The MIT MISTI-China Program & The MIT Club of Beijing

are proud to present:

China Through the MIT Lens:

Getting the Story Right through Innovative Education and Research

A book talk by

Dr. Edward Steinfeld

Associate Professor of Political Economy

in the MIT Department of Political Science

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Book Talk and Discussion: 7:30 - 8:30pm

The Bookworm Beijing

Bldg 4, Nan Sanlitun Rd.

Chaoyang District Beijing, 100027

T: 6586 9507

Please RSVP to MIT Beijing Club, MITClubBeijing@gmail.com by June 28, 2010

If you have further questions, please contact Chris Tosatdo at Tel: 15810296928.

Playing Our Game: Why China’s Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West

China is often seen by outsiders as a place that has changed economically, but not politically. Moreover, it is often seen as a place that plays only by its own rules in the game of global competition. This book argues that the real story could not be more different. Beginning in the mid-1990s, China embarked on a radical acceleration of its reform efforts, one that involved a tight embrace of globalized production. That embrace opened up China to a variety of outside individuals and outside forces, forces that would play a key role in the restructuring of the country's domestic economy, society, and even politics. As a result, many global companies today outsource production activities to China. Yet, China itself outsources the writing of the rules of the game to outsiders, particularly outsiders from the world advanced industrial economies. In the global division of labor that has resulted, China has grown not by supplanting the advanced industrial economies, but instead by complementing them. In the process, China has proceeded down a path of monumental social and political change. While China remains authoritarian today, its trajectory looks similar to that followed by previous Asian democratizers, namely South Korea and especially Taiwan. Not unlike what the KMT had done on Taiwan in the 1970 and 1980s, the Chinese communist party today has shifted from ideology-based to performance-based rule. Economic performance, particularly in the current era of globalization, increasingly requires the incorporation into the ruling party establishment of people who had previously been spurned intellectuals, technocrats, private entrepreneurs, and overseas trained experts. The core of the system is changing as the system scrambles to keep up with ever-expanding series of governance commitments held out to the Chinese citizenry. And throughout this process, China, for its own domestic interests, increasingly ends up playing not its own game of economic development, but rather our own.

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