"The way that the economy has developed over the past generation is actually gone contrary to a lot of the existing economic models. The Simon Kuznetz phenomenon says it's not just globalization, it's economic growth. As the country is modernizing, as it's growing economically, it does lead to an increase in inequality. When you reach a  certain level of income, the inequality starts to decrease. That was the experience in Europe, in the 19th and 20th century, that was the case in the United States and so forth. That has not been the case of the countries that have been growing rapidly in recent years, where inequality has continued to increase," says CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama. Watch here. 

While Americans may be well acquainted with China’s quest for influence through the projection of power in the diplomatic, economic, and military spheres, they are less aware of the various ways in which Beijing has more recently been exerting cultural and informational influence. According to a new report, some of these ways challenge and even undermine our democratic processes, norms, and institutions.

With a growing realization that the ambition of Chinese influence operations requires far greater scrutiny than it has been getting, a group of American scholars and policy practitioners set out to document the extent of China’s influence-seeking activities in American society. The working group, co-chaired by Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Hoover Institution, and Orville Schell, Arthur Ross director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, just released its findings and recommendations in a report that has drawn much attention, “Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance.” On December 4, Diamond and Schell discussed the report’s findings and implications at a special roundtable organized by Shorenstein APARC’s U.S.-Asia Security Initiative (USASI).

Diamond and Schell described the report’s detailing of a range of assertive and opaque “sharp power” activities that China has stepped up within the United States in multiple sectors, including Congress, state and local government, universities, think tanks, media, corporations, technology and research, and the Chinese American community. These activities, they argue, penetrate deeply the social and political fabric of our democratic society and exploit its openness. Unlike legitimate “soft power” efforts within the realm of normal public diplomacy, they constitute improper interference that demands greater awareness and a calibrated response.

“The report was born out of a recognition that things have changed,” said Schell. “Our engagement with China has either failed or is teetering on the brink of failure. The report aims to put the question of our interaction and exchange with China within the context of policy.”

Diamond noted that “The question at least has to be asked whether there is a threat to U.S. national interests.” He emphasized that the members of the working group that produced the report seek a productive relationship between China and the United States. The report therefore advocates for perspective and framework that are built on three principles regarding U.S.-China relations: transparency, institutional integrity, and reciprocity.

Diamond and Schell were joined at the panel by Hwang Ji-Jen, a Taiwanese scholar in the Institute for East Asian Studies at the University of California - Berkeley, who helped situate the forms and effects of Chinese “sharp power” in the United States in comparison to its practice in and toward Taiwan. Karl Eikenberry, director of USASI, chaired the discussion.

The event was co-sponsored by the US-Asia Security Initiative in the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Audio from the event is available for download or streaming:

The age of ideological struggle failed to end with the Cold War.  Francis Fukuyama, who coined the phrase “the end of history”, talks to Anne McElvoy about the rise of identity politics, whether there is any force that can rival it, and which party is playing the identity game better in the American midterms. Listen here.

"Samuel Huntington was not right about everything. Rather, his greatness lay in his ability to conceptualize big ideas in a wide variety of fields," writes Francis Fukuyama in this comparative article. Read here.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to congratulate the 2018 class of honors students for completing their research under the CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program. The ceremony for the honors students took place on June 15, 2018.

Each year the Center offers an interdisciplinary honors program, through which students write a thesis related to the topics of democracy, development and the rule of law. This year’s cohort wrote on a vast range of topics, including electoral reform in Chile, the rise of the far-right in Greece, and public health in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Each year the CDDRL gives one student an Outstanding Thesis Award. This year’s recipient is Marin Callaway for her work, “Whose California? Power, Property Rights, and the Legacy of the 1851 California Land Act”. Callaway researched Mexican land grant ownership in California throughout the nineteenth century, and how the 1851 California Land Act interacted with social, economic and political phenomena, which led to a loss in this ownership.  
 

One of the CDDRL honors students, Qitong Thomas Cao will receive the Stanford University Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. This award is given to the top ten percent of all theses in social sciences, natural sciences and engineering and applied sciences. Cao’s thesis, titled “The China Wide Web: The Information Dilemma and the Domestication of Cyberspace”, addresses many of the contemporary technology and information issues within authoritarian regimes.

Furthermore, several of this year’s honors students have been the recipients of university-wide and national awards.

Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award

The Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel award is given for university-wide recognition of distinctive and exceptional contributions to undergraduate education or the quality of student life at Stanford. Each, year, two graduating seniors receive the award for their service to the university. 
 

Alexis Kallen

Fulbright Scholarship

Fulbright scholarships provide graduates the opportunity to pursue research all over the world to foster intercultural relations and understanding with other countries.  
 

Jason Jiajie Li—Fulbright research scholarship to Shaanxi China to implement and independently evaluate an integrated early child development intervention with community health workers to combat the effects of childhood malnutrition and a lack of quality health care.

Rhodes Scholarship

Rhodes scholarships are awarded to promising future leaders to support their academic studies at the University of Oxford.  
 

Qitong Thomas Cao

Alexis Kallen

Schwarzman Scholars

Schwarzman Scholars continue post-graduate studies and focus on China's relations with the world at the Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Lucienne Oyer

Truman Scholarship

The Truman Scholarship is a prestigious graduate fellowship in the United States for those pursuing promising careers in public service.   
 

Alexis Kallen

Finally, a special shout out to two of our alumni. Anna Blue (2016) received a research Fulbright to Estonia, and Jelani Munroe (2016) received a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford.

"In what may be looked back upon as the most important election in the United States in 2018, the voters of Maine rejected political cynicism on Tuesday and preserved ranked-choice voting (RCV) for its future elections. To appreciate the historic significance of this vote for greater democratic choice, it’s important to understand what Mainers were up against—a two-party duopoly in which “all the levers of power” (in the words of one grassroots activist) were overtly or covertly working to block political reform," writes Larry Diamond in American Interest. Read here.