Kleptocracy--well-organized elite corruption--has come to characterize Russia and much of the post-Communist space and is one of the chief obstacles to democratic development as well as economic growth in Russia and Ukraine. This panel features three experts who have focused on anti-corruption measures in these countries and will discuss the origins, effects, and future of kleptocracy in the region.

Speakers:

Charles Davidson, the publisher of The American Interest and Director of The Kleptocracy Initiative at the George Mason School of Public Policy.

Jeffrey Gedmin, the editor of The American Interest, who previously was president of the Legatum Institute in London and of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe in Prague.

Oleksandra Ustinova, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Fellow 2019 and a leading Ukrainian anti-corruption activist for a conversation on kleptocracy in Russia and Ukraine and how it is abetted by American institutions.

Moderator: Francis Fukuyama, CDDRL Mosbacher Director and FSI Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow.

Watch the video here.

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Weaver’s research interests are comparative social policy (with a particular focus on public pension programs in advanced industrial societies) and policy implementation. His recent research focuses on understanding how political institutions, feedback from past policy choices and the strategic behavior of politicians interact to shape public policy choices. He is also interested in understanding the determinants of compliance and non-compliance with public policy across a variety of policy sectors.

“We look forward to having Kent in residence at CDDRL this winter and spring,” said Francis Fukuyama, CDDRL’s Mosbacher director. “Kent will work with Stephen J. Stedman and me on teaching the ‘Leadership and Implementation’ course for the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Masters of Arts in International Policy. He will help our students dig deeper into policy processes and behavioral change.” 

At CDDRL, Weaver will also be completing a book on pension reform in seven wealthy democracies and working on a cross-national project on how politicians balance multiple objectives. More broadly, he will work with CDDRL on developing strategies for utilizing case-method teaching in the classroom and with CDDRL's LAD project on improving the capacity of training programs for public sector officials in developing countries.

"CDDRL is an intellectually vibrant environment. I'm excited to work with the CDDRL team on its programs and participate in the CDDRL community,” says Weaver. “I look forward to interacting with MIP students and learning about their perspectives on many of the issues and challenges the world is facing today."

Contact: weaverrk@stanford.edu

"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. 

CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama says for BBC we need national identities that unite rather than divide us. Watch here.

"Are democracy and capitalism compatible? Or, to put it differently: What made democracy and capitalism compatible for decades, even centuries, and what strains this relationship today? The end of the Cold War seemed to settle longstanding debates about the political and economic institutions best able to achieve freedom and security. But a few decades have passed, and our institutions now seem brittle. Longstanding critiques of capitalism are being dusted off and repackaged," writes Didi Kuo in Democracy Journal. Read 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 following report was originally published by the Hoover Institution.

Scholars from the Hoover Institution, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and other organizations today issued a report that examines China’s efforts to influence US institutions and calls for protecting American values, norms, and laws from such interference, while also warning against “demonizing” any group of people.

According to the 192-page document, which was unveiled today (Nov. 29) at a Hoover DC press event, China is attempting on a wide scale to manipulate state and local governments, universities, think tanks, media, corporations, and the Chinese American community. (Click here to read the report, titled “Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance.”)

The document was produced by researchers convened by the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, along with support from The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. The working group included leading China scholars who researched the issue for more than a year and a half. Project cochairs are Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution, and Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director at Asia Society Center on US-China Relations.

The objective of the Chinese entities is to promote sympathetic views of China, especially its government, policies, society and culture, the report concludes. The work is described as a “summons to greater awareness of the challenges our country faces and greater vigilance in defending our institutions,” and explicitly not intended to cause unfairness or recklessness towards any group of Americans.

On this point, Diamond and Schell wrote in the afterword, “At the same time that we fortify ourselves against harmful outside interference, we must also be mindful to do no harm. In particular, we must guard against having this report used unfairly to cast aspersions on Chinese, whether Chinese American immigrants who have become (or are becoming) United States citizens, Chinese students, Chinese businesspeople, or other kinds of Chinese visitors, whose contributions to America’s progress over the past century have been enormous.”

The report’s findings include the following:

• The Chinese Communist party-state leverages a broad range of party, state, and non-state actors to advance its influence-seeking objectives, and in recent years it has significantly accelerated both its investment and the intensity of these efforts.
• In American federal and state politics, China seeks to identify and cultivate rising politicians. Chinese entities employ prominent lobbying and public relations firms and cooperate with influential civil society groups.
• On American university campuses, Confucius Institutes provide the Chinese government access to US student bodies, and Chinese Students and Scholars Associations sometimes report on their compatriots on American campuses and put pressure on American universities that host events deemed politically offensive to China.
• At think tanks, researchers, scholars, and other staffers report regular attempts by Chinese diplomats and other intermediaries to influence their activities within the United States. China has also begun to establish its own network of US think tanks.
• In business, China is using its companies to advance strategic objectives abroad, gaining political influence and access to critical infrastructure and technology. China has made foreign companies’ continued access to its domestic market conditional on their compliance with Beijing’s stance on Taiwan and Tibet.
• In the technology sector, China is engaged in a multifaceted effort to misappropriate technologies it deems critical to its economic and military success. Beyond economic espionage, theft, and the forced technology transfers that are required of many joint venture partnerships, China also captures much valuable new technology through its investments in US high-tech companies and by exploiting the openness of the American economy.
• In the American media, China has all but eliminated independent Chinese-language media outlets that once served Chinese American communities. It has co-opted existing Chinese-language outlets and established its own new media outlets.

Policy principles

Looking to the future, the scholars offer a set of policy principles for guiding American relationships with Chinese entities. These include:

• promoting greater transparency of financial and other relationships that with Chinese entities which may be subject to improper influence;
• promoting the integrity of American institutions; and

CDDRL Director, Francis Fukuyama talks in an interview for Al Jazeera how identity policy is hurting democracy. Watch here.