|
| |||||
| | Center News | Conference News | Special Report | Associates News | Vol. 2, No. 3, July 2003 | |||||
 | |||||
|
Asian Studies Center Established at GSU Georgia State University recently established a new “Asian Studies Center”, and named Dr. Susan Walcott as its Director. The ASC includes faculty from a dozen departments, with research ties to universities and institutions from Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia. More information is available on its website at http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwast A new Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Asian Studies was also established, beginning Fall 2003. Inaugural day events will be held on Friday, September 12 in the Student University Center. The featured speaker is a leading economist from Tokyo University, Dr. Motoshige Ito, who will give an address on the state of the Japanese economy at 1:30, following an Asian buffet lunch. In April the ASC is co-sponsoring a talk by Jonathan Spence, noted Yale professor of Chinese history and current president. ___________________________________________________________________________________ China Seminar
Held at Georgia Tech
A seminar on “Current Economic and Political Issues in China” was held on the Georgia Tech campus June 30th. Two scholars from Michigan lead discussions on development in western China, and public venture capital. Shuming Bao directs the China Data Center at the University of Michigan and is a principle investigator on an inter-university project analyzing western development. Changwen Zhao is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan. He is a professor of economics and finance, and an Assistant President, at Sichuan University in Chengdu. The seminar was organized by Christine Reis, who is a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Economics. Faculty and students from the University of Georgia, Kennesaw State, Georgia State University and Georgia Tech attended the half-day seminar. Seminar on Taiwan's International Issues was Held The Information Division
of the Taipei
Economic and Cultural Office in Atlanta (TECO) and the
Chinese-American Academic and Professional Association in the Southeastern
United States (CAPASUS) co-sponsored
a seminar on international issues facing Taiwan on July 19th
and 20th in Atlanta. The
seminar was a part of the annual meeting program of the CAPASUS. The two
day conference was held at Atlanta Marriott at Perimeter Center. University of Miami
Professor June Dreyer spoke on “Taiwan’s Participation in the WHO and
the Case of SARS” and “The Cross-Strait Relations since Chen Shui-bian
Became President.” Robert Sutter, Visiting Professor in the School of
Foreign Service at Georgetown University, delivered lectures entitled
“China-US balance in Asia and Taiwan’s future” and “ Bush’s dual
normalization with Beijing and Taipei—status and outlook.” The 16th ACPS Annual Meeting was Held at Knoxville, TN
After the opening session, Dr. Weixing Chen, then President of the ACPS and Professor of Department of Political Science at East Tennessee State University, chaired a roundtable discussion of possible new developments in Chinese domestic politics, society and foreign policy participated by Shulong Chu, Professor and Director of Center for Strategic Studies, Hsinghua University of China, Xinning Song, Professor and Associate Dean, School of International Relations of Remin University of China, Gang Lin, Woodrow Wilson Center of Washington, DC, and Yang Zhong, Professor of Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee. The roundtable discussion was followed by a number of interesting panels dealing with the 16th party congress of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s foreign relations, cross-Taiwan Straits relations and social issues in China. At the business meeting of the ACPS during the conference a new ACPS Board of Directors was elected: Yang Zhong (president), Shiping Hua (president-elect), Zhiyue, Bo, Joseph Cheng, Baogang Guo, Sujian Guo and Ka Zeng. Conference participants also took some time out of their busy schedule to tour the Great Smoky Mountains and Gatlinburg, two well-known tourist attractions near Knoxville. ___________________________________________________________________________________ China and SARS: A Crisis Ended?By Penelope
B. Prime* One of the
main news stories of 2002 By March,
2003, growing concern over the new disease, severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS), began to dampen expectations for China.
By the end of April, many business, travel and study plans had been
put on hold. In May most, if
not all, conferences and summer foreign study programs in China had been
cancelled. Within China,
foreign and domestic companies restricted visitors and employee travel,
hotels checked the temperature of those entering, and local governments
set up required border health checks of travelers with possible
quarantine. Reportedly
traffic in Beijing was only one-third of normal times, and the bustling
shopping and restaurant scene all but died.
Schools and universities were closed.
Internationally, the crisis halted adoptions, delayed shipments of
goods for the holidays, and forced many companies to use video
conferencing instead of personal contacts (The New York Times, 1
May 2003, p.A10). By July,
China’s economy was reportedly booming again.
Industrial output reportedly increased nearly 17% in June over the
year before, and that was over 3% faster than in May (The Wall Street
Journal, 10 July 2003). Exports
surged 32% over the year before, and imports increased 40%.
In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted its travel
advisory for Beijing, one of the hardest hit places on the mainland, at
the end of June. The success
at containing the disease and the rapid economic recovery far exceeds what
most analysts predicted just a short while ago.
This is good news indeed. In
other ways, however, the effects of SARS on life and the economy in China
will probably be more long lasting. To begin
with, health experts suggest that SARS is probably seasonal, so that next
fall another round of SARS is likely.
The most recent crisis raised awareness of the inadequacies of
China’s healthcare and prevention system.
This situation makes fear of the disease more intense, as the
quality of one’s care is dubious if infected.
This is true for both Chinese citizens and visiting foreigners.
While the focus on healthcare may help increase government
resources allocated to medical care and public health, the size and
complexity of the problems will mean a long process of improvement. Industrial
and agricultural production were less affected by the crisis, while
services, and particularly tourism, were devastated.
Domestically, restaurants and entertainment may see a reasonable
rebound, but those relying on foreign guests will be hurt for a good while
to come. Since services is
one area that is needed to absorb the many people under employed in the
rural areas and in over staffed state owned enterprises, the effect of the
SARS crisis is a serious setback. Less
measurable, but no less important, is how people view China’s progress
as a result of the crisis. Clearly
the cover-up in Beijing by city and health officials has not inspired
confidence of Chinese citizens. Ironically,
just before the crisis broke, many people in Beijing expressed a new sense
of freedom of expression and access to information. After being miss-led, confidence turned to near panic.
The benefits of economic growth suddenly seemed irrelevant and
fragile if children could not go to school and people were afraid to shop. Chinese
officials hiding information also exacerbated Hong Kong’s situation.
It became known later that some in southern China knew about this
new virus as early as November, 2002, but they did not seek help or share
the information in other ways. The disease quickly spread south to Hong Kong, and to other
parts of the world, along international travel routes. Hong Kong was one of the places particularly hard hit
by the crisis. Now citizens
of Hong Kong are especially wary of changing its laws to suit the
People’s Republic, and are seriously protesting proposed sedition laws.
An otherwise relatively smooth reversion to Mainland sovereignty
since July 1st, 1997, has become problematic. So the SARS crisis in China has abated, and many are relieved to see the economy recover to grow at perhaps 8% this year. But the underlying fabric of confidence and optimism has been shaken. This experience could prompt social and political reforms; the other possibility of growing skepticism and mistrust would be very harmful to China’s continued progress. * Dr. Prime was working in China from the end of March until early May of this year.
China
Economic Data Now More Accessible The China
Data Center at the University of Michigan is dedicated to providing
official data on China for scholars, practitioners and students around the
world. The Center
disseminates official statistics for Mainland China.
The Center currently provides a number of services, and is working
on expanding those services as well as helping institutions to network and
collaborate. The Center is
located on the University Michigan campus in Ann Arbor and is accessible
via their website at http://chinadatacenter.org. One
fundamental service the Center provides is the distribution of data in
hardcopy and online. The
Center is a clearing-house for China’s Statistical Yearbooks, Population
Census publications, and other data publications.
Order forms and prices are available at the website.
To promote the Center and research on China, however, universities
can apply for a free single-user account.
This means that one person at a time can use the system, but that
anyone at the university can use the account.
A form is available at the Center’s website to apply for this
type of account. The online
data system is available in Chinese and English, and is easy to navigate.
It provides annual and monthly data for the national economy and
major cities, and annual data for counties.
These data are also available in the official publications, but
this system allows quick retrieval of specific indicators as well as
monthly data with only a one to two month lag.
In addition, very few libraries have complete sets of China’s
statistical yearbooks, making this source especially valuable for creating
complete series over time. The Center
has also recently started “China News Online.”
This service is only in Chinese.
It is a search engine focusing on current developments in China in
economic development, population, environment, and new publications of
statistical data and reports. Users
can search by keywords and by date. In
addition there are maps and other geography resources for faculty and
student use, including a “Silk Route” section.
The Center is working with GIS data combined with socio-economic
data in some of the University’s projects. Contact
information for the China Data Center is as follows: China Data Center, International Institute, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, tel: 734-647-9610; fax: 734-764-5540;
email: chinadata@umich.edu. __________________________________________________________________________________
|
|||||
|
| |||||
The
16th annual meeting of the 
was China’s economic rise within Asia.