USC and China in the News, March and April 2010

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April 28, 2010: Phoenix Television

Clayton Dube of the USC US-China Institute was interviewed for a story broadcast prior to the opening of the Shanghai Expo. Dube noted that while China is still a developing country, the Olympics and Expo showed how China’s government is able to allocate tremendous resources to creating spectacular venues and effectively managing large international events. Because the Expo is larger and lasts longer, there will be more opportunities for ordinary people to interact with foreign visitors. China’s resurgence will be very much on display in Shanghai.

April 27, 2010: China News

A story about the China-US Business Summit noted that USC Architecture Dean Qingyun Ma and US-China Institute Associate Director Clayton Dube were among the invited speakers.

April 24, 2010: Associated Press

Nicholas Cull, public diplomacy specialist at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, was interviewed for a story about a dispute regarding the creation of a “Confucius Classroom” in Hacienda La Puente Unified School District. "I'm sure this will become a standard dispute,” Cull said. "People in America are very suspicious of ideas from the outside."

April 23, 2010: Voice of America

A story reported on the screening of the USC US-China Institute documentary Assignment: China. USCI Senior Fellow Mike Chinoy and USCI Associate Director Clayton Dube were interviewed. Chinoy noted that the film focuses on how the reporters crossed language and cultural barriers to introduce China to Americans. Chinoy, who covered China for CNN for many years, noted the difference in the coverage of the Tangshan earthquake in 1976 when no foreign reporters had access to the quake zone to the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 when many reporters were able to report from the affected areas. Chinoy noted that while China is not as open as it could be, the overall trend is towards greater openness. Dube noted that in addition to the materials included in the segment that was screened, other interviews have been conducted and would become available in the future. He said the documentary will be of great use to students and scholars and the wider public.

April 9, 2010: Voice of America

A presentation by USC visiting scholar Chen Shengluo was broadcast and published. Chen discussed a survey he conducted among university students in Beijing to learn how they viewed the US and Chinese political systems. Among the most striking findings was the high regard students had for the separation of powers in the US and the role independent courts play in protecting individual rights. Overall, students had a more favorable attitude towards the US system than they did the Chinese system. USC’s Stanley Rosen and Clayton Dube were also quoted in the story. Rosen thought Chen’s work underestimated the role films play in shaping these perceptions. Dube was impressed by the level of knowledge students seemed to have about the US system as well as their favorable view towards it.

April 3, 2010: Xinhua

Clayton Dube of the USC US-China Institute and Stanley Rosen of the USC East Asian Studies Center were quoted on the importance of US-China cooperation. Dube noted that, "Strong leaders know that they must sometimes yield on important measures in order to attain even more crucial aims. That must happen now and it must happen on both sides." Rosen argued, “There is much pressure on [Obama] to be tough on China."

April 2, 2010: Voice of America

An article reported on a talk at USC by UCLA political scientist and USC US-China Institute board of scholars member Richard Baum. Baum discussed how his career began with documents “borrowed” from a Taiwan government archive and also how he inadvertently leaked news that President George H.W. Bush invited famed Chinese dissident physicist Fang Lizhi to a banquet in Feb. 1989. He described how Chinese studies in the US has changed for the better because of the ability of scholars to visit China, something he couldn’t do when he began studying. Stanley Rosen, of the USC East Asian Studies Center was also interviewed and noted that now Chinese students come to the US and study and can then have a big impact when they return to China. Foreign scholars, he said, were no longer as influential.

April 1, 2010: Taipei Times

USC Cinema School alum Arvin Chen’s award-winning first feature film, Au Revoir Taipei (一頁台北), was reviewed. The romantic comedy focuses on Kai’s efforts to prepare to go to Paris to win back his girlfriend. The reviewer describes it as an expanded sequel to Chen’s Mei (美), his USC graduation film. That film won the Silver Bear in the 2007 Berlin International Short Film Competition. Au Revoir Taipei won the Comcast Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Best Asian Film at the Berlin Film Festival.

March, 2010: China Economic Review

Crystal Lu was interviewed about her decision to pursue an MBA through the Shanghai-based USC Marshall Global Executive MBA program. Lu works for BP China. She said, "The professors from USC Marshall have rich experience with different backgrounds and industries. This meant they could not only make difficult academic topics easier to understand, but they were also able to use business cases from their experiences. The interaction I had with classmates was a key value-added aspect of the program as well. We learned a lot from each other's various industry backgrounds."

March, 2010: Central News Agency (Taiwan)

USC has signed a memorandum of academic exchange and cooperation with Taiwan’s Ming Chuan University. USC Rossier School Dean Karen Symms Gallagher, who signed the agreement, said that this academic cooperation will allow the two schools to share resources with each other, while enhancing research, teaching quality and competitiveness. USC has been lauded by Time magazine as “University of the Year,” the story noted.

March 28, 2010: New York Times

Andrew Lih of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism was quoted in an article about Google’s decision to stop providing censored web search results in China. Lih said,

“This represents a return to principles, and it might go some way toward convincing people that they have not gone over to the dark side.”

March 25, 2010: The Guardian

Interviewed for a story about Google’s pull out from China, USC new media specialist Andrew Lih said that he doubted Americans would boycott China-based firms. He said, "Americans rarely even engage in boycotting of US-based entities they know have done far worse things. I doubt the actions in China are going to energize them."

March 24, 2010: ABC Radio

Clayton Dube of the USC US-China Institute was interviewed about the importance of Google’s withdrawal from the China market. Dube noted that it was not the sort of publicity the Chinese government wants. Google a technological leader and the Chinese government is eager for such firms to set up shop in China. At the same time, Dube explained that Baidu, a Chinese firm, was the dominant player in the Chinese search market. While China has the largest internet market in the world, it accounted for just 1-2% of Google’s $24 billion in global revenues. On the broader question of the US-China economic relationship, Dube argued that while the countries and companies sometimes find it uncomfortable, they need each other and that the relationship will go forward.

March 24, 2010: China Economic Review

A column on business education quoted a Graduate Management Admission Council report noted that USC’s Leventhal School of Accounting “has become one of the top ten target programs in the entire world for the PRC's GMAT takers, and the only non-MBA program in the top ten.”

March 23, 2010: Global Times

Stanley Rosen, director of the East Asian Studies Center and a professor in the Department of Political Science at USC, discussed the Chinese film industry. Despite the sucess of several martial arts films in the West, China still has a long way to go in matching the popularity of Hollywood hits. Like most foreign language productions, Chinese films tend to be more successful with critics than with audiences. Professor Rosen stated “I don't think China's limitations on film imports affect its export of films. The problem with exports is more related to the perceived quality of Chinese films and the nature of the stories being told in the films." Asia films do have a market internationally, but more succesful films are English language films that have an Asian component.

March 23, 2010: Information Week

Andrew Lih, USC Annenberg new media specialist, was quoted in an article about Google’s withdrawal from China. He said that, "The fact that there's been kind of a strong reaction from the PRC authorities is a little bit surprising because it probably means that the situation has reached a point where they cannot control everything anymore.”

March 23, 2010: PBS Newshour

Andrew Lih of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism was interviewed about Google’s decision to relocate its Chinese web search business to Hong Kong. He said, “I think there were a lot of people who had very high expectations around Google, with its "Don't be evil" mantra, who were disturbed in 2006 the way that Google entered the market who are cheering today, very glad that Google, having seen it try to go into the China market in good faith and play by the rules, and also be the victim of -- at least they claim -- hacking into their systems that seemed to be pretty fishy, so that Google's pulling out now has made a lot of those folks very happy.”

March 17, 2010: Stimulus-Funded Research at USC 

Yong-Gang Li, USC College, “Study of Coseismic Damage and Post-Mainshock Healing on the Longmen-Shan Fault Ruptured in the 2008 M8 Wenchuan Earthquake in China,” $108,558 from the National Science Foundation: To determine the evolution of the fault zone after the devastating earthquake in western China in 2008, to document characteristics of damaging earthquakes and to evaluate potential earthquake risk in high-risk regions in the U.S.A. and China, with the aim of understanding earthquake processes and hazards globally.

March 11, 2010: Xinhua and Yunnan Daily

Asked about the Chinese government's plan to "put people first," the USC US-China Institute's Clayton Dube noted that China's income disparity is now at its highest point since the economic reform period began (in 1978). He noted that wealth redistribution through taxation was a common practice and China's own tax policies needed retooling.

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