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Event Details
March 12, 2010
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USC University Club, Pub Room
3535 S. Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States
Public Talk - Los Angeles, CA

Microcredit, The Internet and Community Building in China and Beyond

Click here to watch a video of the presentation. 

After three decades of reform, China still does not have an infrastructure to supply start-up capital for even the smallest businesses, but in the past few years, several international Non-Governmental Organizations have become active in China, providing microcredit for small entrepreneurs.
 
This talk uses a case study of Wokai (我开 "I start" [an enterprise]), an NGO based in San Francisco and Beijing, which, using the Kiva model, utilizes the internet to post profiles of potential borrowers to whom donors can target their funds. Drawing on the Grameen Bank model, it builds communities among the borrowers as well as between them and their foreign donors. This presentation examines the ways in which the internet is linking people at the grassroots in China to global society, with implications for the changing shape of the business field and social space more generally.

Thomas Gold is professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and a member of the USC US-China Institute board of scholars. He’s the executive director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University. He previously served as chair of Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies and the Berkeley China Initiative. Prof. Gold’s current work focuses on entrepreneurship, network building, and the ramifications of both for Chinese civil society. He’s also known for his work on the Taiwan economic miracle (State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle, 1986) and is currently working on Remaking Taiwan: Society and the State Since The End of Martial Law. He’s the author of numerous book chapters and journal articles. His co-edited books include Laid-Off Workers in a Workers’ State: Unemployment With Chinese Characteristics (2009), Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Nature of Guanxi (2002), and New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia: Patterns of Business Development in Russia, Eastern Europe and China (2001).
 
Related story: USC US-China Today touched on this subject in a March 2009 article.
http://www.uschina.usc.edu/article@usct?a_hand_up_microfinance_in_china_13271.aspx

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