USC and China in the News, January and February 2010

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February 27, 2010: Singtao Daily (星岛日报) via Sina.com

Clayton Dube of theUSC US-China Institute was interviewed for an article on how Taiwan local elections might affect US-Taiwan-China ties. Dube said that President Ma and his KMT party swept into office in 2008 promising economic growth and the failure to realize those promises were bound to affect the party’s results in local voting. He noted, though, that a couple of the elections were in KMT strongholds. Dube said he didn’t anticipate that the vote would significantly affect ties among the US, Taiwan, and China. 

February 27, 2010: Los Angeles Times

Stanley Rosen, USC political scientist and East Asian Studies Center director, was quoted in an article on the failure of the film Confucius to gain a large audience. Released in time for the big lunar new year holiday, Confucius’s box office totals are much less than the Hollywood giant Avatar. Rosen said, "It's been, in a sense, a loss of face….  It really backfired." He argued that Chinese films cannot generally garner huge audiences because, "Politics still trumps everything else."

February 21, 2010: The Chronicle of Higher Education

In an article about allegations that the cyberattack on Google may have originated at Shanghai Jiaotong University, USC political scientist Stanley Rosen was interviewed. Rosen said, “Jiaotong University probably has the strongest, or close to the strongest, computer-science and computer-engineering programs in China and arguably the rest of the world.”

February 18, 2010: CNN Digital Biz

Andrew Lih of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism was quoted in a story on opportunities for companies with technology that helps Chinese overcome their country’s internet controls. Lih said, "It is only the elite who can get access or know how to use [the software]… "As long as the Chinese government can keep 90 percent [behind the firewall], then there is not enough critical mass for there to be a problem."

February 7, 2010: Voice of America

An article reported on a USC conference which examined, among other things, the implications of China’s rise. Daniel Lynch, USC international relations specialist, presented his study of what Chinese scholars and officials writing in influential journals have to say about China’s future international relations. Lynch said most of these authors have a realist perspective. Lynch noted that some think US-China conflict is inevitable. Though his study predated current headlines, Lynch says China’s increasing assertiveness is consistent with his findings.

February 3, 2010: KABC Radio

Clayton Dube of the USC US-China Institute was interviewed about the status of US-China relations, in light of Chinese complaints regarding arms sales to Taiwan, plans for Pres. Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama, and Google’s desire to offer Chinese web users access to uncensored search results. Dube said that while some of this criticism is “not new” there were new elements, namely threats of sanctions for companies producing the weapons sold to Taiwan and the cyberattacks on Google that merited special concern.

February 2, 2010: Radio New Zealand

Clayton Dube of the USC US-China Institute was interviewed about what is at issue in the Google/China dispute and what the dispute suggests about what globalization means for businesses and for countries. He discussed the history of Google in China, how Sec. Clinton’s internet freedom speech raised the profile and stakes of the dispute, and how the issue was perceived in China.

February 1, 2010: Singtao Daily (星岛日报) 

The USC US-China Institute’s Clayton Dube was quoted in an article on the Chinese economy. Dube noted that while China’s economy will soon pass Japan’s to be the second largest in the world, on a per capita basis, China’s economy is still less than one-tenth the size of America’s. Dube highlighted several problems confronting China including a widening income gap between rural and urban residents and within cities. Addressing these problems will require an expansion of better paying jobs. He noted that this is also critical if China is to increase domestic consumption and become less dependent on exports.

February 1, 2010: BusinessWeek

The magazine named USC School of Architecture Dean Qingyun Ma one of the world's most influential designers. "As China undergoes an extraordinary period of evolution, its architecture has also changed dramatically. One architect who is influential both within and outside the ancient nation is Ma, 44, who has worked on numerous large projects in China and who acted as planning expert for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing," the story stated.

January 26, 2010: Guangzhou Daily 广州日报 and redistributed by Xinhua

USC electrical engineering student Junqiang Li was among those interviewed for a story about Chinese student life in the US. Li is especially popular among his classmates because of his cooking ability. He notes that many Chinese students live together and visit Chinatown together to shop for foods. He said homesickness affects all students and that his biggest challenge is loneliness.

January 23, 2010: Wenhui Daily (Hong Kong)

Andrew Lih, USC Annenberg new media specialist, was quoted in an article discussing net access in China. He said that information wants to be free and that some Chinese would “scale the firewall” in order to gain access to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

January 23, 2010: South China Morning Post (China)

An article featured a USC U.S.-China Institute lecture in which leading tobacco expert Judith MacKay discussed the epidemic of smoking in China. MacKay said that the Chinese government is the world’s largest tobacco company, and that the industry is viewed in that country as supporting the economy and employing large numbers of people.

January 20, 2010: Wall Street Journal

USC political scientist and East Asian Studies Center director Stanley Rosen was quoted in a story about Chinese movie audiences.

January 15, 2010: Wall Street Journal

Andrew Lih of USC Annenberg School was quoted about Google Inc.'s threat to no longer censor itself at China's request and possibly to pull its search site from the country. Tech-savvy Chinese people have been finding ways around China's Internet censorship, and Web sites like Twitter and Facebook are sharing their coding with other developers, who can create independent software and programs that work as third-party proxies, Lih said. "In that sense, it really is that 'information wants to be free,'" he said.

January 14, 2010: KERO 23

USC historian Bettine Birge, a specialist on the Yuan period in Chinese history, will deliver the keynote address at the January 29 CSU Bakersfield History Forum. Birge will speak on “Marriage and the law in China during the age of Khubilai Khan.”

January 14, 2010: San Francisco Chronicle

An article about the emergence of China in technological advances and the Internet, included comments from USC Annenberg’s Andrew Lih. "It's going to happen, but the question is how fast," Lih said. "Chinese companies are terrible at interfaces -- onscreen displays, menu navigation, that whole last meter to the consumer's eyeballs," he said. "And marketing, branding, customer service -- these are all things that Chinese firms don't get right very often. Then again, Chinese have only been capitalists for a few decades, and they learn a lot faster than you might expect."

January 13, 2010: PBS Newshour

Andrew Lih of USC Annenberg was interviewed about Google in China. "I think when people saw the post went up on a corporate blog directly challenging the PRC's policies, that was a huge event in the Chinese cyberspace and also in corporate relations over the Pacific," Lih said.

January 8, 2010: New York Times

Stanley Rosen, USC political scientist and director of the East Asian Studies Center, was quoted in a story about how two Chinese films were pulled from the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Rosen said that Lu Chuan, director of City of Life and Death, had to pull his film so “he could continue having his films in international festivals and be successful in China.”

January 4, 2010: Xinhua

In a widely distributed story, Clayton Dube, associate director of the USC US-China Institute, was quoted discussing USC’s programs in China, including the large number of USC Marshall students who participate in study visits each year. Dube also discussed the institute’s role in arranging for student ambassadors at the USA Pavilion at this year’s Shanghai Expo. Dube noted that although the application period was short and the available time slots inconvenient for American students, still there was a tremendous outpouring of interest from college students across the U.S.

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