China and India: development achievements and challenges
Four leading international scholars, Professor Shailaja Fennell, Professor Jayati Ghosh, Professor Huaichuan Rui and Assistant Professor Isabella Weber, will explore the development achievements and challenges facing China and India and will discuss the key issues facing the political economies of the two countries. The opening presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion including a question and answer session.
China and India together contain 36% of the world’s population. Their development over the past forty years has exerted a huge influence upon the shape of global political economy. Their collective impact is likely to grow even greater in the decades ahead. Each of them has made great development progress, including industrialisation, urbanisation and human welfare. However, they each face deep development challenges. The contrasting histories of the two countries has exerted a profound influence upon their respective development paths. The way in which the two huge countries interact will strongly affect the nature of global governance during this critical period in the history of the human species.
In the round table, four leading international scholars will explore the development achievements and challenges facing the two countries. Professor Jayati Ghosh (University of Massachusetts, Amherst and formerly Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Professor Shailaja Fennell (University of Cambridge) will analyse the key issues facing India’s political economy, while Professor Huaichuan Rui (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Assistant Professor Isabella Weber (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) will analyse the key issues facing China’s political economy. Each of the speakers will give an opening presentation and these will be followed by a round table discussion between the panellists, including responding to questions from the audience. The round table will be chaired by Professor Peter Nolan (Director of the China Forum, Jesus College, Cambridge).
Shailaja Fennell is Professor of Regional Transformation and Economic Security, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge.
She was awarded her degrees of BA, MA, and MPhil in Economics from the University of Delhi, and then went on to read for her MPhil and PhD at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research was on long term agricultural trends in India and China.
Her research addresses the relationship between regional transformation and institutional reform processes. Her work has focussed on rural-urban transitions and sustainability challenges; gendered labour markets and youth employment; and the case for the provision of public goods through development policy.
Professor Fennell has led research projects in Asian and African countries for past fifteen years: on the impact of rural-urban transitions on education and employment, on gendered impacts of food insecurity and inequality, on the challenge of collective action to achieve gender equality, and on investment in education, health, and infrastructure to ensure regional transformation. She has also been a consultant on gender, inequality and national development with international agencies such as the World Bank and Oxfam, as well as with policy think tanks in Asia.
She is currently a co-I on the NERC funded Regenerating Landscapes programme (2022-27) that is examining sustainable land use policies in the UK, awarded to the University of Cambridge. She was previously a co-I on the successful GCRF funded Transforming India's Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies (TIGR2ESS), led by the University of Cambridge (2017-22). On that programme, she led the flagship project on Impacting the Well-Being of Urban and Rural Communities-through interventions in education, empowerment and entrepreneurship to ensure improved health and nutrition. She also led the academic team that produced the ASEAN Development Outlook on Inclusion and Sustainability launched at the end of 2021.
Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years, and since January 2021 is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
She has authored and/or edited 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles. Recent books include the forthcoming co-authored book Earth For All: A survival guide for humanity; The making of a catastrophe: Covid-19 and the Indian economy, Aleph Books 2022; When governments fail: Covid-19 and the economy, Tulika Books and Columbia University Press 2021 (co-edited); and Women workers in the informal economy, Routledge 2021 (edited).
Jayati Ghosh has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09). She is currently a Member of the UN Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All and the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, mandated to provide a vision for international cooperation to deal with current and future challenges.
Huaichuan Rui received her Ph.D from Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and is currently Professor of International Business at the School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London. She has been researching on China’s developmental strategy since her PhD study. Based on case studies of China’s coal industry, she concluded that China faced three parallel challenges of development, transition and globalization, which determined that China’s reform since the 1980s must be handled cautiously, experimentally, innovatively, and in a balanced way.
Rui then became a pioneering researcher on Chinese multinational enterprises and their global developmental impact. She has been leading the project of "China’s Outward Investment and Multinational Enterprises" since 2005 and conducting extensive fieldworks including over 1,000 interviews in over 30 countries across the five continents. Since 2015, Professor Rui has been collaborating on an ERC Advanced Grant project, examining the impact of small commodity trade on the development both in China and the countries importing from China.
Rui has earned her reputation through exploring and theorising multiple themes, for which she has been invited to many organizations to present her study on China and Africa’s development strategy; trade, investment and development; Belt and Road Initiatives; geopolitical power and China's position in the world, among others
Isabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China, global trade, and the history of economic thought.
She is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute, as well as an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University.
She is the author of the award-winning book How China Escaped Shock Therapy (2021).
Isabella Weber holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research and a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, and was a visiting researcher at Tsinghua University.
This is one of the events in the on-going China Forum Seminar series, hosted by the China Forum, Jesus College. The seminars, given by eminent speakers, cover a broad range of topics and disciplines.
Booking
This is a virtual seminar. Attendance is free. Advance booking is required by emailing: china-forum@jesus.cam.ac.uk. Priority will be given to members of Jesus College and the University of Cambridge.
