主讲人：贾瑞雪 加州大学圣地亚哥分校全球政策与战略学院的经济学教授。现任《经济学与统计评论》( REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS )联合主编、中国数据实验室( CHINA DATA LAB) 联合主任、比较经济学会( ACES )执行秘书，以及中国经济暑期研究会( CESI) 联合主席。研究位于经济学、历史与政治的交汇处，探讨权力结构如何演变并塑造经济发展。近期侧重于思想形成与传播的政治经济学，特别关注国家、教育科学与技术之间的相互作用。 评议人：黄亚生 麻省理工斯隆管理学院政治经济和国际管理教授，“时代基金会”讲席教授。2013年至2017年，任麻省理工斯隆管理学院副院长。历任密歇根大学、哈佛大学教职和世界银行顾问。研究领域涉及国际商务管理、政治经济学和制度经济学。在麻省理工斯隆管理学院，创办了旨在帮助中小企业提高管理水平的“中国实验室”、“印度实验室”和“东盟实验室”。著有《东方兴亡》(耶鲁大学出版社 )，《具有中国特色的资本主义》和《销售中国》等11部专著。 主持人兼主讲人：李宏彬 斯坦福大学中国经济与制度研究中心联席主任。斯坦福大学经济政策研究所和FREEMAN SPOGLI国际研究所的资深研究员，经济系的荣誉教授。2001年获得斯坦福大学经济学博士学位。曾任清华大学经济管理学院 C.V. STARR 经济学讲席教授，创立清华大学中国经济社会数据中心并把任常务副主任。曾任香港中文大学教授，创立香港中文大学中国经济研究中心并担任主任。担任比较经济学领域顶级期刊 JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE ECONOMICS 的主编，研究领域包括中国的经济发展与转型、人口和教育，是研究中国经济引用率最高的经济学家之一。

November 1, 2025 at 12:30 AM UTC

中国的教育体系核心是考试体系。是什么让这一体系如此独特 ?《最高考试》追溯了它在帝制中国的起源，以及如何演变为今日的全国高考制度，揭示了考试如何深深嵌入国家治理、家庭生活与社会价值之中。作者结合亲身经历与统计证据，展示了个体命运如何与一个如同中央集权式等级竞赛的更大体系紧密相连。这一考试体系至今仍在定义中国的机会与合法性-并在当下美中竞争的格局中，愈发具有启示意义。搜索“大学沙龙”YouTube频道收看讲座。

主讲人：任焕宇 麻省理工学院化学系博士研究生，星空摄影师/业余天文学家。主要研究方向为天体化学与分子转动光谱学。南京天文爱好者协会、南京天文高校联合会、MIT KAVLI INSTITUTE ASTROGAZERS成员。其星空摄影作品曾多次荣登国内最大天文分享平台“巡星客”的每日一图和作品精选，曾获第十八届“牧夫杯”天文摄影比赛第一名，曾在南京市图书馆参展天文摄影作品。其耕耘天文科普六年，天文科普课程曾获第五届全国大学生天文创新作品竞赛一等奖，研发出可用于天文与化学科普的模块化光谱仪发表于教育学核心期刊JORNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION。目前致力于建设MIT乃至全波士顿的华语天文科普生态圈。 主持人：杨泽霈 东北大学理学院博士候选人。主要研究方向为宇宙学-星系内在对齐（INTRINSIC ALIGNMENT）。

November 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM UTC

讲座内容：自古以来，人类以无数方式记录夜空。从《诗经》中“维天有汉”到敦煌星图与苏州石刻天文图，从伽利略的望远镜中的土星伴星到哈勃望远镜的超深场，我们不断用新的“纸笔”重新定义宇宙与自我。而天文摄影，是这一古老“仰望传统”在现代科技时代的延续与再创造。

JINGHAN ZENG (CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG)

November 3, 2025 at 11:15 AM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is not only transforming societies but also redefining the very foundations of international relations. Around the world, governments are racing to secure technological leadership, framing AI as both an economic opportunity and a strategic imperative. China has declared its ambition to become an AI superpower by 2030, while the United States is equally determined to safeguard its global dominance. These competing trajectories have intensified the AI race, driving technological decoupling and placing U.S.–China relations at the heart of the struggle for global order. Not surprisingly, the rise of AI has introduced new complexities into the traditional U.S.–China security dilemma, with both sides viewing each other's technological advances as potential threats. This talk examines US-China AI race with a focus on how ChatGPT has further complicated these dynamics. Its success triggered not only Chinese anxiety over losing ground in technological and strategic competition but also concerns about threats to ideological and regime security. In response, China implemented a series of measures aimed at regulating generative AI to preserve domestic stability while simultaneously advancing its own technological capabilities. These reactions, coupled with the technical success of China's DeepSeek, reshaped the competitive landscape—this time triggering anxiety and strategic insecurity in the US and propelling the U.S.–China generative AI race into a new, more intense phase. Bio: Jinghan Zengis a Professorat City University of Hong Kong.He is the author ofArtificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics: National Strategy, Security and Authoritarian Governance(2022),Slogan Politics: Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy Concepts(2020) andThe Chinese Communist Party's Capacity to Rule: Ideology, Legitimacy and Party Cohesion(2015). He is also the co-editor ofOne Belt, One Road, One Story? Towards an EU-China Strategic Narrative(2021). He has published overthirtyrefereed articles in leading journals of politics, international relations and area studies.Professor Zeng has participated in Track II AI dialogues with China and the United States, testified before the UK Parliament's Committee on AI in Weapon Systems, and advised the UK Cabinet Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and FTSE 100 companies on AI governance. Currently, he serves as the Founding Editor-in-Chief ofCambridge Forum on Technology and Global Affairs(Cambridge University Press). Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong, Professor Zeng established his academic career in the UK.At 31, he was appointed Professor of China and International Studies at Lancaster University, becoming one of the youngest full professors in Britain.Simultaneously, he served as Director of its Confucius Institute, leading a team of nearly 30 staff in the university. Under his guidance, the Institute flourished into an award-winning institution, receiving the prestigiousConfucius Institute of the Yearawardfrom the Confucius Institute Headquarters, as well as Lancaster University'sOutstanding Contribution Award. During this time, the Institute also overcame unprecedented challenges, including the global pandemic, the sudden dissolution of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, and a political campaign by the then-ruling UK government to close Confucius Institutes. These remarkable experiences are chronicled in his forthcoming three-volume memoir,Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director, withthe first volume released in August 2025.

MR. WANG YANG (THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG) WANG YANG IS A PHD STUDENT IN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE HONG KONG INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES (IHSS) AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG. HIS RESEARCH INTERESTS ENCOMPASS URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY, MODERN BUDDHISM, GENDER STUDIES, AND VOLUNTEERISM. HIS PREVIOUS WORKS EXAMINE TEMPLE-CENTERED URBAN REDEVELOPMENTS IN MAINLAND CHINA. FOR HIS PHD PROJECT, HE STUDIES WITH VOLUNTEER COMMUNITIES WITHIN BUDDHIST TEMPLES AND TRIES TO UNDERSTAND THE INTRICATE INTERSECTION BETWEEN GENDERED EXPERIENCES IN A BROADER SOCIETAL CONTEXT AND THE RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF FEMALE VOLUNTEERS AT THESE TEMPLES.

November 4, 2025 at 4:30 AM UTC

Beginning in late 2023 the notion of “nine purplelifire trend (jiuzi lihuo yun九紫离火运)” started to emerge on various Chinese media platforms. The trend (yun运) is a temporal unit of twenty years from 2024 to 2043 during which the Chinese world enters the final stage in the cosmic cycle of “Three Phases and Nine Trends (sanyuan jiuyun三元九运)”. The popular articulation of “nine purple li fire” is closely tied to the predicted rising (jueqi崛起), or awakening (juexing觉醒), of middle women (zhongnü中女) during these twenty years. According to the Book of Changes (Yijing易经), the eight trigrams can be mapped onto a traditional household in which the li trigram is the “second daughter” (zhongnü, same characters as “middle women” in Chinese). The category ofzhongnü, however, has been widely interpreted as middle-aged women (zhongnian nüxing中年女性) in their thirties, who became increasingly visible in mediascape to advocate both spiritual and social empowerment. This proposed study engages in postcolonial feminist discussion by examining the social construct of “middle women” both on social media platforms and in offline spiritual/religious spaces. “Empowerment” in this case is not framed as a socio-political activism for gender equality but concrete ways in which female subjects make sense of their everyday experiences and life projects anchoring a cosmic pattern of rising femininity envisioned by the “nine purple li fire trend”.

DAVID A. PALMER(PH.D., ECOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ETUDES, PARIS) IS PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, JOINTLY APPOINTED BY THE HONG KONG INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG. HIS AWARD-WINNING BOOKS INCLUDEQIGONG FEVER: BODY, SCIENCE AND UTOPIA IN CHINA(COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS),THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN MODERN CHINA(UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CO- AUTHORED WITH V. GOOSSAERT), ANDDREAM TRIPPERS: GLOBAL DAOISM AND THE PREDICAMENT OF MODERN SPIRITUALITY(UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CO-AUTHORED WITH E. SIEGLER). HIS RESEARCH FOCUSES ON THE SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN CHINA, CIVIL SOCIETY, AND TRANSNATIONAL INTERACTIONS ALONG CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD. DR. JOSEBA ESTÉVEZIS A SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGIST AND RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE “ASIAN RELIGIOUS CONNECTIONS” CLUSTER, HONG KONG INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG. HIS RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDE RITUAL, COSMOLOGY, EXCHANGE, ANIMISM, DAOISM, AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA. HE LEADS THE YAO DAO PROJECT AND DIRECTS DIGITAL ARCHIVING AND SMART CITIES RESEARCH INITIATIVES IN LAOS AND SOUTHEAST ASIA. DR. RUNDONG NINGIS AN RGC POST-DOCTORAL FELLOW AT THE HONG KONG INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG. HIS RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDE WORK AND LABOR, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, VOLUNTEERISM, AND THE DIGITAL ECONOMY. HIS CURRENT RESEARCH FOCUSES ON CHINA-KENYA CONNECTIONS IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN CONGO- BRAZZAVILLE. HIS PUBLICATIONS APPEAR INCURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY,ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY,AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY,AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW,AFRICA, AND OTHER LEADING OUTLETS.

November 6, 2025 at 12:00 AM UTC

The “Global China, Local Cultures” research team at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences has been assessing the nature and dynamics of localized cultural interactions on the BRI. This session will feature presentations by three members of the team: David A. Palmer will discuss The Religious Factor on the Belt and Road, outlining three levels of religious dynamics at the local, transnational and geo- political levels. Joseba Estevez will discuss Infrastructures and Cosmological Frictions in Northern Laos, examining how the Lanten Yao and other ethnic groups engage with the rapidly expanding railway, hydro, and economic development infrastructures in the “Golden Triangle”. Rundong Ning’s presentation will focus on Marketing Africa, examining how Chinese businesspeople represent Africa on Chinese livestreaming and short-video platforms.

DR YUANXIE SHI (UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO) YUANXIE SHI IS A HISTORIAN OF GENDER, LABOR, TECHNOLOGY, AND ECONOMICS IN MODERN CHINA. AFTER RECEIVING HER DOCTORAL DEGREE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IN AUGUST 2025, SHE HAS JOINED THE SOCIAL SCIENCE DIVISION THERE AS A HARPER-SCHMIDT FELLOW AND COLLEGIATE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR. HER DISSERTATION, “MAO’S CLEVER HANDS: EXPORT LACEMAKING AND SOCIALIST FLEXIBILITY IN COLD WAR, 1949-1980S,” EXPLORES AN UNCHARTED HISTORY OF SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION SINCE 1949 AND DURING THE COLD WAR. RATHER THAN FOCUSING ON MECHANICAL MANUFACTURING AND FACTORY SETTINGS, HER RESEARCH EXAMINES MASS PRODUCTION THROUGH LABOR-INTENSIVE NEEDLEWORK BY MILLIONS OF CHINESE WOMEN, SPECIFICALLY IN RURAL CHAOSHAN REGION. THIS PROJECT REVEALS THE SUBALTERN STATUS OF RURAL WOMEN AND BRIDGES AN OVERLOOKED SOCIAL CATEGORY IN BOTH THE SOCIALIST HIERARCHY OF VALUES AND THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR.

November 7, 2025 at 1:00 AM UTC

This talk forms part of a larger project investigating the mechanisms of socialist learning and knowledge accumulation in foreign trade during the Maoist era, through a historical and comparative study of the export lacemaking industries in Fujian and Chaoshan (Guangdong). Drawing on archival sources, it examines how state-led export initiatives prompted both regions to formalize female handicraft labor through contrasting organizational strategies: one place adopted a flexible hybrid model that integrated rural sideline production with state enterprise oversight, while the other rapidly recruited women into factory settings. The research demonstrates that local adaptations and cross-regional collaborations enabled socialist China to respond to global market demands, while highlighting the unstable and often underrecognized role of women’s sideline labor. By foregrounding these adaptive structures, the study revisits the hybrid nature of “enterprise” in socialist business history.

PROFESSOR ELIJAH SIEGLER (PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AT COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON) ELIJAH SIEGLER IS A PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AT COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON, A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY IN SOUTH CAROLINA. HE IS THE LEADING EXPERT IN THE FIELD OF AMERICAN DAOISM, AND HAS LECTURED AND PUBLISHED WIDELY ON THAT FIELD, INCLUDING THE AWARD-WINNING BOOK DREAM TRIPPERS: GLOBAL DAOISM AND PREDICAMENT OF MODERN SPIRITUALITY (UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2017, CO-AUTHORED WITH DAVID A. PALMER).

November 17, 2025 at 7:00 AM UTC

Daoism is the indigenous organized religion of China, with a two-thousand-year history, an enormous canon of sacred texts, and a complicated liturgy. However, until fairly recently, Daoism was best known in the West, if at all, as a quaint and exotic philosophy of quietism and mysticism. This was how Daoism was depicted in most readily available sources of information, including anthologies of Chinese philosophy and world religion textbooks. According to modernist Chinese intellectuals of the 20th century, Daoism may have inspired a lot of Chinese art and poetry, but it was not a spiritual option for modern Chinese, and certainly not for North Americans. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, Daoism became a plausible spiritual path for Euro-Americans, not by becoming more like Chinese Daoism in either of its two current denominations in China (Quanzhen or Zhengyi), but rather by being completely taken out of its religious setting, and reconstituted as a series of modular, individual practices. This interactive lecture will explore the various origins of Daoism in America, based on original research. It will argue that American Daoism is a definable and distinct religious tradition of North America. American Daoism was neither exported whole cloth from China nor simply invented by Euro-Americans. Rather it arose from collaboration between progressive elements in American society and elite, lettered Chinese immigrants, nostalgic for their own displaced childhoods. This lecture will ask the question “how much can a religious tradition change before it is no longer a tradition at all?” It will be of interest to anyone interested in how Asian culture is translated into Western context, and issues of appropriation and authenticity.

HUI ZHOU & GENIA KOSTKA (FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN)

December 4, 2025 at 1:15 PM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT are gaining increasing popularity and importance against the backdrop of the AI revolution. Despite the plethora of chatbots on the market, the questions of which chatbot a user adopts and why some users develop stronger emotional attachments remains understudied. Capitalizing on a large-scale survey with over 8,000 responses collected from Germany, the United States, China, and South Africa, this study scrutinizes chatbot acceptance and emotional attachment in the context of ChatGPT and DeepSeek. We find that product usefulness and social influence play a critical role in the acceptance of chatbots. We also find that respondents are significantly more likely to accept chatbots from countries toward which they had positive feelings and to oppose chatbots from countries associated with negative sentiments. This study further seeks to explain why some users develop stronger emotional attachments to chatbots than others. We propose a dynamic interaction theory of emotional attachment, which emphasizes the perceived emotional support from chatbots, users’ social networks, and the depth and frequency of chatbot use. We find that over one-third of respondents reported some form of emotional attachment to chatbots, depending on how attachment is measured. For instance, 39% of respondents considered chatbots to be their friends, and 62% of respondents used polite expressions such as “thank you” when interacting with them. Second, there is a strong correlation between the perceived emotional support and self-reported emotional attachment. Those who obtained emotional support from chatbots, such as the decrease in loneliness, were more likely to report a higher degree of emotional attachment. Both the frequency and depth of chatbot use are positively correlated with emotional attachment. To our surprise, however, the size of social network is negatively associated with emotional attachment. These findings have important implications for the appropriate use of AI chatbots in the context of emotional support. Bio: Hui Zhouis postdoctoral researcher in the "Privacy China" project at the Institute for Chinese Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. He graduated with a PhD in Political Science from University of Houston and worked as an Assistant Professor at Saint Louis University before joining Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include Privacy, Digital Governance, Crisis Management, Dispute Resolution, and Distributive Politics. Genia Kostkais Professor of Chinese Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on digital transformation, local governance, and environmental politics. She is particularly interested in how digital technologies are integrated into local decision-making and governance structures in China.

ANGELA HUYUE ZHANG (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)

December 11, 2025 at 5:15 PM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a In recent years, China has emerged as a pioneer in formulating some of the world’s earliest and most comprehensive regulations concerning artificial intelligence (A.I.) services. Thus far, much attention has focused on the restrictive nature of these rules, raising concerns that they might constrain Chinese A.I. development. This Article is the first to draw attention to the expressive powers of Chinese A.I. legislation, particularly its information and coordination functions, to enable the A.I. industry. Recent legislative measures, such as the interim measures to regulate generative A.I. and various local A.I. legislation, offer little protective value to the Chinese public. Instead, these laws have sent a strong pro-growth signal to the industry while attempting to coordinate various stakeholders to accelerate technological progress. China’s strategically lenient approach to regulation may therefore offer its A.I. firms a short-term competitive advantage over their European and U.S. counterparts. However, such leniency risks creating potential regulatory lags that could escalate into A.I.- induced accidents and even disasters. The dynamic complexity of China’s regulatory tactics thus underscores the urgent need for increased international dialogue and collaboration with the country to tackle to safety challenges in A.I. governance. Bio: Angela Huyue Zhangis a Professor of Law at the Gould School of Law of the University of Southern California. Widely recognized as a leading authority on Chinese tech regulation, Angela has written extensively on this topic. She is the author of"Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation" published by the Oxford University Press in 2021. The book was named one of the Best Political Economy Books of the Year by ProMarket in 2021. Her second book,High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, released in March 2024, has been covered in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Wire China, MIT Tech Review and many other international news outlets. Angela is currently teaching and conducting research on topics including the U.S.-China tech rivalry and the global regulation of artificial intelligence.

EDDIE YANG (PURDUE UNIVERSITY)

December 18, 2025 at 1:15 PM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a There has been a flurry of recent concern about the question of who directly controls large language models. We show through six studies that coordinated propaganda from powerful global political institutions already indirectly influences the output of U.S. large language models (LLMs) via their training data, a pattern which is easiest to see in China. First, we demonstrate that material originating from China's Publicity Department appears in large quantities in open-source pre-training datasets. Second, we connect this to U.S.-based commercial LLMs by showing that they have memorized sequences of propaganda, suggesting that it does appear in their training data. Third, we use an open-weight LLM to show that additional pre-training on Chinese state propaganda generates more positive answers to prompts about Chinese political institutions and leaders---evidence that propaganda itself, not mere differences in culture and language, can be a causal factor in the behavioral differences we observe across languages. Fourth, we show that prompting commercial models in Chinese generates more positive responses about China's institutions and leaders than the same queries in English. Fifth, we show that this language difference holds in prompts of actual Chinese-speaking users. Sixth, we extend our findings with a cross-national study that indicates that the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger pro-regime valence than those with higher media freedom. Finally, we show results that demonstrate that the phenomenon described here is broader than propaganda and state media alone. Our findings join the ample recent work demonstrating the persuasive power of LLMs. Together, these results suggest the troubling conclusion that states and powerful institutions will have increased strategic incentives to disseminate propaganda in the hopes of poisoning LLM training data. Bio: Eddie Yangis an Assistant Professor of Political Science and faculty member in the Institute for Physical Artificial Intelligence at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California San Diego. Yang studies the politics of innovation and technology. His research has been published at theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, andPolitical Analysis, among other outlets.

JEFFREY DING (GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY)

January 15, 2026 at 1:15 PM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a Emerging economies face significant challenges in managing safety risks from powerful technological systems. Indeed, many analysts have identified China as the most likely source of a major accident linked to emerging technologies. Yet, contrary to these expectations, China has achieved a remarkable safety record in certain technological domains, such as civil aviation and nuclear power. How? We theorize that, for industries in which one firm’s accident damages the reputation of all others, international industry associations can contribute to improved safety standards in emerging economies. When firms share a collective reputation, industry associations exert positive peer pressure by subsidizing laggards’ efforts to raise their safety standards and protecting members from public naming and shaming. This departs from existing theories of international private regulation on certification clubs that set strict quality, safety, and environmental standards to deny association benefits to non-members. To demonstrate differences between these two mechanisms, we examine interactions between international industry associations and Chinese firms in three high-risk technological domains: nuclear power, civil aviation, and chemicals. Our findings have implications for scholars interested in the interdependencies between international public regulation and private regulation as well as policymakers trying to manage the safety risks of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Bio: Jeffrey Dingis an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, sponsored by Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He researches great power competition and cooperation in emerging technologies, the political economy of innovation, and China's scientific and technological capabilities. His book,Technology and the Rise of Great Powers(Princeton University Press, 2024), investigates how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for U.S.-China competition in emerging technologies like AI. Other work has been published or is forthcoming inEuropean Journal of International Relations,European Journal of International Security,Foreign Affairs, International Studies Quarterly,Review of International Political Economy, andSecurity Studies, and his research has been cited inThe Washington Post,The Financial Times, and other outlets.

DAVID Y. YANG (HARVARD UNIVERSITY)

January 22, 2026 at 1:15 PM UTC

Online via Webex. Please register here:fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/webinar/webinarSeries/register/4a9b46cc059949ec85b7360d963cca0a Venture capital plays an important role in funding and shaping innovation outcomes, characterized by investors’ deep knowledge of the technology, industry, and institutions, as well as their long-running relationships with the entrepreneurship and innovation community. China, in its pursuit of global leadership in AI innovation and technology, has set up government venture capital funds so that both national and local governments act as venture capitalists. These government-led venture capital funds combine features of private venture capital with traditional government innovation policies. In this paper, we collect comprehensive data on China’s government and private venture capital funds. We draw three important contrasts between government and private VC funds: (i) government funds are spatially more dispersed than private funds; (ii) government funds invest in firms with weaker ex-ante performance signals but these firms exhibit growth rates exceeding those of firms in which private funds invest; and (iii) private VC funds follow government VC investments, especially when hometown government funds directly invest on firms with weaker ex-ante performance signals. We interpret these patterns in light of VC funds’ traditional role overcoming information frictions and China’s unique institutional environment, which includes important frictions on mobility and information. Bio: David Y. Yangis a Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and Director of the Center for History and Economics at Harvard. David is a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER, a Global Scholar at CIFAR, and a fellow at BREAD. David’s research focuses on political economy. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from historical and contemporary China. David received a B.A. in Statistics and B.S. in Business Administration from University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Economics from Stanford.