China: End of the Reform Era

A Public Talk by Professor Carl Minzner

 

Monday, May 1st, 2017
4:00-6:00 pm
Orozco Room (712), 66 West 12th St, New York

Join ICI for an exciting talk by University of Fordham law professor Carl Minzner as he discusses the core factors that have characterized China’s ending reform era. Professor Minzner’s recent publications include “China After the Reform Era” and “The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education”.

About the Talk:

China’s reform era is ending. Core factors that characterized it – political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth – are unraveling.  Since the early 1990s, Beijing’s leaders have set their face against fundamental political reform of China’s one-Party system.  On the surface, this has been a success.  The past three decades have seen political turmoil topple former Communist East bloc regimes, internal unrest overtake Mideast nations, and populist movements rise to challenge established Western democracies.  China, in contrast, has appeared a relative haven of stability and growth. But a closer look at China’s reform era reveals a different truth.  Over the past three decades a frozen political system has fueled both the rise of entrenched interests within the Communist Party itself, and the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large.  Economic cleavages have widened, social unrest worsened, and ideological polarization deepened.  Now, to address these looming problems, China’s leaders are progressively cannibalizing institutional norms and practices that have formed the bedrock of the regime’s stability in the reform era.  Uncertainty hangs in the air as a new future slouches towards Beijing to be born.

About the Speaker:

Carl Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance. He has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press, including op-eds appearing in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. Prior to joining Fordham, he was an Associate Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, he has served as Senior Counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, International Affairs Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, and Yale-China Legal Education Fellow at the Xibei Institute of Politics and Law in Xi’an, China. He has also worked as an Associate at McCutchen & Doyle (Palo Alto, CA) and as a Law Clerk for Hon. Raymond Clevenger of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.