Disaggregating China Inc., with Yeling Tan

Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Speaker: Yeiling Tan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon Professor Yeling Tan discusses her book, Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 represented an historic opportunity to peacefully integrate a rising economic power into the international order based on market-liberal rules. Yet current economic tensions between the US and China indicate that this integration process has run into trouble. To what extent has the liberal internationalist promise of the WTO been fulfilled? To answer this question, this study breaks open the black box of the massive Chinese state and unpacks the economic strategies that central economic agencies as well as subnational authorities adopted in response to WTO rules demanding far-reaching modifications to China’s domestic institutions. The study explains why, rather than imposing constraints, WTO entry provoked divergent policy responses from different actors within the Chinese state, in ways neither expected nor desired by the architects of the WTO. Yeiling Tan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, and a non-resident scholar at the opens in a new windowUC San Diego 21st Century China Center. From 2017-2020, she was a fellow of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of International Trade and Investment. From 2017-2019, she was a member of the opens in a new windowGeorgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. In 2017-18, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the opens in a new windowPrinceton-Harvard China and the World Program in Princeton University. ​Her research interests lie at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, with an emphasis on China and the developing world. Two broad questions define her research agenda. First: how do the rules of globalization affect politics within authoritarian regimes such as China, given that these rules require increasingly far-reaching modifications to domestic institutions? Second, how do authoritarian regimes affect rule-making at the international level? She holds a PhD in Public Policy from opens in a new windowHarvard University (2017), an MPA in International Development from the opens in a new windowJohn F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2011) and a BA (Honors, Distinction) in International Relations and Economics from opens in a new windowStanford University (2002). Apart from research on globalization and China, she has also worked in the public and non-governmental sectors on a range of issues including economic development, international security policy, global governance and governance innovations.