Center for Global Management

The 2022 Brazilian elections were decisive for the future of the country, as the leftist former president Lula defeated the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. But beyond the actual vote, the election threw into relief the deep polarization that has recently come to characterize Brazilian politics, family relations, consumer behavior, and media habits. Underlying all this is a huge machine of fake news that we still barely understand that is sustaining the division and threatening Brazilian democracy. Speaker: Felipe Nunes, Post-Graduate Program in Political Science (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais). Sponsored by the Latin American Institute and the Center for Brazilian Studies.

An aging population has become a serious issue for many societies, with the US included. Based on the estimates of demographic trends, it is predicted that the US will become a super-aged country with more than 1 in 5 people being aged 65 or older in 2030. In comparison to the US, Taiwan is projected to move from an aging society to a super-aged one by 2026 because of decreasing birth rates. Given this future demographic development, it may have significant consequences for the whole society in various aspects such as the labor force and healthcare systems. In this lecture, the discussant will present insights into the issues and challenges Taiwan faces with its aging population. Furthermore, the existing and potential solutions the government can adopt to address Taiwan's rapidly aging population will be discussed. Speaker: Pei-shan Yang (National Taiwan University). Moderator: Fernando Torres-Gil (UCLA). Sponsored by the Asia Pacific Center.

Trillions of dollars flow across borders through the banking system every day. While bank-to-bank transfers facilitate trade and investment, they also provide opportunities for criminals and terrorists to move money around the globe. To address this vulnerability, large economies work together through an international standard-setting body, the FATF, to shift laws and regulations on combating illicit financial flows. In The Banker's Blacklist, Julia C. Morse demonstrates how the FATF has enlisted global banks in the effort to keep "bad money" out of the financial system, in the process drastically altering the domestic policy landscape and transforming banking worldwide. Moderator: Leslie Johns, professor of political science and law at UCLA and Associate Director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations, Political Science, UCLA Anderson School of Management, UCLA Law and the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy.

In Trafficking Data, Aynne Kokas, C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, the director of the UVA East Asia Center, and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish, and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fueled China's technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.

For three decades after Mao's death in 1976, China's leaders adopted a restrained approach to foreign policy. They determined that any threat to their power, and that of the Chinese Communist Party, came not from abroad but from within―a conclusion cemented by the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. To facilitate the country's inexorable economic ascendance, and to prevent a backlash, they reassured the outside world of China's peaceful intentions. In Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise, Susan Shirk shows how China went from fragile superpower to global heavyweight, threatening Taiwan as well as its neighbors in the South China Sea, tightening its grip on Hong Kong, and openly challenging the United States for preeminence not just economically and technologically but militarily. To explain what happened, Shirk pries open the "black box" of China's political system and looks at what derailed its peaceful rise. Moderator: Leslie Johns, professor of political science and law at UCLA and Associate Director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations, Center for Chinese Studies, and Political Science.

The Iranian Diaspora in Global Perspective Conference aims to support the growing field of Iranian Diaspora Studies by sharing new research and scholarship and will bring together scholars to showcase their work on the global Iranian diaspora. This conference will build and sustain a stronger academic community, draw attention to increasingly transnational elements of the Iranian diaspora, and highlight the importance of cross-disciplinary research and collaboration. Additionally, the conference will draw from selected 2023 conference presentations to invite papers for an edited volume that will be made available in open access format through an academic publisher such as University of California Press. Sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies, Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University; School of Global Studies & Partnerships and Oklahoma State University.

Mark Sidel, Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a longtime specialist on philanthropy and civil society in China, India, Vietnam and Asia more generally will discuss China’s policies toward international as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan offers of aid to China in the Covid era, comparing recent policies to China’s policies after the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan (2008) and the Tangshan earthquake (1976). He will discuss the special policies adopted in China to deal with those offers of aid, and the overall policy and regulatory framework in which China has responded. He will also discuss a different but related issue of international cooperation with China in the Covid era – the long and complex interactions over the provision and availability of mRNA vaccines in China. Sponsored by the UCLA Asia Pacific Center. 

Drawing on a wealth of original data to document the rise of cheap overseas credit between 1816 and 1913, Didac Queralt shows how countries in the global periphery obtained these loans by agreeing to “extreme conditionality,” which empowered international investors to take control of local revenue sources in cases of default, and how foreclosure eroded a country’s tax base and caused lasting fiscal disequilibrium. Queralt goes on to combine quantitative analysis of tax performance between 1816 and 2005 with qualitative historical analysis in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, illustrating how overreliance on external capital by local leaders distorts their incentives to expand tax capacity, articulate power-sharing institutions, and strengthen bureaucratic apparatus. Moderator: Leslie Johns, Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA and Associate Director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations, Political Science, UCLA Anderson School of Management and the Department of History.