Thammasat University students interested in ASEAN studies, China, business, economics, history, political science, sociology, law, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 20 July Zoom webinar on China’s Rise as a Norm Entrepreneur and Implications for Southeast Asia.

The event, on Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 9am Bangkok time, is presented by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of China and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is the process of developing, organizing, and running a new business to generate profit while taking on financial risk.

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T9NZ-vifRDyXwmkC3aBykg#/registration

The event webpage explains:

About the Webinar

China is actively projecting its discourse power and normative influence towards the Global South, including in Southeast Asia. When China proposed a ‘Community of Shared Destiny for Mankind’ a decade ago, it was dismissed by many as just nice-sounding rhetoric. But with the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI) and Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI) – buttressed by Chinese economic influence globally – an alternative architecture of global governance with Chinese characteristics is taking shape and competes with the post-Cold War liberal international order. Together, these initiatives systematically project the Chinese narratives about global governance, and attract people to the Chinese way of thinking about the world – be it about development, modernisation, security, democracy and human rights. This webinar will unpack the Chinese characteristics inherent in the GDI, GSI and GCI, how they complement and reinforce each other, their corrosive effect to the liberal international order, their traction in the Global South, and the implications for Southeast Asian countries.

About the Speakers

Manoj Kewalramani is the Chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Programme and a Fellow in China studies at the Takshashila Institution, a leading Indian public policy education center. He is also a Senior Associate, Freeman Chair in China Studies, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. […]

Li Mingjiang is an Associate Professor and Provost’s Chair in International Relations at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. […]

Last month the 16th World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention (WCEC)  was held in Bangkok (June 24-26), with over 4,000 Chinese business leaders attending.

The event, organized by the Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, was held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre from June 24 to 26. Founding members of the WCEC, including Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong, take turns hosting the meeting every two years.

The World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention (WCEC) was first conceptualised and organised by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry to provide a forum for overseas Chinese entrepreneurs to enhance economic cooperation and promote better understanding among overseas Chinese entrepreneurs and business communities worldwide.

Also last month, East Asia Forum reported:

In China, one of the consequences of the economic reforms launched in the late 1970s was the re-emergence of private entrepreneurs. Gradually, capitalists were not only encouraged, but also portrayed as national heroes and incorporated into the system.

On the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in July 2001, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin called for qualified members of the various social strata that had emerged over the reform period, including private entrepreneurs, to be admitted to the CCP.

In today’s China, the private sector contributes more than 50 per cent of tax revenue and over 60 per cent of GDP every year. But the attitude of the party-state towards private entrepreneurs remains ambiguous. The regime regularly praises private entrepreneurs for their unique role in bringing prosperity to the Chinese nation. But at the same time, billionaires are regularly criticised and sometimes prosecuted and imprisoned. […]

Most analysts have argued that Chinese private entrepreneurs form a largely atomised group that is focussed on their individual interests and unable or unwilling to engage in collective action. Private entrepreneurs are dependent on the party-state for their prosperity and are often co-opted by the Party. Since the early 2000s, the CCP has been integrating emerging private business elites into the party-state through a variety of formal institutional arrangements, such as granting CCP memberships and allowing them to act as national or local-level legislators or in Party congresses.

Since the early 2000s, the CCP has also deployed a variety of measures to expand its control over the private sector. One major innovation was the establishment of party cells in private enterprises. In the early 2010s, at the province level, new agencies were created specifically to implement this. It also sent down ‘party-building instructors’ to enterprises, adopting a business-friendly approach and providing host firms with meaningful services and tangible benefits.

Party organisations within private firms are business-oriented and support production services and employees’ welfare rather than intervening in day-to-day management and strategic planning. The presence of the CCP within firms, from boardrooms to factory floors, has relied on various blueprints found in the organisation’s long history. The increasing representation of the Party’s interests in the private sector is one of the tools that has been used by Chinese President Xi Jinping to make China more socialist.

Xi Jinping is now calling for China to achieve ‘common prosperity’ (gongtong fuyu) by narrowing a yawning wealth gap that threatens the country’s economic ascent and the legitimacy of CCP rule. In 2021, Xi signalled a heightened commitment to delivering common prosperity, emphasising that it is not just an economic objective but core to the Party’s governing foundation. […]

Recently, the government has pursued the ‘common prosperity’ agenda with a series of striking reforms, amounting to a major crackdown on tech, the platform economy, private education, real estate and financial capital, which lead to a dramatic destruction of stock market wealth in 2022.

These new regulations are designed to increase the size of the Chinese middle class, raise the earnings of low-income groups and reduce excessive incomes. But there is significant risk that the crackdown is killing innovation, creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese private sector.

The position of big private companies in China today is less secure than it has been at any point since 1989. State intervention has resulted in entrepreneurs losing confidence in China’s future, with some choosing to move abroad temporarily or for good. At the same time, collaboration between the Party and private entrepreneurs over the last decade appears less exceptional if we acknowledge that red capitalists are a creation of the Party itself.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)