Coastal Economies and China’s Maritime Power

kunchinlin

Conveners: SIAS, China Centre, Oriental Studies

Speaker: Dr. Kun-chin Lin (University of Cambridge)

In gauging China’s bid to be a maritime power capable of  breaking up the American naval hegemony in the Asia-Pacific oceans,  Western analysts have largely ignored the dimension of domestic economic  geography. This research project examines the maritime economic models  of coastal provinces since the Dengist era to trace variations in the  physical infrastructure and investment vehicles connecting China to the  global value chain and transport and logistics links. Illustrated with  case studies of local policy framework and institutional configurations  for maritime economy and port development, Kun-Chin Lin shows that regional  variations have shaped national capacities and strategic options in the  South China Sea and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Kun-Chin Lin is a university lecturer in politics and Director of  the Centre for Rising Powers at the University of Cambridge. After his  PhD at UC Berkeley, Kun-Chin was a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellow at the  University of Oxford and taught at King’s College London and the  National University of Singapore. His current research includes  federalism and regulatory issues in transport infrastructure and  electricity grid expansion in China, industrial policy and privatization  of Chinese state-owned enterprises, and the economic and security nexus  in maritime governance in Asia and the Arctic. Kun-Chin is an associate  fellow of the Asia Programme of the Chatham House. His new book – Governance, Domestic Change, and Social Policy in China. 100 Years  after the Xinhai Revolution – is available from Palgrave: http://www.crp.polis.cam.ac.uk/news/kun-chin-lin-and-jean-marc-f-blanchard-publish-new-book-on-governance-domestic-change-and-social-policy-in-china