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