Constrained Expertise In India and China - Panel 1
2025-10-23 09:00 - 10:30 (America/New_York)
We invite you to join us for the launch of "Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking", a publication emerging from our international research seminar The Shifting Geographies of Expertise and Policymaking. This seminar brought together 12 scholars and practitioners from India, China, and beyond to explore expertise and policymaking across fields including energy, public health, education, housing, pandemic responses, and rural and urban development. The book is edited by Professors Manjari Mahajan and Mark W. Frazier, Co-Directors of the India China Institute.
"Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking" explores what kinds of knowledge and knowledge purveyors get mobilized and privileged, and what gets sidelined in policymaking in India and China. Through its detailed empirical studies in both countries, the volume illuminates a trend of increasing concentration of political authority which has frequently demanded that experts be aligned with the central government's agenda.
The first panel, on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 9:00am EST, will focus on expertise that is embedded within a state bureaucracy and executive. The cases from India and China point to the need for new conceptual categories that break down established binaries between political and epistemic authority that have dominated much of the debate and theorization about expertise.
SPEAKERS

Rohit Chandra
Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology
"Pushing and Pulling: Institutional Underpinnings of Energy Transitions in India and China"

Ka-Kin Cheuk
Assistant Professor in Anthropology, University of Southampton
"Beyond Local State Corporatism and Entrepreneurial Political Selves: A Governance Assemblage Perspective on the Management of Foreigners in a Chinese County"

Loraine Kennedy
CNRS Research Director, Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies (CESAH), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
"Policy-making and Expertise in Telangana State: Mediating Knowledge and Interests in Pursuit of Economic Development and Social Justice in Hyderabad"

Wenjuan Zhang
Professor and Associate Dean (International Collaboration), Jindal global Law School (on leave); Senior Counsel, Beijing Zhicheng Law Firm
"Divergence of Universal Elementary Education Policy Implementation Measurement and the Culture of Expertise in India and China"

Yu Zhou
Professor of Geography and Chair of Earth Science and Geography, Vassar College
"Knowledge and Power: China's High-tech Industry and the Perils of a Shifting Global Knowledge Hierarchy"

Constrained Expertise In India and China - Panel 2
2025-10-30 09:00 - 10:30
{VIRTUAL BOOK TALK}

We invite you to join us for the launch of “Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking”, a publication emerging from our international research seminar The Shifting Geographies of Expertise and Policymaking. This seminar brought together 12 scholars and practitioners from India, China, and beyond to explore expertise and policymaking across fields including energy, public health, education, housing, pandemic responses, and rural and urban development. The book is edited by Professors Manjari Mahajan and Mark W. Frazier, Co-Directors of the India China Institute.

“Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking” explores what kinds of knowledge and knowledge purveyors get mobilized and privileged, and what gets sidelined in policymaking in India and China. Through its detailed empirical studies in both countries, the volume illuminates a trend of increasing concentration of political authority which has frequently demanded that experts be aligned with the central government’s agenda.

The second panel, on Thursday, Oct. 30 at 9:00am EST, will discuss knowledge that emerges from social movements, grassroots communities, and local governments, and how it influences, or gets sidelined, in policymaking processes.

SPEAKERS

Thresia CUSenior Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies (New Delhi)

“Shifting Locations of Knowledge Production for Health Policies: Community Engagement in Palliative Care in the Indian State of Kerala”

Ceren Ergenc

Research Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

“Expert-Policymaker Relationship in China’s Urban Waste Governance”

Avinash Madhale

Program Director, Urban Programmes, Center for Environment Education, India

“Struggle for Stability: Coping with COVID-19 Community-Led Actions and Learning from M-East Ward of Mumbai”

Kesava Chandra Varigonda

Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore

“Challenging the Centralised Hierarchy of Civil Nuclear Policy and Expertise in India: Anti-nuclear Opposition from the mid-2000s to late-2010s”

Yang ZHAN

Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Department of Applied Social Sciences; A Managing Committee Member of the China and Global Development Network, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University

“Gendering Scholar Activism in China’s Rural Development”

News Media in an Authoritarian Age
2025-11-13 17:00 - 18:30 | A 407, 66 West 12th Street, New York
SUMMARY

On November 13, 2025, India China Institute (ICI) hosted an in-person panel discussion on the shifting landscapes of news media in India, China, the US, UK, and beyond. Moderated by Manjari Mahajan, Co-Director of ICI, panelists discussed how regimes of India, China, the US, and the UK have tried to restrict what journalists and writers produce, as well as coping strategies that are being deployed in response. The panelists were Sipan Li, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University; Jonathan Derbyshire, US Opinion Editor at Financial Times; and Rollo Romig, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist Journalist.

Sipan Li is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a scholar-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and an associate professor at the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University in China. A journalist, scholar, and feminist advocate, she has written extensively on public discourse, China's feminist movement, the development of women's NGOs, and social media activism.

Sipan Li noted that trends in Chinese journalism over the past decade include the undermining of institutional and investigative journalism, judicial and police control becoming a routine tool of repression, and smear campaigns being used to discredit journalists and undermine media credibility. Despite these challenges, journalists find ways to mitigate the negative effects of repression. Li explained that when a journalist conducts an interview for a major news story—even if the report is never published or is published but quickly deleted—it can still be shared in a bookstore event. The act of sharing itself becomes a process of creating content.

Jonathan Derbyshire is the Financial Times' US opinion editor. He was previously Managing Editor of Prospect, Britain's leading monthly magazine of politics and ideas, and Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Derbyshire has also written for a number of other publications, including The Guardian, The Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. He emphasized the upheavals in the media landscape in the US, especially for international journalists who now face new challenges relating to visas and threats of summary deportation. But he also pointed to how US domestic media, such as NPR, PBS, and their member stations, have been targeted by the federal elimination of $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting. Derbyshire provided examples of how both traditional and new media organizations might respond.

Rollo Romig, who currently manages the Solutions Insights Lab at Solutions Journalism Network, pointed out that tactics used against journalists in India are manifold, from trolling and harassment to defamation lawsuits that distract journalists from their work to political pressure on newsroom editors. Despite the challenges journalists face, Romig expressed hope for Indian journalism. "Every time I go back to India, the thing that surprises me the most is how many young people I meet who are absolutely fervent about starting careers in journalism. These young people are incredibly brave, and I don't think this hunger for truth is something that can be suppressed," he said.

The panel discussion was followed by an interactive Q&A session covering the role of diaspora journalism, the complex relationship between democracy and journalism, and the importance of local context in shaping journalists' activism. The panelists also offered thoughtful insights on new forms of independent journalism—its innovations and limitations.

SPEAKERS

Jonathan Derbyshire

US Opinion Editor, Financial Times

Jonathan Derbyshire is the Financial Times' (FT) US opinion editor. He was previously Managing Editor of Prospect, Britain's leading monthly magazine of politics and ideas, and Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Jonathan has also written for a number of other publications, including the Guardian, the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement. In a previous life, he taught philosophy in several British universities.

Sipan Li

Visiting Scholar, Stanford University

LI, Jun (also known as LI, Sipan, 李思磐), Ph.D., is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a scholar-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and an associate professor at the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University in China. A journalist, scholar, and feminist advocate, she has written extensively on public discourse, China's feminist movement, the development of women's NGOs, and social media activism. Her doctoral research, Social Movement, Media, and the State: The New Feminist Movement with Communication as Core in Contemporary China (2003–2016), examines these dynamics in depth.

Rollo Romig

Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Journalist, Critic, Essayist

Born and raised in Detroit, Rollo Romig is a journalist, essayist, critic, and the author of Pulitzer Prize finalist "I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India." He has been reporting on South India since 2013, most often for The New York Times Magazine. His book "I Am on the Hit List" is a gripping investigation into the mysterious assassination of a journalist in India, revealing the courage and vulnerability of those who are fighting the decline of democracy around the world.

China and India in Africa: Comparative Assessments on Trade, Technology, and Knowledge Flows
2026-02-12 09:00 - 10:00
While much attention has been centered on China in Africa and Global China as a lens through which to examine changing patterns of investment and infrastructure in Africa, this panel puts the China in Africa paradigm in a comparative perspective with India, which has longstanding commercial and trade ties with East and South Africa.
This online panel will assess Indian and Chinese engagements in Africa through the lens of technology transfers, skills upgrading, educational exchanges, and knowledge flows. Participants will explore patterns of expertise and technology transfer, higher education partnerships, cross-border research collaborations, and supply chains, among other forms of engagement between Chinese and Indian organizations with African counterparts.
SPEAKERS

Antonio Andreoni
Professor of Development Economics, SOAS University of London & Co-Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Structural Transformation

He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London (UCL), UK. He also holds an ASN National Habilitation to Full Professor in Economics in Italy. At SOAS, Antonio is Convenor for Research and Knowledge Exchange for the College of Development, Economics and Finance (CODEF) and Chair of the SOAS Knowledge Exchange Committee. He previously served as Head of Research for…Read More

Veda Vaidyanathan
Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress, New Delhi & Associate, Harvard University Asia Center

Veda Vaidyanathan is a Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at CSEP. She examines Asian engagement in Africa from the grassroots, across multiple sectors and countries. These include financial services, mining, agriculture, infrastructure, and manufacturing in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Ghana. Veda is also affiliated to the Institute of Chinese Studies and the Harvard University Asia Centre. She was a 2022-23 Fung Global Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University.

The Legal Infrastructure for Physical Artificial Intelligence in China
2026-03-09 13:00 - 14:30
This talk offers a comprehensive account of how law serves as a critical layer of infrastructure supporting China's development of physical AI—systems embedded in and operating in the physical world. The discussion expands on Angela Huyue Zhang's paper, The Sixth Layer: The Legal Infrastructure for Physical Artificial Intelligence in China. Zhang is currently conducting research on the regulation of artificial intelligence.
Read her recently published article The Sixth Layer: The Legal Infrastructure for Physical Artificial Intelligence in China here.
SPEAKER

Angela Huyue Zhang
Professor of Law, USC Gould School of Law

Widely recognized as a leading authority on Chinese tech regulation, she has written extensively on this topic. Her first book, Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation, was named one of the Best Political Economy Books of the Year by ProMarket in 2021. Her second book, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, released in March 2024, has been covered in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Wire China, MIT Tech Review and many other international news outlets. Read more

Shifting Boundaries of State and Civil Society in India and China
2026-03-12 09:00 - 10:00
We are pleased to invite you to a thought-provoking discussion that explores how boundaries between state and civil society have been historically drawn, reshaped, and reimagined in India and China from their founding days to the present moment.
This panel will explore how civil society emerged alongside state power in India and China, the role of non-state actors in welfare and governance, and how aspirations for democracy are expressed and contested in both countries. The discussion will analyze the shifting boundaries of power, accountability, and civic action, offering fresh insights into the future of democratization in Asia.
MODERATOR

Nidhi Srinivas
Professor of Management, The New School

Nidhi Srinivas's research centers on social innovation and postcolonial studies, mobilizing critical theory to study a variety of topics, including management history, international development, mutual aid, ecological politics and civic design. Read more
SPEAKERS

Ajay Gudavarthy
Associate Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Ajay Gudavarthy has authored and edited several books on Indian politics, including India after Modi: Populism and the Right (Bloomsbury, Delhi, 2018), and Secular Sectarianism: Limits of Subaltern Politics (Edited, Sage, 2019). Gudavarthy has served as Visiting Fellow/Faculty in universities in India and abroad, including the University of Calcutta, Gottingen University and Tubingen University, Germany. Read more

Carolyn L. Hsu
Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity, Colgate University

Carolyn Hsu's research interests include Chinese civil society, citizenship, NGOs, social movements and activism, the social credit system, social entrepreneurship, morality and values. She is part of the research group that conducts the Civic Participation in China Survey, which has been tracking changes in the relationship between citizens and the state in China since 2018, including new forms of activism and mobilization. Read more

Competing for the Global South: India-China Competitive Cooperation in a Multipolar World
2026-09-10 12:30 - 13:45 | Wolff Conference Room, Room 1103 11th Floor, 6 East 16th Street New York, NY10003
In the context of Global South narratives and practices, the India-China relationship can best be characterized as competitive cooperation. Driven by both strategic calculations and pragmatic considerations, the two countries compete for strategic space and political influence while simultaneously cooperating in areas where their interests overlap. Understanding this complex relationship requires examining how India and China engage in debates over Global South identity, pursue different development paths and working patterns with the North, and participate in the construction of new institutional mechanisms. That’s why their interaction demonstrates “uncoordinated coordination” in certain issue areas despite differences in their responses to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the more recent U.S.-Israel-Iran confrontation. Ultimately, their competitive cooperation relationship over divergent strategic interests, competing national priorities, and different interpretations of global order are helping the Global South, as a loosely connected community of nations, develop shared understanding, build collective strength, and explore its own path of development and global engagement.

SPEAKER

Chao XIE

Associate Professor

Institute of International Studies

Fudan University, China

XIE Chao is Associate Professor at the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University and Associate Editor-in-Chief of Quarterly Journal of International Politics. He earned his PhD in International Relations from Tsinghua University in 2018. He served as Visiting Scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute (2025-2026), and Visiting Faculty Scholar at O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana, India (2018-2020). He was Bangalore Fellow (The Takshashila Institution, July 2019), Raisina Young Fellow (Observer Research Foundation, January 2020) and Kautilya Fellow (India Foundation, January 2020). He also held visiting scholar positions at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2014 and 2015, and University of Oxford from 2013 to 2014. He published two books and dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles. His research interests span the politics and foreign policies of South Asia and the Global South more broadly, with a particular focus on India. His broader scholarly interests also encompass great power relations and international relations theories.

Annual India China Day
2026-10-01 17:00 - 19:00 | Starr Foundation Hall, University Center, UL102, 63 Fifth Ave, New York City, New York, 10003
Starr Foundation Student Fellowship is a funding opportunity for selected students of The New School to pursue their own research projects.

India China Day is a celebration of our student fellows and the broader community—an invitation for students, faculty, and staff to come together, enjoy authentic Indian and Chinese food, make new friends, exchange ideas, and learn about the fascinating research our Starr student fellows are pursuing.

This year’s six student fellows include three PhD students, two MA candidates, and one BFA student from across the New School for Social Research and the Parsons School of Design. Their projects span a fascinating range of topics—from exploring the production of eri silk in Assam, India, to examining people’s theater in post-martial-law Taiwan and investigating women’s participation in the global hair industry. Together, their projects reflect the diverse interests, perspectives, and expertise of our student community.

Come celebrate our fellows, discover their research, share a meal, and find inspiration for your own research ideas.

SPEAKERS

Arimbi Alessandra

PhD student in Public and Urban Policy at the New School for Social Research

The Unfolding In Three Acts: Act I: ancestry/lineage as method—migratory afterlives; Act II: inherited forgetting/remembrance in the absence/presence of archives; Act III: fragments of memory—tradition, mysticism/superstition, and collective life

The Unfolding In Three Acts traces how lineage, collective care, and everyday belief persist under conditions of migration and archival absence. “Act I: ancestry/lineage as method—migratory afterlives” takes a family history marked by fragmentation across centuries as an entry point. “Act II: inherited forgetting/remembrance in the absence and presence of archives” examines how remembrance operates between absence and presence, asking what forms of knowledge persist when written records fall silent. “Act III: fragments of memory—tradition, mysticism/ superstition, and collective life” approaches rituals, cooperation and belief as epistemic practices organizing obligation and care.

Uttamasha Dutta

PhD student in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research

Ordinary Silk: Eri, Exchange, and Everyday LifeThrough two phases of ethnographic fieldwork across Nagaon, Morigaon, and Karbi Anglong districts in India, this project follows what eri silk sets in motion, what circulates, what obligations it sustains, and what sustainability looks like as lived practice rather than brand. The project provides ethnographic grounding for the following questions: When does eri enter global markets? Which practices of production become legible as ethical? Which remain invisible, and how?

Qiyi Huang

MA student in Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research

Bodies of the People: People’s Theater and Political Subjectivity in Post-Martial Law Taiwan

The project examines people’s theater in post-martial law Taiwan as a site where “the people” as a political subject takes shape. Drawing on critical theory and political aesthetics, it investigates how documentary drama and Theatre of the Oppressed do not merely represent an already-existing people, but actively constitute—through embodied participation, collective rehearsal, and theatrical encounter—the imaginaries and bodily presence through which communities come to recognize themselves as historical actors.

Hoyeon Lee

PhD candidate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School for Social Research.

Programming Workers? Algorithmic Control and the Institutionalization of Autonomy in Kerala’s Collective Landscape

The project explores how algorithmic management operates as an informal labor market institution in Kerala, India. While digital platforms promise autonomy and flexibility, they often introduce new forms of discipline that reshape worker subjectivity and social relations. This study investigates how algorithmic control functions within Kerala’s distinctive institutional context, where strong traditions of collective organization coexist with high levels of education and persistent youth unemployment.

Keertana Panyam

BFA student in Design History and Practice at the Parsons School of Design

Intergenerational Indian Women’s Perspectives on the Human Hair Trade The project examines the question: What does it mean to “ethically source” full, long, and healthy hair for the global hair industry? How often do women in India participate in this industry and willingly give up decades’ worth of hair? What does “willingness” entail for these women and their circumstances? This qualitative research centers social and gender-justice methods for conducting multigenerational familial interviews among women living in peripheral southern India’s epicenters of unprocessed human hair smuggling.

Yu Pei

MA student in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research

Dancing on the Ruins: Raving Bodies, Psychological Landscape, and Future Imagination in Contemporary China

The project examines underground rave scenes in contemporary China as a form of endurance and its embedded ethics of escape amid widespread feelings of hopelessness and future rejection. Situating rave within broader affective conditions among Chinese youth, this project explores how rave constitutes an experimental response to various psychological tensions in everyday life, and to the collapse of future imagination under the disillusioned promise of a path to success.

China’s dual-track approach to reforms: implications for social insurance
2026-10-22 17:00 - 18:30 | Wolff Conference Room, Room 1103, 11th Floor 6 East 16th Street, New York, NY 10003
Like China’s broader market-oriented reforms, its social insurance system has followed a dual-track model since its inception. While this approach has reduced political resistance and relieved fiscal pressure on the government in the short term, it has left fundamental long-term liabilities unresolved and contributed to greater fragmentation and inequality within the system. More importantly, stricter enforcement of mandatory social-insurance contributions can significantly raise employers’ labor costs, potentially dampening private investment and exacerbating financial pressures across the system as a whole.

SPEAKER

Cheryl Long

Professor of Economics, Xiamen University
