In a Sinica podcast streamed live on August 27, Professor Qin Gao, Director of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, joined hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to examine China’s efforts to fulfill the goal of eradicating extreme poverty in China by the end of 2020. They are also joined by Matthew Chitwood, who spent two years researching rural poverty in the remote mountain village of Bangdong in Yunnan Province and brought an on-the-ground perspective.
The Columbia China Center for Social Policy will host a fall 2020 lecture series on “Chinese Social Policy from Comparative Perspectives.” The lecture series is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. All lectures will be held remotely via Zoom webinar.
A doctoral student at the School of Finance at Renmin University of China and a member of the China Institute for Income Distribution (CIID) at Beijing Normal University, Pengzhan Yang was a visiting scholar at the China Center for Social Policy in 2019–2020. He offers a few reminiscences from the year.
As the Chinese government approaches its deadline for eradicating rural poverty by the end of 2020, Dr. Qin Gao, Professor and Columbia University’s founding director of the China Center for Social Policy, is a sought-after expert by various international media outlets. On June 25, Qin Gao was quoted in a feature report in the Financial Times that “the government is determined to achieve this goal. Since March, official publications have reaffirmed that it must happen by the end of the year.”
COVID-19 has been one of the most substantial challenges to human development in over a century. In a new publication, Qin Gao, Professor and Director of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, joins a team of international interdisciplinary scholars to examine the impacts of COVID-19 and understand policy challenges using a capability framework.
Yalu Zhang, Doctoral Fellow of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, won three awards for her dissertation research on “the Consequence and Policy Responses of Health-Induced Poverty.”
Dr. Yao Lu, Associate Professor of Sociology and faculty member of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, won two prestigious awards from the American Sociological Association (ASA) for her recent publication on migration and collective action in rural China.
Dr. Xian Huang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Faculty Associate of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, has published an important book on social protection and health policy in China. The book, titled “Social Protection under Authoritarianism: Health Politics and Policy in China”, will be released by Oxford University Press on August 14, 2020.
As part of a wider effort by Columbia University alumni in Greater China to send masks, face shields, medical gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline workers working to stop the spread of the coronavirus on the East Coast, CSSW alumni in China, led by Ting Ding (MSW ’14), organized a shipment of 2,000 surgical masks to the School of Social Work. Professor Julien Teitler signed for the packages upon their delivery to the Social Work Building, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, on April 23.
The Columbia China Center for Social Policy is proud to celebrate the graduation of three Center fellows this May.
In a letter addressed to this year’s graduates, Professor Qin Gao, Director of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, sends her warm congratulations and best wishes. Drawing from her life experience, Prof. Gao encourages the graduates to “hone your skills and dare to act.”