October 6, 2025
This event was recorded live on September 17, 2025.
From the perspective of the West, China is easily misunderstood. Is it capitalist or communist, an adversary or a vital economic partner, a modernized nation or a retrograde regime? A panel of experts demystifies the vast economic and societal changes that have transformed China in recent decades. They discuss China’s remarkable strides toward eradicating poverty and the simultaneous growing inequality that has produced a new billionaire class; the decline in the birthrate despite the end of the One Child Rule; and how increased access to technology, with the limitations of censorship, is affecting the social landscape.
Featuring Yong Cai, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Qin Gao, professor of social policy and social work at Columbia University; Rongbin Han, associate professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia; Branko Milanovic, Stone Center Senior Scholar and author of Capitalism, Alone and Visions of Inequality. This GC Public Programs event was presented with the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, the China at CUNY Initiative, and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.
