Speaker: Prof. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard (柏思德), Copenhagen Business School

Time: April 10, 2018, 10: 15-11:45

Venue: Unioninkatu 35, SH114

Chinese business groups have grown into huge enterprises with significant economic and political clout. As a result of institutional reform, corporate restructuring, and listings in China and abroad, these business groups, especially within the energy sector, have become so big, profitable and well-connected that they are challenging the authority of the central government.  Yet, increasingly, business leaders are appointed to government positions as ministers or provincial governors.  What is the mechanism of this elite circulation and how does it impact the power relations between Party-state- business in China as well as the likelihood of fundamental SOE reform? The seminar advances the notion of fragmented integration to characterize the evolving relationship between business groups and the Party-state.  The seminar also argues that in order to abolish vested interests and interest politics, reform of the role, function, and organization of Chinese business groups is necessary.

Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard is Professor at the Department of International Economics and Management and Director of the China Studies programme at the Copenhagen Business School.  He is the author or editor of 30 books, most recently Chinese Politics as Fragmented Authoritarianism: Earthquakes, Energy and Environment (2016); From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China: Economic Discourse and Development From 1953 to the Present (2017) and Critical Readings on the Chinese Communist Party, 4 vols. (2017).

Professor Brødsgaard has held visiting research appointments in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the USA. He is, among others, member of the International Advisory Board of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore; member of the Board of Sino-Danish University Centre for Education and Research, and member of the Board of Directors, the Danish-Chinese Business Forum. He is also a Non-resident Professor at the Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology; an Honorary Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Contemporary China, School of Government, Peking University.

More about the speaker: 

Oral history interview with Prof. Brødsgaard

This event is organized by Confucius Institute at the University of Helsinki.