INS Seminar Explores China’s Role in Shaping Global Economic Leadership

The Department of International Studies recently hosted Dr. Meixin Guo, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practices and Thinking, as part of its INS Research Series. Dr. Guo’s seminar, titled “Why is China Promoting Economic Globalization? A Leadership Theory of Globalization,” drew on her groundbreaking paper co-authored with Professor David Daokui Li and Dr. Kun Lang, published in the prestigious journal China & World Economy.

Dr. Guo presented a rigorous framework for analyzing the drivers of globalization, integrating both economic and non-economic factors to explain how nations assume leadership roles in shaping global economic integration. Central to her argument is that a nation’s government is incentivized to lead globalization if it holds technological, market, and institutional advantages. First, dominance in high-tech industries enables a leading nation to reap disproportionate benefits from globalization, motivating it to initiate liberalization. Second, a large domestic market attracts follower nations by offering export growth opportunities, reinforcing the leader’s influence. Third, effective governance structures allow the leading nation to balance domestic gains and losses from globalization, securing political stability and sustaining public support for integration.

The seminar was introduced by Dr. Francesco Macheda, acting Head of the Department of International Studies, who emphasized the theory’s interdisciplinary significance. “By bridging political science and economics,” Dr. Macheda noted, “Dr. Guo’s work offers a nuanced lens to understand the shifts in today’s global order, where globalization remains a pivotal force.” He further critiqued conventional approaches, highlighting the limitations of purely economic or political theories in explaining why nations oscillate between openness and protectionism.

This seminar underscored the urgent need for interdisciplinary research to decode the “changes unseen in a century” – a phrase coined to describe today’s turbulent economic and political international landscape – while also reaffirming China’s potential to play a pivotal role in shaping contemporary globalization processes.

Following the collaborative ties established during Dr. Meixin Guo’s visit, Associate Professors Yun Liu and Francesco Macheda from the Department of International Studies have been invited to present their latest research papers at the 7th Annual Conference on Government and Economics, hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing on June 7, 2025. The conference will also feature presentations by Nobel laureates in economics Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and Eric Maskin (Harvard University), alongside Prof. Dani Rodrik (Harvard University), one of the most renowned scholars in the field of International Political Economy.