Research

China and the Development of Technologies for Global Energy Sustainability

Watson Institute director Edward Steinfeld and Brown postdoc Jonas Nahm, in collaboration with engineering faculty, are exploring the process by which Chinese, American and European companies engage in collaborative innovation and product development in the energy technology domain. How do firms work with – and learn from – one another? How do the capabilities of firms relate to the social institutions and public policies of their respective home countries? How can firm-level collaboration be understood in the context of other phenomena such as geopolitical rivalry, trade wars, accusations of intellectual property theft and commercial competition?

China, Global Labor Standards, and Socially Sustainable Production

Former Watson Institure director Richard Locke, in close collaboration with a team of graduate students and numerous colleagues from both Hong Kong and South China, engaged in extensive research on the drivers of workplace conditions in global manufacturing operations. Through extensive qualitative and quantitative data collection in China and other nations, Locke’s team has demonstrated that substandard working conditions — safety problems, excessive overtime, contract breaches, etc. – stem not simply or exclusively from lax regulatory enforcement, but from complex buyer-supplier relationships in global supply chains.  This work offers both managerial and public policy solutions appropriate for China and other global locales, including the United States.

China and the Public Health Consequences of Environmental Pollutants

China’s extraordinary growth over the past three decades, while benefiting hundreds of millions of people, has also come at a cost, particularly on the environmental front. Severe air pollution now affects many Chinese cities. As many people now recognize, there is an urgent need for detailed information on how these levels of air pollution impact human health, and how policy-related remediation should be undertaken.

Faculty members in the Brown School of Public Health, in collaboration with colleagues in the social sciences, are working with Chinese governmental partners to study the health consequences of airborne pollutants. Specifically, sophisticated epidemiologic and biostatistical methods are being applied to extensive environmental and health data from multiple large Chinese cities to quantify the effects of air pollution on morbidity and mortality, including adverse birth outcomes and childhood neurodevelopment. This work could prove critical for informing environmental policy in China, as well as our knowledge about the health consequences of pollution in any context, including the United States.

China and Sustainable Urbanization

Brown sociology professor and Watson faculty associate John Logan directs the “Urban China Research Network,” a global and multidisciplinary scholarly collaboration on China’s contemporary experience of urbanization. This platform for networked research and scholarly interaction has involved faculty members, graduate students, and academic institutions across Mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States and the United Kingdom. The effort has led to the establishment of specialized working groups, conferences and joint data collection.

Comparative 'Gilded Ages': China, India, and the United States

Brown faculty members Ashutosh Varshney, James Morone and Edward Steinfeld co-direct a research program on rapid industrialization and rapid urbanization in the contemporary experiences of China and India, and the historical (late 19th century) experience of the United States. The research, using the urban municipality as the level of analysis, examines comparative patterns of business-government relations, public goods provision, government accountability and social stability. To what extent can we discern common experiences across the three national cases and two major time periods? To what extent are outcomes influenced by institutions of governance, cultural factors, or technological advancements?