Jessica Teets

Dam projects have long been associated with uneven development, human insecurity, injustice and even indirect and direct forms of inter-region or inter-state conflicts. Almost all Mekong River countries have made ‘damming Mekong’ a policy priority to achieve economic development and secure clean energy.
China now is the largest investor, trading partner, and aid donor in the region and has invested in major infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across the region. China’s extensive dam-building in Southern China, and its development financing in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, have given it extensive control of the waters of Mekong River states in Southeast Asia that have long depended on the river for agriculture, fisheries, and increasingly for hydropower and energy supply.
After preparation during the fall 2023 semester, our faculty-student research team will travel to Vietnam and Thailand to compare large foreign-financed dam projects that have been completed or currently under construction.
Through a two week field research experience in Vietnam and Thailand, we will guide students to conduct in-person field work, including semi-structured interviews (and potentially surveys) with government officials, think tank experts, environmental NGOs, hydropower companies, and local citizens in Vietnam and Thailand.
In addition to traditional security threats, we will spend ample time exploring the non-traditional security threats that plague the region, including debt sustainability, access to water and electricity as basic human rights, environmental insecurity, and forced relocation of low-income farmers along the Mekong River. 
Students will get to workshop and select the specific research questions inside the following overarching topics of water conflict:
Through extensive field research, students will study selected questions in groups exploring water politics and conflict transformation comparing the two countries, such as how do they secure foreign investment but also balance local environmental and water use concerns to avoid conflict over scarce water resources?
Learning Objectives
To deepen students’ understanding and appreciation of both the policy and development challenges faced by Southeast Asian country policymakers and local citizens, including organized advocates like environmental NGOs and hydropower companies.   
(1) development of knowledge and skills on conflict transformation regarding water conflict
(2) Build familiarity with main theoretical and empirical perspectives on development projects and their social, environmental, economic and political implications in a region so culturally, politically and economically diverse and at the same time strategically important to the United States
(3) Apply field research methods and writing skills
(4) Foster communication skills for diverse audiences, including formal presentations and informal discussions in class, semi-structured interviews with foreign experts and government officials and with culturally and religiously diverse local populations
(5) Understanding and appreciation of cultural sources of individual, community, and national identities, cultural values, and culturally-informed perspectives on and approaches to conflict over public policies addressing environmental challenges and development concerns. 

How China is Changing the World

The rise of China over the last four decades is one of the most significant events that shape global market competition, trade and economic development, and geopolitics. Its implications on worldly issues from global and regional peace and security to the sustainability of the environment are profound. China’s rise exerts an ever-greater influence on international affairs. The country’s government, military, markets, firms, and ideas are reshaping the world. But there is little agreement across the globe about the nature of this newfound influence. Is China an opportunity? Is China a threat? What does China want? How to meet the challenges of ‘China Shocks’ and ‘the dragon in the room’?

Regardless of how you would answer such questions, all types of policy professionals need to be familiar with China and know how to think about its international profile. This course is an amalgamation of dynamic, complex and interactive forces that appear as problems, puzzles or challenges to different people/countries at different times. This course aims to provide an orientation for students to understand those forces, especially those related to the major stakeholders and their evolving relationships, policies and game rules, and collective behaviors. The orientation is grounded in both Chinese historical and cultural legacies and the contexts of China’s state building, modernization and globalization.

This course provides students with a broad introduction to Contemporary China’s political, economic, and strategic challenges. The discussion begins with the lowest point in Chinese history when the country was rendered as a semi-colony of Western powers and ends with China’s contemporary rise and implications for the world. The questions asked include: In what ways is China rising? How did it happen? How does China’s rise impact the U.S and the global system? The course covers a wide array of topics in primarily three areas: domestic politics, foreign policy challenges and development challenges. More specifically, the topics include Chinese imperial legacies and revolution, contemporary political institutions and policy making processes, the opening of China and its reforms and their resulting challenges, China’s role in global peace and development, its relations with U.S., Russia, the other Asian powers and the other powers of the world powers, and the mainland-Taiwan relation, China’s trade and investment policy before and during the reform era, the Chinese economic regime and policy making process, China’s industrial policy and national standard strategy, and the social, environmental and energy challenges China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has imposed on developing countries.

Throughout the semester, students are also trained on research design including both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Collectively, we will develop research topics and proposals, and drafts of initial methodology (e.g., interview questionnaires, surveys, etc). This would serve as an intensive training on research methodology and the development of research instruments to be implemented during our field research trip in Vietnam and Thailand in January 2024. Students who are not planning to join the trip can also benefit from this field research skills training.

This course is a multidisciplinary study of China’s relationships with the world that synthesizes knowledge from international relations, political science, development and economics to provide students with a holistic understanding of China’s rise and what it means for the world. The aim is to span the divide between scholarship and policymaking by using data, theory, primary sources, and secondary texts from various sides of key China debates.