Building U.S. - China Bridges

China Center

China, the U.S., and Global Debt: Why Cooperate?

On October 27, 2022, the University of Minnesota China Center welcomed Dr. Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative and the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy Emerita at Johns Hopkins University, to present the annual Bob and Kim Griffin Building U.S.-China Bridges Lecture on “China, the U.S., and Global Debt: Why Cooperate?”

Joan Brzezinski, director of the China Center, welcomed the audience to the first in-person Griffin Lecture since 2019, and Meredith McQuaid, vice president and dean of international programs, outlined how U.S.-China relations have changed since the lecture series started in 2001.

“[The Griffin Lecture] began in a time when building a bridge between our two countries was based on the trust that each could and would build a structure together, one that started on each continent and met in the middle,” McQuaid said. “In the past five years, each of the lectures has been about tensions, about predictions for the future, guarded advice on what hook we might hang our hope for a better future in a period of tumultuous change all over the world.”

After being introduced by John Freeman, the Paul W. Frenzel Professor of Liberal Arts, Brautigam addressed some of that tumult.

“Relations between China and the United States have deteriorated sharply since the global financial crisis in 2008, and particularly during the last six years of the Trump and Biden administration,” Brautigam said. “The result is that the U.S. and China have stopped cooperating to address urgent global problems like climate change, interstate conflict, nuclear proliferation, global health, and poverty. And unfortunately, we can now add global debt to that list.”

Brautigam explained that multiple countries have declared bankruptcy since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, including Argentina, Belize, Ecuador, Lebanon, Suriname, Zambia, and Sri Lanka. Others are sure to follow.

“Solving the challenge of developing country debt is going to require China and the U.S., the two largest economies, to work together,” Brautigam said. “Ultimately, I believe it’s likely to require a new financial architecture.”
 

About the Speaker

Deborah Brautigam
Photo credit: Kaveh Sardari

Dr. Deborah Brautigam is director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) and the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy Emerita at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Before joining SAIS in 2012, she taught at Columbia University and American University. A Sinologist with extensive field experience in Africa, Dr. Brautigam’s teaching and research have focused on development strategies, governance, and the political economy of foreign aid and debt.

She is the author of The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (OUP, 2009; 2011) and co-editor of Taxation and State-Building: Capacity and Consent (Cambridge, 2008. Her most recent book is Will Africa Feed China? (OUP, 2015).

A firm believer that academics can — and should — bridge the gap between research and the policy world, Dr. Brautigam has been a visiting scholar at the World Bank, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and advised more than a dozen governments on China-Africa relations. Her Ph.D. is from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.