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Thursday, March 18, 2021

 

Description: Jack Ma has become the global face of Chinese entrepreneurship and represents the growing influence of private business and capital in China. Yet the decision by Chinese regulators to halt the IPO of his latest venture, the Ant Group, as well as subsequent investigations into the company has raised questions about why Beijing seems to have suddenly tried to exert greater control over the fintech giant. Join Wall Street Journal reporter Lingling Wei for a discussion about what the future holds for Jack Ma and the Ant Group. Wei will provide a deep dive into the events surrounding the Ant Group’s IOP, and explore whether this latest action signals a fundamental shift in the relationship between China’s high-profile entrepreneurs and the state? Tony Saich, Ash Center Director and Daweoo Professor of International Affairs will moderate.

This event is co-hosted by HKS China Society, a student organization at Harvard Kennedy School.

About the Speaker
Lingling Wei is an award-winning journalist for The Wall Street Journal and co-author of “Superpower Showdown.” She covers China's political economy, focusing on Beijing's policy-making process and its key decision makers. Lingling was born and raised in China and has a M.A. in journalism from N.Y.U.


From Mark Seah to Everyone:  09:35 AM
Here are two recent WSJ articles by Ms. Wei,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-regulators-plan-to-tame-tech-giant-alibaba-jack-ma-11615475344?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-blocked-jack-mas-ant-ipo-after-an-investigation-revealed-who-stood-to-gain-11613491292?mod=searchresults_pos2&page=1
From Sarah Grucza (she/her) | Ash Center to Everyone:  09:36 AM
For educational resources on anti-Asian racism, see the Race and Ethnicity section of the Harvard Library Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Collection
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hksdigitalbookdisplay/publications/topics/race-ethnicity
From Me to Everyone:  09:36 AM
is there a bookmark list to the various harvard networks you connect?
From Sarah Grucza (she/her) | Ash Center to Everyone:  09:36 AM
Please find more resources on a webpage of the Harvard Women in Tech + Allies group https://wit.abcd.harvard.edu/standing-solidarity-against-anti-asian-violence


020 State of Digital Transformation

 

The State of Digital Transformation, a new report published by the Ash Center and authored by David Eaves, HKS Lecturer of Public Policy and Lauren Lombardo MPP 2021 highlights key lessons learned from the digital response to the coronavirus pandemic. Drawn from a comprehensive set of interviews and discussions with key digital government stakeholders from around the world, the paper argues that because many governments hadn’t invested in digital services, their crisis response was insufficient. Even governments that had made progress in digitizing public services struggled to respond as the pandemic laid bare every pain point in their service delivery process. In other words, according to Eaves and Lombardo, crisis response is digital response. 

The stories of successful responses to COVID-19 highlighted that, as the pandemic unfolded, there was no time to build new capabilities, hire and train new staff, or ask for new levers. Governments had to fight the crisis with the tools they already had. The authors ask if government has truly internalized that future crisis responses must be digital-centric. 

Explore the report for key findings including:
Digital Crisis Response
Public-Sector Code-Sharing Communities
Growing Digital Service Groups Hiring, Funding, and Power
New Capabilities Agile Procurement, Once-Only Policy
Read the Full Report
christopher macrae (You) 09:40 AM do we know if ma and xi are opponents- historically xi seemed to choose ma to co-host china g20 in 2016 ? and hangzhou was part of the development region that the younger xi stewarded? would also like to know more about education which ma has said is now his full time job since fall 2019 if anyone has info on that