China's AI Exports: Implications for Asia and Africa (RAND)
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Time: 10:30–11:30 a.m. ET
Location: Virtual
How to Join: Details on attending the event will be sent to registered attendees.
Program
China exports artificial intelligence services and products to over 60 countries, many of which are the Belt and Road Initiative partners. Chinese leaders have nurtured a vision in which China assumes the mantle of global technology leadership. This vision has ignited a strong political will in China to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) for national security, economic development, and societal welfare. How does the Chinese government support their companies using AI technologies overseas? What is unique about Beijing’s approach to overseas AI markets? How do the locals feel about China’s AI exports?
These can be hard questions, given Beijing does not participate in any global aid transparency initiatives. Recently, researchers from RAND and AidData jointly built a new dataset on China’s AI export projects with official development financing—China’s AI Exports Database (CAIED). The data set is used to build a web tool to map the AI projects and a research analysis based on the dataset and stakeholder interviews.
The RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy is hosting this public webinar to convene a multidisciplinary group of academic researchers with expertise on this topic to answer these questions. The webinar is designed to introduce these newly published resources and discuss opportunities to utilize them for further research.
Speakers
Bulelani Jili
Dr. Bulelani Jili is a meta research Ph.D. fellow at Harvard University. His research interests include Africa-China relations, Cybersecurity; ICT development; African Political Economy; Internet Policy; Chinese Business Law; Law and Development; and Privacy Law. He is also a visiting fellow at Yale Law School; fellow at the Atlantic Council; cybersecurity fellow at the Belfer Center; and is conducting research with the China, law, development project at Oxford University. The project, funded by the European Research Council, is a five-year, interdisciplinary and multi-sited research project that aims to understand the nature of the order that underlies China’s new globalism. He has also advised leading think tanks, governments, and watchdogs like the American Bar Association, Atlantic Council, Freedom House, UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, U.S. State Department, United Nations, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Anita Plummer
Anita Plummer is an associate professor of African Studies at Howard University. Currently, she is the associate director of research and faculty engagement at the Center for Women, Gender, and Global Leadership. Her research and teaching focus on African political economy, transnationalism, public diplomacy, and Sino-African relations. Before joining the faculty at Howard University, she taught International Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and she was also a Mellon post-doctoral fellow in the Cultures in Transnational Perspective Program and Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Political Science at the University of California Los Angeles. She was awarded a Carter G. Woodson Center Pre-doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia, where she researched Mandarin language in Africa. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in African Studies from Howard University.
Dr. Ammar A. Malik is senior research scientist at AidData, where he leads the Chinese Development Finance Program. His team develops pioneering methods, such as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology, to track and analyze underreported financial flows from non-traditional donors to developing countries. Prior to joining AidData, Malik was director of research at Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), a research initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, where he led research-policy collaborations in the Middle East region by deploying evidence-based insights and training to improve public policies and leadership. Malik obtained his Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University, MA in public affairs from Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) Paris, MA in public policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and B.S. in economics and mathematics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences.
Moderator
Dr. Jennifer Bouey is a senior policy researcher, Tang Chair for China Policy Studies, and an epidemiologist at the RAND Corporation. She also serves as the department chair for Global Health at Georgetown University and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She leads wide-ranged collaborative research initiatives on global health security and health equity. She earned her Ph.D. and M.P.H. in epidemiology from The George Washington University, and her M.D. from Peking University.
Register for This Program
Please register online to attend. Contact Ingrid Villanueva-Burroughs with questions about the event.