Mr. Fu Shouquing, Vice Director, Administrative Committee of Xiongan University, meets with Pericles Lewis, Yale’s Vice President for Global Strategy and Deputy Provost for International Affairs. Mr. Shouquing, leading a delegration from Xiongan, was on campus to learn and exchange best practices in university management including curriculum design, faculty recruitment, student development, fundraising, and technology transfer; to understand mechanisms for undergraduate programming; and to understand future trends, educational models, and technology platforms for higher education.

Professor Anne Underhill, who is chair of the Anthropology Department, has collaborated with archaeologists at Shandong University, China, on regional surveys and excavation work since 1995—initiating one of the first Sino-American archaeology projects— to help understand the changes in regional settlements and economic organization that took place during the prehistoric and early Bronze Age periods in the Rizhao area of southeastern Shandong province. China is home to many important discoveries in world archaeology, and the on-going international collaboration is one of the longest. I recently sat down with Professor Underhill to learn more about the collaboration over the years between Yale and Shandong University and the discoveries that have resulted from it. The following is an edited excerpt from our conversation.

How did the collaboration with Shandong University come about?

I first met archaeologists from Shandong when I was doing my dissertation research in 1987 about changes in pottery production during the late prehistoric period of northern China. I approached them in 1994 about doing collaborative archeological research after the government of China gave permission for foreigners to be involved in collaborative fieldwork. They were very welcoming from the beginning and said, “Yes, we’d be glad to work with you.” We developed an archaeological survey project in the Rizhao region that started in 1995. It was one of the earlier Sino-foreign collaborative projects that actually got off the ground in China, and I’ve been very lucky to work with this university ever since.

Those early days must have been an exciting time for you!

Yes, it was! And it still is exciting all these years later. In the beginning, we did a long-term regional survey, and that means walking over farmers’ fields looking for broken pieces of pottery and stone tools on the surface of the ground to get an estimate of what may be underneath—what kind of settlements were there, and their approximate size. Later, we got permission from provincial and national administrators to excavate at one of the bigger settlements in the region called Liangchengzhen.

What was happening in the region during this time period?

The late prehistoric Longshan period is before the first dynasties developed, roughly from 2300 to 1900 BC. It’s a dynamic period when urbanization was taking place. Very large settlements were developing along with more than one kind of craft production, and social systems were changing. It’s also a period before any bronze metallurgy was fully in play. There are sites that are known from this late prehistoric period all over the Yellow River valley and other parts of China as well. It seems to be a period when people were experimenting with trying to get metallurgy to work, but in our area the ceramics were the kind of craft product that really represent a high level of sophistication in technology. It’s thought that there was already a very highly developed sense of social hierarchy, since some very large burials were found in the province with really beautiful black, shiny pottery and thin pottery. The pottery caught my eye immediately and I began to want to know what kinds of craft specialists made the pottery, how was it used, did every member of society have a right to use the pottery, and what was put in the burials versus what was used in daily life.

What have been some of the results of your collaboration? 

At the time I developed this collaborative project with colleagues at Shandong University, much of our understanding about the Longshan period was from burials. There hadn’t been as much information, at least in the English literature, about the settlements. We all agreed to do an excavation of a large site in the Rizhao area that we were terming as a regional center. We wanted to know just what kinds of people lived here and what activities were they involved in. Since 1995, we’ve had a number of publications on the survey component summarizing what we learned about the period as a whole and on the excavation component that speak to those questions. The culmination of the excavation was a four-volume site report, titled 两城镇—1998-2001 年发掘报告(Liangchengzhen—1998-2001 excavation report, edited by the Sino American Collaborative Team/中美联合考古队 （栾丰实/Luan Fengshi， 文德安/Anne Underhill， 于海广/Yu Haiguang， 方辉/Fang Hui， 蔡风书/Cai Fengshu， 科杰夫/Geoffrey Cunnar, which was published in 2016 by Wenwu (Cultural Relics) Press in Beijing. Last year the report received first prize from Shandong Province for excellence in recent publications in the social sciences (history).  

This past October, a conference on the archaeology of Shandong province was held, along with a signing ceremony for renewal of the MOU between the archaeology programs at Yale and Shandong University. Why are both events significant?

The conference, “Early Cities and Economy: The Development of Urbanism, Regional Politics, and Economic Networks in the Shandong Peninsula before the Rise of Empire,” was held on October 25-27 at Columbia University’s Tang Center and co-sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale. It was a collaboration between Shandong, Columbia, and Yale. It was the first time there had been a special academic conference on the archaeology of Shandong. Archaeologists from universities and archaeological institutes around the world attended, along with scholars from New York universities and Yale.

For the signing of the renewal of the MOU, the new president of Shandong University traveled to Yale. Shandong University is a very large University with several campuses, and its leaders are very forward thinking. They have seen how people like me and Yale students have opportunities to do research and travel abroad, and they would like to see the same opportunities for their students. I’ve had more than one PhD student here originally from Shandong University and visiting scholars as well. I would like to see what we can do to increase the flow of students and faculty between our two universities, and my colleagues from Shandong, who had been here previously, are very enthusiastic about it.

What does the future hold for Yale’s collaboration with Shandong University? What do you hope to discover?

Our ongoing research on the composition of pottery vessels excavated from Liangchengzhen is beginning to address the issue of local production versus exchange of vessels between settlements. So far it appears that there were many households producing both the coarse wares used for cooking and the fine, black wares. We plan this year to excavate a smaller contemporary settlement to the south– and by analyzing the composition of its pottery and stone tools, to learn whether any products were exchanged with Liangchengzhen. This will be important to find out, since early urbanization in other areas of the world often involves changes in regional economic organization including specialization of some kinds of craft production and exchange of goods. I am very grateful to the Council on East Asian Studies, my colleagues in Shandong, other international collaborators, and many at Yale for support of my team’s archaeological research.

A new social pension program in rural China isn’t just providing older adults with more financial security, Yale School of Public Health researchers say, it’s also improving their mental health.

It may seem obvious that a post-retirement pension income is going to make people feel better. But the fact that social pension programs boost both financial and mental health could be beneficial to countries struggling to meet the needs of a growing global population of older adults, the researchers said.

“More than 100 low- and middle-income countries have adopted social pension programs to support the needs of the elderly,” said Xi Chen, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. “Our findings suggest that even a relatively modest pension improves the mental health of the Chinese population and, quite possibly, it would do the same for elderly populations in other countries as well.”

As a policy matter, an investment in social pension programs could help reduce costs for mental health treatment as well as physical health care, as the two are inexorably linked, the researchers said.

“Given that the costs of mental health treatment in many low- to midde-income countries are commensurate with the treatment and prevalence of diseases such as diabetes and HIV/AIDS, policies that offer certain segments of the population more income as a means of improving mental health might prove more cost-effective,” the study said.

More than 80 percent of the world’s two billion older individuals will be living in low- and middle-income countries by 2050. Low- and middle-income populations have more than twice the rate of depression, mood disorders and anxiety disorders compared to their counterparts in the United States, according to the study, which appears in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

The study is believed to be the first to find a direct causal relationship between pension provisions and mental health in a developing country. 

The research was done in China because of the unique size and scope of the country’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). The program, launched in 2009, has more than 400 million participants (nearly 90 million over 60 years old) and is the largest pension program in the world.

The pension program rolled out in randomly selected provinces over three years, beginning in 2009 until it was nationwide in 2012. Individuals age 60 and over are eligible for pension payments that come in two forms:  a basic modest government subsidy and an individual account combining personal contributions and a government matched subsidy. Pensions range from about 55 Chinese yuan (about $9) a month in rural areas to around 360 Chinese yuan (about $60) in wealthier provinces like Beijing. Total pension benefits are approximately 15 percent of China’s average earned income, the study said. 

The researchers measured the mental health of pension recipients using government data from the China Family Panel Studies, which include a scientifically verified, 20-item self-reported mental health questionnaire. 

The researchers found that improved mental health and fewer depressive symptoms was most pronounced in pension recipients who were previously struggling with mental health issues or who were dealing with financial constraints due to limited income or education.

Specifically, the study found that a 100 Chinese yuan (CNY) rise in monthly pension income decreases depressive symptoms by 11.9 percentage points.

“Considering that the lowest pension payment in the NRPS is 55 CNY per month and that pension beneficiaries on average receive 91 CNY, the total effect of monthly pension benefits on depression is sizable,” the authors said. “On average, receiving pension reduces the prevalence of depressive symptoms by 25.4 percent.”

The study also tracked the mental health of individuals age 45-59 who were contributing to the pension program but not yet receiving payments. The researchers found that improvements in mental health in that population were insignificant.

Co-authors on the study are Professor Susan Busch, Yale School of Public Health, and Tianyu Wang from China’s Renmin University.

President Xi Jinping of China has marked 2049 — the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China — as the date by which his country will be a fully developed and prosperous global power. A panel of Yale faculty on Nov. 2 considered China’s chances of meeting the goal and the implications for the United States should it succeed.   

Jamil Anderlini, Asia editor for the Financial Times, moderated “China 2049 — New Era or New Threat,” which was held at the Yale School of Management. It featured panelists Yale President Peter Salovey; Stephen Roach, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs; Jing Tsu, professor of East Asian languages and literatures and comparative literature; Nuno Monteiro, associate professor of political science and director of international security studies; and Aleh Tsyvinski, the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics.

Tsyvinski, who has studied China’s economic growth, said the nation’s rise as a global economic power can be viewed as China returning to its historical position following the “century of humiliation” — a period between 1839 and 1949 when the country was subjected to interventions and invasion by Western powers and Japan.    

“To me, 2049 is China coming back to its long-term track and occupying its rightful place,” he said. “China’s rightful place is, in some sense, that it is the center of the economic system. Whether it’s going to be the center or a center of the economic system is a debatable question.”

Anderlini asked the panelists whether the United States ought to consider China a substantial threat to its dominance of the global order.

Roach, former chair of Morgan Stanley Asia, explained that a bipartisan narrative that has formed in Congress and the U.S. government casts China as a major threat that has gained advantage through various unfair practices.

“I happen to believe that a lot of those allegations are without merit, but the perception right now in the Trump administration … views China as a threat,” he said, referencing the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on imports from China.

Salovey noted the mutually beneficial relationships between investigators in the United States and China. He asked members of the audience, which filled a large lecture hall at SOM’s Edward P. Evans Hall, to indicate whether they had collaborated with Chinese colleagues on research. More than a dozen people raised their hands.

“I would argue that such collaborations have led to discoveries that could help the world,” he said. “Of course, we have to be careful … not to be naïve or put our heads in the sand with respect to fair competition, but we should try to appeal to the best possible outcomes of a developed China and the United States. We could build on one another’s strengths to find solutions to pressing global challenges.”

Monteiro posited that whether or not China becomes a major threat to the United States could hinge on its ability to develop a brand — a vision of the ideals the country represents — that it can sell to other countries.

“This has been the core of the U.S.’s success,” Monteiro said. “The U.S. has been very successful with selling the idea of democracy and capitalism with lightly regulated markets as the best way to manage society.”

China needs to develop its own narrative for marketing its system to the globe, he said.

Tsu explained that China has couched its rise over the past several decades in the narrative of the underdog and has adopted elements of Western system while maintaining its own cultural and political identity.

“For China, assimilating the best parts of the West was never about becoming the West,” she said. “It was about a stepping stone to becoming something better … What the rest of the world sees at the very least is an alternative to the U.S.-centric worldview.”

Anderlini, noting that the average Chinese citizen knows more about the United States than a U.S. citizen knows about China, asked the panelists to identify what they think Americans should seek to learn from its rapidly growing rival.

Tsu urged the audience to watch Chinese movies, particularly its summer blockbusters, and read Chinese science fiction to gain insight into the country and its society.

“As much as I think economics is very important, I think it’s equally important to look at history and culture,” she said. “Self power is also a very strong component of China’s presence in the world at the moment.”

Salovey suggested the United States should learn from China’s infrastructure projects, such as the high-speed rail system and modern airports.

“The economic and political contexts are dramatically different, but we have not developed needed infrastructure like railways and subways in this country, and we are paying the price for it,” he said.

Anderlini asked the panelists to weigh in on the resilience of China’s economy.

Roach said that many commentators have been incorrectly predicting the demise of China for the last 20 years. China has the ability to meet its challenges, including environmental degradation, demographic concerns, and excessive investment, he noted.

“They do it in a position of strength with the largest reservoir of domestic saving in the world,” Roach said. “They can deploy their saving to build infrastructure; to shore up the social safety net … They’ve got a lot of staying power.”

The Chinese government’s attempts to control the flow of information presents a potential vulnerability in a world economy that increasingly depends on sharing information, Monteiro said.

“There is a tension between the need to control information for the purpose of maintaining the current regime on the one hand, and on the other hand, the need to drive innovation, which requires spreading information around,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s a manageable process for them.”

Participants of the sixth annual China-Yale Youth Leaders Dialogue appear with Pericles Lewis, Yale University’s Vice President for Global Strategy and Deputy Provost for International Affairs, during the program closing ceremony held recently at the Greenberg Conference Center. Established in 2013, the Dialogue was created through a partnership between Yale University and the All-China Youth Federation. The visiting delegation, comprised of provincial youth organization leaders, government and Party officials, and private sector executives, spent a week at Yale engaging with faculty, students, World Fellows, and local officials to discuss topics ranging from U.S. politics and policies to innovation, education, and governance. The group then traveled to Washington, D.C. for meetings with U.S. government officials and experts on U.S.-China relations to discuss other matters of mutual interest. The Dialogue offers rising Chinese leaders a comparative perspective on theories and practices of American government, bilateral relations, and higher education in the U.S. and globally. More information about the Dialogue can be found here. Information about other Yale International Leadership Programs (YILP).

Yale University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) launched the SJTU-Yale Immune-metabolic Research Center (SYIRC) at a ceremony at the SJTU School of Medicine on Sept. 11. The signers in attendance were Donald Filer, associate vice president for global strategy at Yale University, and Fan Jiang, vice-chancellor of Shanghai Jiao Tong Medical School (SJTUMS). Witnesses of the signing ceremony included Professor Bing Su, director of the SYIRC; Chancellor Chen Guoqing of SJTUMS; Deputy Dean Michael C. Crair of the Yale School of Medicine (YSM); and Richard A. Flavell, the Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at YSM and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The center will be led by Dr. Richard Flavell, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Dr. Bing Su, professor and chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at SJTU School of Medicine. It will provide a platform for the two medical schools to exchange research ideas and resources, train students and postdocs, and hold joint research symposiums.

Yale and SJTU have a history of close partnership in other collaborations including the SJTU-Yale Biostatistics Center, co-directed by Yale professor Hongyu Zhao, which was established in 2014. SJTU also participates in the China Scholarship Council World Scholars BBS, a program that sends top SJTU graduates to Yale’s Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program. Additionally, the SJTU-Yale Joint Center for Health Policy was established in March 2018. 

Read a detailed history of Yale University’s history and heritage of collaboration and partnership in China.