About the Speaker
Meg Rithmire is the James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. Her second book, Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia (Oxford University Press, 2023) examines state-business relations in Malaysia, Suharto's Indonesia, and the People's Republic of China. The book shows how trust or distrust between business and political elites and financial liberalization in authoritarian regimes interact to create different patterns of state-business relations. In the cases of Indonesia and contemporary China, Rithmire shows that distrust and financial liberalization produced mutual endangerment, by which business and political elites impress one another into dangerous and corrupt relationships that can be economically and politically destabilizing. Her work also focuses on China's role in the world, including Chinese outward investment and lending practices and economic relations between China and other countries, especially the United States. A new project on business geopolitical risk and resilience, for which she is co-chairing an initiative with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, focuses on how firms can and should change their governance practices to deal with geopolitical and especially national security risk.
