CANCELED: The Social and Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Asia and Beyond

IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE: 

In keeping with Stanford University's March 3 message to the campus community on COVID-19 and current recommendations of the CDC, the Asia-Pacific Research Center is electing to postpone this event until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we do our best to keep our community healthy and well. 

The coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak has sickened thousands and its control measures constrain millions of lives. What do we know, and need to know, about the epidemic’s social and economic impacts in East Asia, the broader Asia-Pacific region, and the world? APARC social scientists offer multidisciplinary perspectives on this question.

Speakers

Image

Karen Eggleston is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. She is also a Fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Eggleston earned her PhD in public policy from Harvard University in 1999. She has MA degrees in economics and Asian studies from the University of Hawaii and a BA in Asian studies summa cum laude (valedictorian) from Dartmouth College. Eggleston studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea. Her research focuses on government and market roles in the health sector and Asia health policy, especially in China, India, Japan, and Korea; healthcare productivity; and the economics of the demographic transition. She served on the Strategic Technical Advisory Committee for the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Health Organization regarding health system reforms in China.

Image

Donald K. Emmerson is the Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is affiliated with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Emmerson has also taught courses on Southeast Asia in the International Relations and International Policy Studies Programs, in the Department of Political Science, and for the Bing Overseas Studies Program. He is also active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. Emmerson’s policy concerns run from specific issues such as sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea to broad questions involving China-Southeast Asia relations, the American “rebalance” toward Asia, and the future of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His recent publications include: “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); and “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009). His analyses of current events since 2009 have been carried by Asia Times Online and the East Asia Forum among other outlets.

Image

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009. From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Image

Matthew Kohrman joined Stanford’s faculty in 1999. His research and writing bring multiple methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated. Focusing on the People's Republic of China, he engages various intellectual terrains such as governmentality, gender theory, political economy, critical science studies, and embodiment. His first monograph, Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, examines links between the emergence of a state-sponsored disability-advocacy organization and the lives of Chinese men who have trouble walking. In recent years, Kohrman has been conducting research projects aimed at analyzing and intervening in the biopolitics of cigarette smoking and production. These projects expand upon analytical themes of Kohrman’s disability research and engage in novel ways techniques of public health.

Image

David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and Research Scholar at FSI and affiliated with Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).  He also is the Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Emeritus.  Professor Lampton's current book project is focused on the development of high-speed railways from southern China to Singapore.  He is the author of a dozen books and monographs, including Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping  (University of California Press, 2014, and second edition 2019) and The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (University of California Press, 2008).  He has testified at multiple congressional and commission sessions and published numerous articles, essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces in many venues, popular and academic, in both the western world and in Chinese-speaking societies, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Image

Yong Suk Lee is the SK Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Deputy Director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Lee’s main fields of research are in labor economics, technology and entrepreneurship, and urban economics. Some of the issues he has studied include technology and labor markets, entrepreneurship and economic growth, entrepreneurship education, and education and inequality. He is also interested in both the North and South Korean economy and has examined how economic sanctions affect economic activity in North Korea, and how management practices and education policy affect inequality in South Korea. His current research focuses on how the new wave of digital technologies will affect labor, education, entrepreneurship, and productivity, and he is pursuing several projects in this regard. His research has been published in both Economics and Management journals including the Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Health Economics, and Labour Economics. Lee also regularly contributes to policy reports and opinion pieces on contemporary issues surrounding both North and South Korea.

Image

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development. He obtained a PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he became a full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 2007 to 2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He also founded and served as the executive associate director of the China Data Center. Li’s research has been focused on China and is concerned with two general themes: i) the behaviors of governments, firms and banks in the context of economic transition; and ii) human capital and labor markets in the context of economic development. Research results have been published in journals such as PNAS, Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of International Economics, and Demography¸ among others. His research has been widely covered by media around the world and well read by top policy makers in China.

Image

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations. Shin is the author/editor of more than twenty books and numerous articles. His recent books include Strategic, Policy and Social Innovation for a Post-Industrial Korea: Beyond the Miracle (2018); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Asia’s Middle Powers? (2013); Troubled Transition: North Korea's Politics, Economy, and External Relations (2013); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); and One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010). His articles have appeared in academic journals including American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and Journal of Democracy.

Image

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of the Rural Education Action Program in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He received his BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MS and PhD from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. He currently is a member of several organizations, including the American Economics Association, the International Association for Agricultural Economists, and the Association for Asian Studies. Rozelle also serves on the editorial boards of Economic Development and Cultural Change, Agricultural Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the China Economic Review. His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with: agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition.

Image

Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology, and a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow. His main area of research is on institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships. His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011); interactions among peasants, markets, and capital (China Quarterly, 2011); access to financial resources in Chinese enterprises (Chinese Sociological Review, 2011, with Lulu Li); multiple logics in village elections (Social Sciences in China, 2010, with Ai Yun); and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; and Modern China, 2010). Before joining Stanford in 2006, Zhou taught at Cornell University, Duke University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a guest professor at Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the People's University of China. Zhou received his PhD in sociology from Stanford University in 1991.

Advisory on Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

In accordance with university guidelines, if you (or a spouse/housemate) have returned from travel to mainland China, South Korea, Italy, or Iran in the last 14 days, we ask that you DO NOT come to campus until 14 days have passed since your return date and you remain symptom-free. For more information and updates, please refer to the Stanford Environmental Health & Safety website: https://ehs.stanford.edu/news/novel-coronavirus-covid-19

Image

This event is part of the Contemporary Asia Seminar Series, sponsored by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.