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Robots Ease Elder Care Shortages Without Displacing Workers or Diminishing Care Quality, Study Finds
The study, one of the first to use institution-level data to examine service-sector robots, indicates that the adoption of care robots in Japanese nursing homes improves staffing retention, increases employment of care workers and nurses under flexible contracts, and may enhance quality of care.
Reflecting on more than five decades spanning Stanford and Washington, D.C., retiring Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar argues that the most valuable expertise comes from asking the right questions and building enduring personal and institutional relationships.
Conflicts over smoking are becoming more prominent as China's younger generation is actively speaking out against exposure to secondhand smoke.
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Fellow Dr. Thomas Fingar reflects on the early years of BAYCEP and SPICE.
The trilateral is more feasible – and more important – than ever before.
A Conversation With Oriana Skylar Mastro
The international forum, jointly organized by the Secretariat of the State Great Hural of Mongolia, Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation For a Better Future, will be held in Ulaanbaatar on July 3, 2026. The forum will bring together researchers, policy experts, and leaders from the public and private sectors to examine strategies to advance Sustainable Development Goal 17 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Ruo-Fan Liu, APARC’s inaugural Taiwan Program postdoctoral fellow, examines how students navigate uncertainty in college admissions and educational transitions. Drawing on ethnographic research in Taiwan, she reveals how families and schools shape young people's opportunities and how inequality persists even amid efforts to expand access.
Top aging and healthy policy experts from China, Singapore, and South Korea agree that helping older adults age at home requires addressing systemic health care bottlenecks rather than racing to build smarter AI models.
Japanese capital is flowing rapidly into U.S. markets to back AI, tech IPOs, and data infrastructure.
Seven scholars researching diverse topics across contemporary Asian studies will join the APARC community starting this summer.
Speaking on the latest episode of the APARC Briefing series, the Thai democracy champion opens up about his upbringing, offers insights from his newfound role in social activism, and shares why he continues to hold hope for reform in Thailand.
Barron's Quotes Gi-Wook Shin on How Korea’s Semiconductor Boom Is Creating Social Instability
Record profits led to significant employee bonuses, sparking turmoil, including internal union disputes.
Beijing is betting that its new model of growth, defined by dominance of frontier technologies, kicks in before the old one, driven by land sales and construction, collapses.
Banned from political office but unbowed, the Thai pro-democracy leader revisited Stanford to analyze the recent electoral defeat of his progressive party, weigh in on regional tensions in Southeast Asia and Thailand’s geopolitical balancing act, and consider the prospects for the country’s future and his political comeback.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s ruling Democratic Party won the majority of key local contests in the country's local elections, but faced a symbolic blow as conservative opposition incumbent Oh Se-hoon secured another term as mayor of Seoul.
Political scientist Gaea Morales, APARC’s 2025-26 Shorenstein postdoctoral fellow on contemporary Asia, studies questions at the nexus of global policy and local action and how Southeast Asian megacities build climate resilience by drawing on local knowledge and global networks to drive change from the ground up, even in the absence of central government support.
China’s tobacco monopoly has become so financially vital to the government that even its powerful leader has failed to curb the country’s smoking habit.
Teren Sevea, APARC’s Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia, reveals how overlooked histories and everyday ethics in Southeast Asia can reshape our understanding of the past and our responsibility for the future.
![Panelists at APARC's Visions of Taiwan's Future conference. [Photo Credit: Ken Hamel]](https://fsi9-prod.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/328x223_x2/public/2026-05/tp_visions_taiwan_recap_hero_v2.jpg?h=8abcec71&itok=_2TyIWkI)
Taiwan is emerging as a testing ground for the defining tensions of our time: democratic fragility, artificial intelligence, technological competition, platform governance, and cultural identity. At a recent Stanford conference, scholars, technologists, and filmmakers explored how these pressures are converging in Taiwan, positioning the island not simply as a geopolitical flashpoint but as a society navigating rapid political, economic, and cultural transformation in real time.
The next-gen battlefield is already here, emphasized policymakers and defense leaders at a Japan Program conference on the implications of critical AI, cyber, and space technologies for the alliance network in the Asia-Pacific region. Panelists warned that future conflicts will be shaped as much by data, supply chains, and autonomous systems as by conventional military power.
As Arctic ice melts, South Korea sees new opportunities in energy, shipping, and shipbuilding – but also growing geopolitical risks tied to US-China-Russia competition.
Speaking on the latest episode of the APARC Briefing series, China expert and veteran diplomat Susan Thornton argues for managing expectations of the summit between the two presidents, rethinking the U.S.-China technology competition, and understanding Beijing’s long game on Taiwan.
Sponsored by Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the 25th annual Shorenstein Journalism Award honors Mahtani for her exemplary investigations into the erosion of democracy in Hong Kong and China's growing global influence.