The Taliban’s shock takeover of Kabul in August 2021 has implications for South Asia far beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Taliban does not have transnational political ambitions, but it is closely tied to the Pakistan security establishment, and its victory will resonate among other networks of terrorists. This webinar will explore the regional geopolitical consequences of the Taliban takeover. It will examine the Taliban victory’s impact on Pakistan’s regional strategy, on security in disputed Kashmir, on the role of China in the region, and on the trajectory of Islamist groups across the region.

Javid Ahmad is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and was, until recently, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the UAE. He was previously a nonresident fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point and worked with U.S. defense contractors, where he provided counterterrorism/economic analysis to U.S. government and business clients on South Asia/Central Asia. He has worked for the Pentagon’s AfPak Hands, the German Marshall Fund in Washington, and NATO in Brussels. He has written for Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, New York Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The Hill, and CNN. He studied at Beloit College and Yale University.

C. Christine Fair is a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (OUP, 2019).  She has authored or co-edited several books, inter alia: Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014); Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges (UPenn, 2015), Policing Insurgencies (OUP, 2014); Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010); Treading on Hallowed Ground: (OUP, 2008); The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (GlobePequot, 2008).  She has a PhD from the University of Chicago, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilization. She causes trouble in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.

Avinash Paliwal is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Deputy Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute. He specialises in South Asian strategic affairs. He is author of the much-acclaimed book My Enemy’s Enemy - India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal (2017), and is currently authoring a strategic history of India's near east. Avinash holds an MA and PhD in International Relations from King’s College London, and a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Delhi.

Moderator:

Arzan Tarapore is the South Asia research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he leads the newly-restarted South Asia research initiative. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. His research focuses on Indian military strategy and contemporary Indo-Pacific security issues. He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the Observer Research Foundation, and the East-West Center in Washington. Prior to his scholarly career, he served as an analyst in the Australian Defence Department, which included an operational deployment to Afghanistan. Arzan holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London.

 

North Carolina time: 19 October, 2021, 8:00-9:30 pm; Singapore time: 20 October, 2021, 8:00-9:30am

Viewed alongside other world regions, Southeast Asia is uniquely vulnerable to major damage by global warming. Its coastlines are lengthy and subject to searise. Its urban centers of economic and political gravity are mainly riverine or deltaic. Its agriculture requires optimal levels and rhythms of waterflow, as do its polluted main veins, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy.  In already tropical conditions, heatwaves are especially enervating.  Nor has the region escaped extreme weather events.  The ten most afflicted countries worldwide in that regard include Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.  With this background in mind, Angel Hsu and Melissa Low, two scholars with deep regional and policy knowledge will consider questions such as:  What has been and is being done, by whom, and with what chances of success?  Can currently worsening trends be reversed?  Mitigated?  Or is adaptation the sole plausible recourse?  Who will represent the interests of the unborn generations who will suffer the long-term consequences of present-day indifference and delay?  Will effective policy require authoritarian politics?  Given that the largest current and historical emitters of greenhouse gases are, respectively, China and the US, what roles should and will they play?  And how, if at all, will global versions of these questions be addressed and answered in November in Glasgow at COP26?

Angel Hsu founded and heads the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Data-Driven EnviroLab, an interdisciplinary research group that innovates quantitative approaches to pressing environmental issues.  Her research into the causes and consequences of climate change explores the interfacing of science and policy.  Her many publications include coverage of Malaysia, Viet Nam, and especially China.  In February 2021 she spoke on global climate trends before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, having addressed US-China climate relations at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020.  Illustrating Prof. Hsu’s commitment to public outreach was her selection as a TED 2018 Age of Amazement Speaker and earlier as an inaugural member of the Grist 50, an annual list of “emerging leaders” working on “fresh, real-world solutions” to the world’s “biggest challenges,” global warming included.  She holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from Yale University.

Melissa Low has published, presented, and advised on climate change in multiple forums.  She is currently researching the relative transparency of climate action and reporting in Southeast Asia.  She provides policy analyses and conducts workshops to improve understanding of the Paris Agreement and track whether countries are keeping their promises.  For that work, in 2021, she received Singapore’s EcoFriend Award and its Public Service Medal.  Having taken part in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties for many years, she is now on the steering committee that coordinates NGOs under the UNFCCC. She holds a University of Strathclyde LLM (with distinction) in Climate Change Law and Policy and an MSc in Environmental Management at the National University of Singapore, where is pursuing a PhD in geography.  Her master’s thesis on the run-up to the Paris Agreement won NUS’s Shell Best Dissertation Award.

This event is part of the 2021 Fall webinar series, Perfect Storm: Climate Change in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

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October 18, 4-5:00 p.m. California time/ October 19, 8-9:00 a.m. Japan time

The recent LDP Presidential Election ended with Fumio Kishida defeating Taro Kono in the final round to become the LDP President and then Prime Minister of Japan, succeeding Yoshihide Suga, who stepped down amidst mounting political challenges dealing with COVID and its economic consequences. This was a closer election than most other LDP Presidential elections with a great deal of intrigue about how the publicly popular Kono might fare against Kishida, who the senior LDP leadership preferred. What does this election process tell us about Japanese politics today, and how will LDP fare in the upcoming House of Representatives Election? Will Kishida last longer than Suga as Prime Minister, and what do opposition parties have to do to stop the dominant LDP to change Japanese politics? In this webinar, two leading experts on the topic, Rieko Kage (University of Tokyo) and Dan Smith (Columbia University), address these questions, moderated by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program.

Panelists

Rieko Kage is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tokyo.  She graduated from the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University and earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University.  She is the author of Civic Engagement in Postwar Japan (2011) and Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe (2010), both of which have been published from Cambridge University Press, and she has published broadly on issues relating to judicial politics, political participation, and public opinion.  Her most recent article, "War, Democratization, and Generational Cohort Effects on Participation in Japan" is forthcoming from Electoral Studies.

 

 

 

Daniel M. Smith is the Gerald L. Curtis Visiting Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2018), and numerous articles on Japanese politics, party politics, and elections. He is also a co-editor of the Japan Decides election series. From 2012 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University.

 

 

 

 

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021). 

This event is part of the Asia Health Policy Program's 2021-22 Colloquium series "Aligning Incentives for Better Health and More Resilient Health Systems in Asia”

Three prominent demographers discuss China's demographic change with insights from the seventh national census. Topics include the pace of urbanization, the more balanced sex ratio, increasing educational attainment, population aging, potential impacts of the pandemic, and recently announced changes in family planning and retirement policies.

Wang Feng is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and an adjunct professor of sociology and demography at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He has done extensive research on global social and demographic changes, comparative population and social history, and social inequality, with a focus on China. He is the author of multiple books, and his research articles have been published in venues including Population and Development Review, Demography, Science, The Journal of the Economics of Aging, The Journal of Asian Studies, The China Journal, and International Migration Review. He has served on expert panels for the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and as a senior fellow and the director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. His work and views have appeared in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, Economist, NPR, CNN, BBC, and others.

Cai Yong's research focuses on China's one-child policy and its implications for fertility and social policies. The one-child policy, engineered to control China's population growth by restricting fertility to one child per couple, has been controversial for many reasons, including the policy's questionable demographic and economic assumptions, the ethical concerns regarding direct state intrusion into family matters, and its negative social and demographic impacts. Cai's work has contributed to an emerging consensus on China's fertility change and the impact of the one-child policy. Specifically, his work shows that: China's fertility has dropped to a level well below the replacement; the demographic impact of the one-child policy was modest, much less than the government's claim of 400 million averted births; socioeconomic development played a critical role in driving China's fertility decline; and the socioeconomic impacts of low fertility and population aging are substantial. The consensus on these issues, to which Cai contributed, provided the empirical and scientific foundation that persuaded the Chinese government to end the three-decade-long policy.

Cai continues to monitor China's fertility in the post-one-child era, but with a new focus on international comparisons on sustained low fertility and population aging, both from a micro perspective about individual responses and family dynamics and from a macro perspective about social welfare regimes and public transfers.

Li Shuzhuo is currently University Distinguished Professor of Population and Development Policy Studies, Honorary Director of the Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and consulting professor at the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, Stanford University. He is a member of the Social Sciences Committee of the Ministry of Education of China. His research is focused on population and social development as well as public policies in contemporary China, including population policies and development, gender imbalance and sustainable social development, aging and health, migration and integration.

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
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In September 2020, President Xi Jinping declared that China would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.  This climate pledge is widely considered the most ambitious of all made to date, especially since the world’s largest carbon-emitting nation is still at a developing stage and has not yet achieved its emissions peak.  With the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) on the horizon, the world is eager to learn about any potential new pledges from the Chinese leadership.  This talk will provide an overview of climate governance under President Xi Jinping and draw on the presenter’s work on local implementation of air pollution policies in China to discuss potential lessons for its ongoing efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Shiran Victoria Shen’s research primarily examines the organizational causes of and responses to environmental crises, with particular understanding of how local politics shape air pollution and climate management in China.  Professor Shen graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors from Swarthmore College and holds an M.S. in civil and environmental engineering and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Stanford University.

 

 

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This event is part of the 2021 Fall webinar series, Perfect Storm: Climate Change in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

 

 

Abstract: The fiscal federalism and decentralization literatures suggest that larger cities often deliver better public goods more effectively because of scale economies. Yet small cities exhibit higher rates of access to basic health and education services in Brazil, India, and Indonesia. Why is this the case? Building on modernization theory and models from urban economics, we argue that citizens in smaller cities prioritize investments in basic health and education facilities because there are few low- cost substitutes for government offerings, and because they face few characteristically “urban” problems, such as congestion and insecurity. Residents of larger cities, in contrast, prioritize investment in a wider set of policy areas because they experience more negative externalities from urban growth and can turn to a larger supply of non-state providers of basic social services. Moreover, public officials in smaller cities find it easier to earn political returns for investments in “divisible” infrastructure for service delivery, such as schools and clinics, because they can coordinate lobbying and credit-claiming more effectively than politicians in larger cities. We illustrate the mechanisms underlying these differences across policy areas through data analysis and paired comparison of representative cities of different sizes in Brazil, and with shadow cases from Indonesia.

Alison Post is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies.  Her research lies at the intersection of comparative urban politics and comparative political economy, with regional emphases on Latin America and South Asia. Her research examines regulation and business-government relations, decentralization, and urban politics and policy.  She is the author of Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and articles in the Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Governance, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, and other outlets. She is currently the President of the Urban and Local Politics section of the American Political Science Association and Chair of the Steering Committee for the Red de Economía Política de America Latina (Repal). 

LIVESTREAM HERE: https://tinyurl.com/apostlive

This event is co-sponsored by Center for Latin American Studies and Center for South Asia

 

Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) 2021-22 Colloquium series "Aligning Incentives for Better Health and More Resilient Health Systems in Asia”

Friday, October 29, 2021, 8:30am - 9:30am (Beijing time)

This paper investigates the impact of China’s reform of the system for medical payments from traditional fee-for-service to prospective payment in the form of diagnosis-related group. The paper explores comprehensive aspects of the reform, taking advantage of a large-scale administrative data set from a pilot city in China. It finds that medical expenditure per admission dropped by 7.3 percent, with greater impact on patients who spent a larger amount. To better understand the changes, further decompositions find that the expenditure reduction is fully explained by reduction in the quantity of services instead of using cheaper ones, and by reduction in the use of drugs but not reduction in other types of services, including examination, treatment, and nursing care. In addition, no evidence is found on quality deterioration or behavioral responses, including upcoding and cream skimming. Hospitals maintained their revenue through attracting more patients to contend with cost containment induced by the payment reform.

Julie Shi is Associate Professor of Health Economics in the School of Economics and the School of Global Health Development at Peking University. Dr. Shi’s research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health insurance coverage, drug regulations, and the trend of medical expenditures. Shi’s work has contributed to the theory and practice of China’s payment system reform. Her research on health insurance includes the impact of insurance on medical utilization. She has conducted academic and policy research on government regulations on prescription drugs. She also works on the trend of expenditures for patients with catastrophic diseases.

Dr. Shi’s undergraduate degree is from Tsinghua university and her PhD is from Boston University, both in economics. Before joining Peking University, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. Her work has published on leading academic journals including Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Health Economics. She received awards for paper of the year in 2014 from the National Institute of Health Care Management (NIHCM) in the United States. She has conducted multiple projects for central and local governments in China for policy recommendation.

 

Jakarta time: Friday, October 8, 2021 07:00 - 08:30 AM

Students often ask themselves: Do I want to be a specialist or a generalist? A hedgehog digging deeper or a fox ranging wider? The answer embedded in Gita Wirjawan’s life so far is unequivocal: Go broad. Think big. And be optimistic. For his weekly virtual podcast Endgame, Gita has interviewed many people, including Stanford’s Southeast Asia Program director Don Emmerson.  Don will turn the tables and interview Gita in this event. Gita will highlight life lessons from his international childhood and consider questions such as these: How well or poorly is Indonesia coping with corrupted governance, religious extremism, Covidian infection, and climate change? How should it respond to worsening US-China relations? To China’s efforts to control the South China Sea? To America’s exit from Afghanistan? To Myanmar’s brutal junta and ASEAN’s apparent impotence? Worldwide, looking forward, is eco-suicide avoidable? Will surveillance technology doom liberal democracy? If there is a global endgame to be played, how should concerned actors play it? Have present perils made Gita’s proactive optimism all the more necessary? Or all the more naïve? Attend the event and find out.

Gita Wirjawan is the founding chairman of the Ancora Group of private-equity investors and wealth managers in Indonesia. He has held leadership positions in Citibank, JP Morgan, and other such firms. His philanthropy sustains the Ancora Foundation, which seeks to improve access to quality education in Indonesia across a range of endeavors—from funding the training of kindergarten teachers to endowing scholarships for students to attend universities around the world including Stanford. His passion for sports led Gita to chair Indonesia’s badminton association (2012-16). His public service career has included heading Indonesia’s trade ministry (2011-14) and investment coordinating board (2009-2011). A jazz pianist, he has performed in concerts and composed and played pieces in more than a dozen albums. His degrees include masters in business administration (Baylor) and public policy (Harvard). Indonesia’s School of Government and Public Policy sponsors his wide-ranging podcast “Endgame with Gita Wirjawan.”