Walking down a side street in Shanghai’s
French Concession, a partially preserved corner of that
city’s gloried and turbulent past, visitors come upon
an ivy-covered house that served as the headquarters
for the Shanghai branch of the Communist Party in
the 1940s. Here the spartan quarters of Mao’s second
in command, Zhou Enlai, are carefully preserved, the
narrow beds and wooden desks evoking a simpler,
revolutionary China.
A short ride away, across the murky waters of the
Huangpu River, monuments to the new China are being
erected in what was farmland less than two decades
ago. The Pudong New Area, with its clusters of highrise
office towers and multi-story shopping malls, is
emblematic of the rush to wealth and economic power
that now drives China.
These were among the images from a visit to China
by a delegation of scholars from the Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center from April 8–14, 2007.
Though time was short, the group managed to visit
Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing.
Fulfilling Shorenstein APARC’s mission to carry its
work “into Asia,” the delegation met senior officials
from government and business and held wide-ranging
exchanges with Chinese scholars and policymakers
at leading universities and research institutions. The
conversation ranged from China’s development strategy
to the current state of relations between China and its
longtime rival and neighbor, Japan.
The delegation was led by Shorenstein APARC
director and professor of sociology
Gi-Wook Shin and
by professor of political science
Jean C. Oi, who has
launched the center’s new China studies program.
The group included Shorenstein distinguished fellow
Ambassador
Michael H. Armacost, associate director for
research
Daniel C. Sneider, and senior program and outreach
coordinator
Neeley Main. In Beijing, Freeman
Spogli Institute director
Coit D. Blacker joined the delegation,
as did Shorenstein APARC’s
Scott Rozelle.
The trip started in Shanghai, a dynamic center of
finance and industry that has drawn in many Stanford
graduates. State-owned enterprises such as Baosteel,
one of the world’s largest steel producers, are in the
midst of becoming players in the global marketplace.
From Baosteel’s sprawling complex of docks, blast
furnaces, and rolling mills along an estuary of the
Yangtze River, products are now being dispatched
around the world. In a meeting, the leadership of the
Baosteel Group expressed an eagerness to tap into
the educational and training opportunities offered at
Stanford University.
Shanghai is not only the business capital but also a
political center, rivaling Beijing. The Shanghai Institute
for International Studies is an unofficial foreign relations
arm of the Shanghai government. Shanghai Institute
scholars are also players in national policy debate on
many key issues facing China, such as relations with
Taiwan, with Japan, and even with the Korean peninsula.
The scholars presented their views on a wide range
of issues, from the preparations for the 17th Congress
of the Communist Party this coming fall to emerging
structures of regional integration in East Asia. Professor
Xu Mingqi, who is also a senior leader of the Shanghai
Academy of Social Sciences, explained that China’s
development strategy is shifting toward a more balanced
approach. Whereas local government officials previously
were pressed to meet targets for GDP growth, foreign
investment, and export volume, now they must also
raise employment levels, close the growing income gap,
and provide social security.
Hangzhou, considered one of the most beautiful
cities in China, is a two-hour drive south of Shanghai.
The modern roadway passed a tableau of the suburbanization
of this part of China’s countryside, with
multi-story brick homes mushrooming amidst the
fields. The delegation arrived at Zhejiang University,
considered among the best of China’s provincial higher
educational institutions and growing rapidly in size
and scope.
The Shorenstein APARC delegation met with faculty
members from Zhejiang’s social science departments,
who briefed the delegation on their research work in
areas such as distance education, international relations,
Chinese history, even a school of Korean studies.
Zhejiang is also the site of a new research institution,
the Zhejiang Institute for Innovation (ZII), founded by
Stanford engineering graduate Min Zhu, a Silicon Valley
entrepreneur who is determined to bring the lessons
of Stanford and the valley to his home province and his
undergraduate alma mater. ZII aims to foster applied
research that can tie the university to the vibrant entrepreneurial
culture of Zhejiang province. Shorenstein
APARC researchers may soon be carrying out fieldwork
in this laboratory of change, based at ZII.
Beijing, however, is still the place that matters most
in China, not only in the realm of government but also
when it comes to academic scholarship. The delegation
met with two of Shorenstein APARC’s longtime corporate
affiliates in China—PetroChina, the state-owned oil and
gas giant, and the People’s Bank of China. Shorenstein
APARC dined with a lively group of Chinese journalists,
organized by former Stanford Knight fellow Hu Shuli,
the editor of Caijing Magazine, considered China’s
leading independent business publication.
The substantive task was to forge new ties with key
research institutions. The current state of China’s development
strategy was again on the agenda when the
delegation met with senior officials from the National
Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), formerly
China’s State Planning Commission. Alongside the NDRC,
the delegation met as well with the leadership of an
offshoot of China’s State Council, the China Development
Research Foundation, which is doing important work in
promoting good governance in areas such as poverty
alleviation, nutrition, and budgeting. Those conversations
were echoed later in our meetings with scholars from
Peking University’s School of Government.
Shorenstein APARC’s own China program, as Oi
explained, is focused on understanding the tensions
that arise as China grapples with the consequences of
its rapid economic development. Out of the meetings in
Beijing, an ongoing dialogue has begun, to be advanced
this summer with a visit from a NDRC delegation and
in the fall with an international conference at Stanford
on China’s Growing Pains.
The delegation also engaged in frank and useful
exchanges on a variety of international relations issues.
We had an extended meeting with scholars and leaders
of the China Reform Forum (CRF), a think-tank associated
with the Communist Party’s Central Party School,
the premier institution for training party leaders and
officials. The CRF is credited with authoring important
concepts such as the foreign policy doctrine of China’s
“Peaceful Rise.” These discussions were followed by a
visit and exchange with scholars from Peking University’s
widely respected School of International Studies.
The scholars shared analysis of the current state
of the North Korean nuclear negotiations, as well as
evaluating the outcome of Chinese Premier Wen Jibao’s
visit that week to Japan. Over dinner with CRF Vice
Chairman Ding Kuisong, the conversation turned to the
American presidential politics and the future direction
of U.S. foreign policy.
Professors Blacker, Shin, and Oi also met with senior
officials of Peking University, as part of an ongoing
dialogue about cooperation between these two premier
institutions of higher education.
