A central element of Deng Xiaoping's political reforms initiated during the 1980s was to reform the ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) related to other national institutions (the state and military), sectors of society, and the Party itself.  While there have been significant ups and downs over the past thirty years, many elements of Deng's original vision for Party reform have been carried out and continue to be pursued. As a result, today's Chinese Communist Party is a stronger institution that has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist party-states worldwide. Yet, it faces new challenges, to which it must adapt. Professor Shambaugh's lecture will assess the CCP's adaptations and reforms over the past three decades.

David Shambaugh has been Professor of Political Science & International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University since 1996.  He directed the Elliott School's Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 1996-98, and since that time has been the founding Director of the China Policy Program.  He has also been a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution since 1998.  In 2008 he was also appointed an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he previously taught at the University of London's School of Oriental & African Studies (1987-1996), served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-1996), and directed the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1986-87).  He received his B.A. in East Asian Studies from the Elliott School at George Washington, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.  Professor Shambaugh has published widely-having authored or edited 25 books, approximately 200 articles and book chapters, and 100 opinion-editorials and book reviews.  He is a frequent commentator on Chinese and Asian affairs in the international media, sits on the editorial boards of a number of scholarly journals, and has served as a consultant to various governments, research institutes, and private corporations. 

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform in China: How Far from the Cage?"

This event - the final in a series of 4 film screening which will be followed by a discussion with director Clint Eastwood - is part of the second phase of a three year research effort to compare the formation of the divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. We will conduct a comparative study of popular cinema dealing with historical subjects focusing roughly on the period from 1931-1951.

Letters From Iwo Jima Synopsis

Sixty-one years ago, US and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, several hundred letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them.

The Japanese soldiers are sent to Iwo Jima knowing that in all probability they will not come back. Among them are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who wants only to live to see the face of his newborn daughter; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian champion known around the world for his skill and his honor; Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a young former military policeman whose idealism has not yet been tested by war; and Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura), a strict military man who would rather accept suicide than surrender.

Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose travels in America have revealed to him the hopeless nature of the war but also given him strategic insight into how to take on the vast American armada streaming in from across the Pacific.

With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics transform what was predicted to be a quick and bloody defeat into nearly 40 days of heroic and resourceful combat.

Almost 7,000 American soldiers were killed on Iwo Jima; more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished. The black sands of Iwo Jima are stained with their blood, but their sacrifices, their struggles, their courage and their compassion live on in the letters they sent home.

Kim argues anti-Americanism belongs to a category of political opposition which may be divided into orthodox dissent and unorthodox dissent: the former involving "efforts to improve the existing system in keeping with its underlying ideological values," while the latter is mainly concerned with the change in political and socioeconomic structures.

In the South Korean context, orthodox dissent is the conservative-rightist whereas unorthodox dissent the progressive-leftist. While sometimes criticizing the U.S. on selected issues, the conservative-rightist accounts cooperation with the U.S. crucial for keeping North Korea from provoking military actions against the South. On the other hand, the progressive-leftist regards the North Korean regime a partner to live together and unification with the North most valuable, transcending ideologies and systems. The progressive-leftist naturally regards "dependence" on the U.S. being against its national autonomy, and in the extreme, the U.S. an obstacle to its unification with the North.

This talk brings its focus on anti-Americanism derived from the progressive-leftist or unorthodox dissenting argument, and its influence on the ROK-U.S relations.

Hakjoon Kim is a visiting scholar at Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford and is the Chairman of Dong-a Il Bo, South Korean newspaper.  He was the President of Korea Political Science Association and Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations.  Kim was Scholar at the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.

However, such observations invite the following questions:

• If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
• Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
• Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?

Minister Kitano will address three points in answering these questions. First he will examine the current situation of Japan by discerning the ‘goals' of Japanese nationalism. Second, he will evaluate the strength of the nationalist movement in Japan by comparing the contemporary movement with the movement in prewar Japan. Last, he will analyze the function of nationalism in different stages of nation states. Through this process, Minister Kitano will reveal the 'myth and reality' of Japan's nationalism.

Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.

His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).

Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.

This program will bring together some of the world's leading experts on Southeast Asia and democracy to consider critical questions facing the region. Has the American model of democracy become tarnished in Asia, and is the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism of growing appeal and significance? What are the dimensions and implications of Islamicization for Southeast Asia? What are the prospects for cleaning up notoriously corrupt party politics? Will the military ever be driven out of politics in places like Thailand and the Philippines? Is the American-led "war on terror" helping stabilize politics in the region, or is it exacerbating already serious problems? What do these developments mean for U.S. foreign policy and American influence in Asia?

 

Kishore Mahbubani, one of Asia's leading public intellectuals, is author of the forthcoming The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East; and Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World. Now the dean and professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, and the newly-released The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World.

Donald K. Emmerson has written or edited more than a dozen books and monographs on Southeast Asian politics, including the forthcoming Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia Beyond Suharto. His latest publication is titled "Challenging ASEAN" (Jan 2008). He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he also heads the Southeast Asia Forum.

Douglas Bereuter (moderator) is president of The Asia Foundation. He assumed his current position after 26 years of service in the U.S. Congress, where he was one of that body's leading authorities on Asian affairs and international relations.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society; Business Executives for National Security; UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asian Studies; USF Center for the Pacific Rim; and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this panel discussion.