Can social, economic, and policy changes turn a period of growing old-age dependency into one of positive opportunity and growth in China? Qiong Zhang and Asia Health Policy Program director Karen Eggleston explore this challenging question in a recent China Brief article. They look back into several decades of China's history and also consider the current demographic picture of one-child families, gender imbalance, declining fertility rates, and a healthy and prosperous aging population.

The Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in conjunction with the Stanford Center for Population Research (SCPR), announces the availability of 2011–2012 pre-doctoral research assistantships in contemporary Asian demography. The research assistantships support pre-doctoral students working within a broad range of topics related to demographic change in Asia while they provide research assistance to Karen Eggleston, faculty director of AHPP, and Shripad Tuljapurkar, faculty director of SCPR.

DESCRIPTION

Research assistantships are available to Stanford University PhD candidates who have completed three quarters of graduate studies at Stanford and have made progress toward defining original research related to population aging, gender imbalance, inter-generational support, migration and health, or other topics related to demographic change in one or more countries of Asia. A minimum of three quarters of residence and participation in AHPP activities is required. AHPP and SCPR invite applications from a broad range of disciplines, including anthropology, biology, economics, demography, history, law, political science, and sociology.

Students on research assistantships (RAs) receive salary and tuition allowance for up to 10 units (depending on the time commitment) in autumn, winter and spring quarters of the 2011–12 academic year. In the summer, tuition allowance for an RA is usually for three units. The RA may choose to work between 10 hours (25% time) and 20 hours (50% time) per week during the quarters in which they are employed. The research assistance will be an extension of research related to the book co-edited by Eggleston and Tuljapurkar: Aging Asia: The Economic and Social Implications of Rapid Demographic Change in China, Japan, and South Korea. Each RA also receives cubicle space at SCPR.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants should send the following materials to the research assistantship coordinator, Lisa Lee:

• CV
• Description of research interests or a detailed dissertation prospectus. The description should be clear and concise, especially to readers outside your discipline, and should not exceed five double-spaced or three single-spaced typewritten pages.
• Description of previous RA experience and relevant skills, including in quantitative and qualitative analysis. This description should be no longer than one page.
• Copy of transcripts. Transcripts should cover all graduate work, including evidence of work recently completed.
• Two letters of recommendation from faculty or advisors, sent directly to AHPP.

Only those applications that contain the complete materials listed above will be considered.

Deadline for receipt of all materials is May 20, 2011.

Please address all materials to:

Lisa Lee, Administrative Associate for AHPP and SEAF
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

llee888@stanford.edu
(650) 725-2429 (voice)
(650) 723-6530 (fax)

After completing the postdoc program, I landed a dream academic job, where I can continue to research health policy with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Despite its relatively short period, my postdoc experience also helped expand the scope of my research and the breadth of professional network.

-Dr. Young Kyung Do 
Former Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow (2008–09)

The Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) is pleased to announce that Ang Sun has been awarded the 2011–12 Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Sun is currently completing her PhD in development economics at Brown University. She earned bachelor degrees in computer science and economics from Peking University in 2002. Sun's research focuses on resource allocation within households, especially in developing Asia. In her dissertation, she provides empirical evidence that the 2001 divorce law in China empowered women and decreased sex-selective abortion. She has also studied multi-generational living arrangements and household decisions about fertility and labor-force participation.

We also are delighted to announce that Yuki Takagi, currently completing her PhD in government at Harvard University, will be the 2012-13 Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow. Takagi is completing her dissertation on the political economy of insurance provision and intergenerational family transfers, such as nursing and childcare, focusing on East Asia. She has earned bachelor of economics and master of law degrees from the University of Tokyo. Takagi will join Shorenstein APARC after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Politics at Princeton University in 2011–12.

The research of these two postdoctoral fellows will complement the Shorenstein APARC research initiative on demographic change in East Asia.

The Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship is designed to strengthen research in the field of Asian comparative health policy and demographic change, drawing from junior scholars in a variety of disciplines, including: demography, sociology, political science, economics, law, anthropology, public policy, health services research, and related fields. Fellows participate in AHPP events and collaborative research while completing their own projects on health policy or the social and economic implications of population aging in Asia.

Previous postdoctoral fellows in the program have accepted faculty positions in Asia and the United States. Dr. Young Kyung Do (2008–09), who earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is now an assistant professor at the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. Dr. Brian Chen (2009–10), who earned his PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley, has accepted a faculty position at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. The current postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Qiulin Chen, earned his PhD from Peking University. He studies the political economy of China's health reforms as well as how China compares to other countries in terms of public and private intergenerational transfers (the China component of the National Transfer Accounts project).

Thoughts from the postdoctoral fellows

Dr. Do notes that "given that the primary goal of most postdoc programs is to help fresh PhD graduates prepare a successful academic career, my postdoc experience at Stanford['s Shorenstein] APARC has proved to be effective in my professional career thus far. After completing the postdoc program, I landed a dream academic job, where I can continue to research health policy with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Despite its relatively short period, my postdoc experience also helped expand the scope of my research and the breadth of professional network."

Dr. Chen adds that "the postdoctoral position opened many more doors than I had coming directly out of my Ph.D. program... The support I received was phenomenal... The wider Stanford community affords the postdoctoral fellow the opportunity to meet and interact with leading scholars of virtually any field in the arts and sciences."

The new postdoctoral fellows anticipate similarly stimulating experiences at Stanford:  Takagi says she is "delighted and excited" to accept the fellowship, and Sun emphasizes that she appreciates "the opportunity to spend one year at such a prestigious place as the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford, which will be a very nice start of my research career."

Go out there and change the world.
- Tim Draper, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

"Whatever the world looks like now, it will change," said Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), during the keynote session at the March 1 Entrepreneurship in the Global Marketplace seminar, organized by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) with sponsorship from Alibaba.com, the first in a series of seminars by the Schwarzenegger Emerging Entrepreneur Initiative. Concluding his remarks, Draper urged the overflow audience: "Go out there and change the world."

Draper and the nine other participants shared different perspectives on entrepreneurship, but a key message underlying all of the presentations was that the world is a dynamic, rapidly changing place where entrepreneurs can succeed by anticipating and responding to global trends. In doing so, many suggested, it is also possible to change the world—for the better. The participants all concurred that China is one of the key places in the world—now and in the future—to do business, representing a challenging but a vast frontier of opportunity.

Global demographic trends are a major factor that venture capitalists consider when making investments. Addressing the worldwide aging phenomenon, which is particularly acute in Asia-Pacific countries such as Japan and China, Draper explained how DFJ has invested in a company that manufactures videogame-like devices designed to improve cognition, noting the growing market for such devices that help keep cognitive health apace with a longer life span. Hans Tung, a partner with the Shanghai-based venture capital firm Qiming Ventures, described how his firm is tracking the large segment of China's population living in small cities away from commercial hubs. These members of the populace, who prefer to shop online where they can find a wider selection of goods than in their local shopping malls, are quickly becoming a driving force in China's e-commerce market.

It is China's e-commerce and other Internet firms—fueled by the explosion of Internet users—that carry increasingly significant weight in China's domestic and the global economy. Duncan Clark, a visiting scholar at SPRIE, presented related findings from SPRIE's China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower research initiative, which is led by Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE. China 2.0, explores the conditions generating such rapid growth of the Internet, and investigates questions surrounding the possible global implications of it. Clark noted that as China's three largest Internet firms—search engine Baidu, instant-messaging service Tencent, and e-commerce portal Taobao—expand, domestic competition will not only intensify, but move further into the global economic arena. The "big three" firms are already ranked among the top 20 Internet sites in the world based on site traffic. According to Clark, the key question in the future for U.S. companies will be how to partner with Chinese companies in order to insure their own growth.

Riding the global wave of innovation and entrepreneurship, Jonathan Ross Shriftman, co-founder of Solé Bicycle Company, and Ryder Fyrwald, vice president of global operations at the Kairos Society, have discovered opportunities to effect positive change despite a global climate of intense economic competition. Shriftman, a recent University of Southern California (USC) graduate, described the lessons that he has learned through his company's quest to manufacture low-cost, quality fixed-gear bicycles that provide a stylish, alternate form of transportation. Despite funding and language challenges, Shriftman and his partner succeeded in connecting with a manufacturer in China through Alibaba.com, and have sold nearly 800 bicycles to date. Fyrwald, who is still an undergraduate at USC's Marshall School of Business, explained the philosophy behind the Kairos Society, an international network of student entrepreneurs who seek to solve world issues through entrepreneurship and innovation. He cited the example of WaterWalla, a company that has developed, among other technologies, a low-cost water purification device for use by urban slum dwellers.

From the perspective of seasoned venture capitalists Draper and Tung and emerging entrepreneurs Shriftman and Fyrwald, the message at Entrepreneurship in the Global Marketplace was clear: the way to succeed in a rapidly changing world is to react promptly—and creatively—to global trends. And, as Shriftman suggested, it is possible to "do well by doing good," and change the world in a positive way.