Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship played a critical role in transforming Japan’s telecommunications sector. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, in a sector long dominated by a stable set of large actors with well-established patterns of interaction, entrepreneurs introduced new technologies, new business models, and new norms of interaction. The subsequent transformation of Japan’s telecommunications sector was dramatic, providing consumers with not only fast and sophisticated services but also low prices and an entire new ecosystem of mobile content—a considerable departure from Japan’s long track record of being known as producer- rather than consumer-oriented, with consumers enjoying high-end services and products, but at high prices. Yet, these transformative entrepreneurs were not acting in a vacuum. Regulatory shifts in telecommunications were critical in providing opportunities for entrepreneurs, while simultaneously protecting them from large incumbent firms. These regulatory shifts were driven by the political dynamics of the 1990s as Japan struggled through its post-bubble economic malaise and political changes.

The sixth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum was held in the Bechtel Conference Center at Stanford University on June 8, 2011. Established in 2006 by Stanford University and now convening semi-annually alternating between Stanford and Seoul, the Forum brings together distinguished South Korean (Republic of Korea, or ROK) and American scholars, experts, and former military and civilian officials to discuss North Korea, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and regional dynamics in Northeast Asia. Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is co-organizer of the Forum with the Sejong Institute of Korea. Operating as a closed workshop under the Chatham House Rule of individual confidentiality, the Forum allows participants to engage in candid, in-depth discussion of current issues of vital national interest to both countries.

The fifth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul, South Korea (Republic of Korea, or ROK), on December 1, 2010, brought together distinguished Korean and American scholars, experts, and former diplomats to discuss North Korea, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and regional dynamics in Northeast Asia. The Sejong Institute organized the Forum in association with Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Operating as a closed workshop under the Chatham House Rule, the Forum allowed participants to engage in candid, in-depth discussions on salient and sensitive current issues.

Why should Americans worry about South Korean security? The answer is clear: North Korea, and beyond. Most international attention to the North Korea problem has focused on U.S. policy, but South Korea's longterm role may in fact be more important. South Korea's security is vital to peace and stability, not only in Northeast Asia but also the wider world.

Written by eminent scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with extensive on-the-ground experience, Beyond North Korea assesses the varied contexts—regional and global, traditional and nontraditional—that underpin South Korea's varied security challenges. What are South Korea's military requirements? How do relations with its neighbors enhance or undermine its position? What economic, environmental, and demographic factors come into play? This book reveals that South Korea's national security rests as much on sound domestic policy choices as on successful interstate relations. 

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Beyond North Korea is the first in a new series of policy-related studies on contemporary South Korea sponsored by the Koret Foundation of San Francisco.

In this paper, Martin Carnoy and Rafiq Dossani ask how the governance and objectives of Indian higher education have evolved, and whether changes in governance are consistent with changes in the system’s social objectives, and, in their turn, how the governance system, which is a “layered” product of past structures heavily influenced by a series of historical reforms, may impact how current social objectives are realized. These social objectives have included, at various times, at the least, equity, quality, cost effectiveness, and access. For private colleges and universities, historically always part of India’s higher education system, operating financial self-sufficiency is also an objective (a private objective).

"Whether China and the United States maintain basically cooperative or fundamentally antagonistic relations obviously has very different implications for the region and for the prospects and policies of others in—and beyond—NEA," states Thomas Fingar in the chapter "Alternate Trajectories of the Roles and Influence of China and the United States in Northeast Asia and the Implications for Future Power Configurations" (One Step Back? Reassessing an Ideal Security State for Asia 2025, 2011). Fingar examines several key factors and interactions between countries that he predicts are likely to play a role in configuring the security structure of Northeast Asia between now and 2025.

Edited by L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, One Step Back? Reassessing an Ideal Security State for Asia 2025 is the second collection of papers published as a part of a research project to identify and refine the "ideal" state of peace and security in Northeast Asia in 2025. Full-length versions of the two publications are available for download, free of charge, at the Foundation website.

Although there are no formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), nonetheless there have been constant attempts by U.S. academia, friendship organizations, and NGOs to develop and promote educational interaction and exchanges between the citizens of these two countries. Have these attempts found success? What lessons can be learned from these experiences?

The essays in this volume originated from a conference held in November 2010 at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University. The conference papers and case studies evaluated past educational exchanges between the United States and the DPRK, in the hope that through such discussions and self-assessments, effective strategies for future international educational exchanges can be developed.

This book is being distributed as a free PDF downloadable from the Shorenstein APARC website.

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set about reforming its centrally planned economy, it faced the thorny policy question of how to reform its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Should it support a shift from public to private ownership of the means of production? Such a shift would challenge not only the CCP's socialist ideology but also its very legitimacy. Mixing the business of corporate restructuring with the politics of socialism presented nothing short of a policy nightmare.

With policy-relevant acuity, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume address the questions about reform programs that have plagued China—and East Asia more broadly—since the 1990s. While China, Japan, and South Korea have all been criticized for implementing reform too slowly or too selectively, this volume delves into the broader contexts underlying certain institutional decisions. The book seeks to show that seemingly different political economies actually share surprising similarities, and problems. While Going Private in China sheds new light on China's corporate restructuring, it also offers new perspectives on how we think about the process of institutional change.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Over the past fifteen years Northeast Asia has witnessed growing intraregional exchanges and interactions, especially in the realms of culture and economy. Still, the region cannot escape from the burden of history.

This book examines the formation of historical memory in four Northeast Asian societies (China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) and the United States focusing on the period from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war in 1931 until the formal conclusion of the Pacific War with the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951.

The contributors analyse the recent efforts of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese scholars to write a ‘common history' of Northeast Asia and question the underlying motivations for their efforts and subsequent achievements. In doing so, they contend that the greatest obstacle to reconciliation in Northeast Asia lies in the existence of divided, and often conflicting, historical memories. The book argues that a more fruitful approach lies in understanding how historical memory has evolved in each country and been incorporated into respective master narratives. Through uncovering the existence of different master narratives, it is hoped, citizens will develop a more self-critical, self-reflective approach to their own history and that such an introspective effort has the potential to lay the foundation for greater self- and mutual understanding and eventual historical reconciliation in the region.

This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Asian history, Asian education and international relations in East Asia.