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Paul Godwin's research focuses on Chinese security policy and defense modernization. His articles include "China's Defense Establishment: The Hard Lessons of Incomplete Modernization" and "The PLA's Leap into the 21st Century: Implications for the U.S." He is a frequent contributor to journals and edited volumes on China's military. In 1987 he was a visiting professor at t he Chinese People's Liberation Army National Defense University in Beijing. He received his Ph.D. in political science form University of Minnesota.

This talk is part of the "China's Year of Decision" colloquium series sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies.

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Paul H.B. Godwin Professor of International Affairs Speaker National War College (ret.)
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Two contradictory trends are emerging in China's countryside: one is an attempt to increase upper level control over village finances to reduce peasant burdens and curb cadre corruption; the other is a new policy to require the village party secretary to stand for popular election, in addition to the village committee head. Based on recent fieldwork in China's countryside, Jean Oi will describe the fiscal problems that emerged as the reforms cut peasant burdens and how the new "two-ballot system" works for the selection of village leaders. She will then consider whether these two policy trends are creating new and potentially more serious problems for local governance.

Jean Oi is author of Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform.

This talk is part of the "China's Year of Decision" colloquium series sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies.

Photo by Jesse Warren

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Department of Political Science
Stanford University
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-26044

(650) 723-2843 (650) 725-9401
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics
jean_oi_headshot.jpg PhD

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Professor Oi is also the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

A PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, Oi first taught at Lehigh University and later in the Department of Government at Harvard University before joining the Stanford faculty in 1997.

Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems. Oi has written extensively on China's rural politics and political economy. Her State and Peasant in Contemporary China (University of California Press, 1989) examined the core of rural politics in the Mao period—the struggle over the distribution of the grain harvest—and the clientelistic politics that ensued. Her Rural China Takes Off (University of California Press, 1999 and Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1999) examines the property rights necessary for growth and coined the term “local state corporatism" to describe local-state-led growth that has been the cornerstone of China’s development model. 

She has edited a number of conference volumes on key issues in China’s reforms. The first was Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), co-edited with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou, which examined the earlier phases of reform. Most recently, she co-edited with Thomas Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press, 2020). The volume examines the difficult choices and tradeoffs that China leaders face after forty years of reform, when the economy has slowed and the population is aging, and with increasing demand for and costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social benefits.

Oi also works on the politics of corporate restructuring, with a focus on the incentives and institutional constraints of state actors. She has published three edited volumes related to this topic: one on China, Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (Shorenstein APARC, 2011); one on Korea, co-edited with Byung-Kook Kim and Eun Mee Kim, Adapt, Fragment, Transform: Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in Korea (Shorenstein APARC, 2012); and a third on Japan, Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan, co-edited with Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu (Brookings Institution, 2013). Other more recent articles include “Creating Corporate Groups to Strengthen China’s State-Owned Enterprises,” with Zhang Xiaowen, in Kjeld Erik Brodsgard, ed., Globalization and Public Sector Reform in China (Routledge, 2014) and "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018.

Oi continues her research on rural finance and local governance in China. She has done collaborative work with scholars in China, including conducting fieldwork on the organization of rural communities, the provision of public goods, and the fiscal pressures of rapid urbanization. This research is brought together in a co-edited volume, Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization (Brookings Institution Shorenstein APARC Series, 2017), with Karen Eggleston and Wang Yiming. Included in this volume is her “Institutional Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in the People’s Republic of China,” with Niny Khor. 

As a member of the research team who began studying in the late 1980s one county in China, Oi with Steven Goldstein provides a window on China’s dramatic change over the decades in Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County (Stanford University Press, 2018). This volume assesses the later phases of reform and asks how this rural county has been able to manage governance with seemingly unchanged political institutions when the economy and society have transformed beyond recognition. The findings reveal a process of adaptive governance and institutional agility in the way that institutions actually operate, even as their outward appearances remain seemingly unchanged.

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Director of the China Program
Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Jean Oi Speaker
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When Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao assumed power in 2002, they immediately put a new populist and egalitarian spin on Chinese policy pronouncements. To the surprise of many, they then followed through with a systematic reorientation of economic policy in a "left" direction. Policy has shifted away from growth at all costs, and toward policies that favor regional redistribution, reduce urban bias and support rural development. Budget allocations for health and education have increased, and the commitment to the environment has been stepped up.

So far, these policies can be characterized as moderate and overdue efforts to address problems that emerged in the course of rapid economic growth. But there is implicit tension with pro-growth policies. Politically, Hu and Wen's policies balanced those of Jiang Zemin's coalition of "winners." At the 17th Party Congress in 2007, Hu will attempt to consolidate his power and redefine the policy direction.

Barry Naughton teaches at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His new book The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. was published by MIT Press this year. He received his Ph.D. in economics and M.A. in international relations from Yale University and holds a B.A. in Chinese language and literature from University of Washington.

This talk is part of the "China's Year of Decision" colloquium series sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies

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Barry Naughton So Kwanlok Professor of Chinese and International Affairs Speaker University of California, San Diego
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Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-0121 (650) 796-8078 (650) 723-6530
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SPRIE Visiting Scholar
dou_headshot.jpg MS, PhD

Dou Wenzhang started his professional carrier as an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Shanxi University, teaching and conducting research in Urban Planning and Economic Geography from 1988-1995. He then joined the Institute of Economics, Peking University, as a visiting scholar specializing in regional economics research projects from 1996 to 1997. From 2001 to 2002, Dr. Dou was a postdoctoral fellow in Applied Economics at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, with a focus on telecommunications economics. At the same time, he joined China Mobile and conducted research on 3G strategy and business development & marketing strategies.

Since August 2002, Dr. Dou has been involved in the planning and fund raising for and formation of the Software & Microelectronics School at Peking University; he assumed the position of the Deputy Chairman of the Management of Technology department (MOT) in May, 2003. Dr. Dou is also a senior advisor to several provincial and municipal governments in the area of regional development, including the strategic planning of industrial parks. In 2001 Dr. Dou founded BOYA Strategy, a consulting business entity engaged in Regional Planning and Development for municipalities around China.

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The year ahead in China's politics promises a level of activity and rhetorical heat comparable to American politics during a presidential campaign year. In the fall of 2007, the Chinese Communist Party will convene its 17th national congress. Because the congress offers the occasion for new directions in China's domestic and foreign policies and for changes in China's top leadership, preparations for party congress are already heating up the political atmosphere in Beijing. This series offers several perspectives by prominent China scholars and analysts on prevailing trends in leadership politics and policy issues heading into the 17th party congress and on what may emerge from it. Professor Alice Miller, organizer of this series, will set the scene.

This talk is part of the "China's Year of Decision" colloquium series sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies.

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Alice Lyman Miller Research Fellow Speaker Hoover Institution
Seminars
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In the mid-1990s, North Korea experienced a famine that killed up to a million people. In this talk, Professor Haggard will examine the origins of the famine, the subsequent humanitarian aid effort, including the problems of diversion of aid, and the market reforms that followed in the famine's wake. These political economy questions have played an important backdrop to the current negotiations over a resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue.

Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is the author of Pathways from the Periphery: the Political Economy of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (1990), The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995, with Robert Kaufman) and The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000). In addition to Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (forthcoming 2006) he has completed a report on North Korean refugees for the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea and is initiating a project with TaiMing Cheung and Barry Naughton on Chinese-North Korean economic relations.

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Stephan Haggard Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies Speaker University of California, San Diego
Seminars
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Almost a decade has passed since the financial crisis in South Korea. At the time Korean banks, already under financial stress, were faced with bad loans stemming from bankruptcies in the corporate sector. To resolve the bad loan problem, the Korean government actively intervened in the financial sector. The policy of "shock therapy" worked to restructure failed or failing banks.

Myung-Koo Kang will discuss this "shock therapy" approach in Korea and look at this approach to financial restructuring in a broader comparative context. He will also explore the impact of Korea's restructuring efforts on financial intermediation and the consequences of rapid privatization on the Korean financial sector.

Myung-Koo Kang is a postdoctoral fellow of Shorenstein APARC. Kang is currently revising his dissertation for publication titled, "Growing out of the "Vortex": The Politics of Financial Restructuring in Japan and South Korea". His dissertation explores the reasons why, despite similar institutional legacies emphasizing economic development, South Korea and Japan have responded so differently to their respective banking crises. Kang received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. He was a visiting scholar to the Policy Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, Japan, in 2003-4. His research focuses on comparative political economy, international relations, public administration, and East Asia.

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Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Postdoctoral Fellow
MK_Kang1.jpg PhD

Myung-Koo Kang holds Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (major in political science, specialty: comparative political economy, public administration, and East Asia) and M.A and B.A. from the Seoul National University (major in international relations). He was brought up in a rural area of South Korea, observing the massive social mobilization during the 1970s, and he served in the DMZ for three years before he came to the U.S. He conducted research at the Policy Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, Japan, for a year as a visiting scholar about Japanese financial reforms.

Dr. Kang is currently conducting research on various projects: (1) preparing the dissertation for publication about the financial reforms in Japan and South Korea, and effects of financial restructuring on corporate financing and governance; (2) research on the social and historical origin of Korean power elite, and as its extension, leading research project on comparative studies on power elite in Japan, South Korea, and China; (3) the pattern of uneven regional integration in East Asia and its prospects; (4) research on the political and economic difficulties faced by North Korean refugees living in South Korea.

Myung-Koo Kang Speaker
Seminars
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The first Korea-West Coast Strategic Forum, held in Seoul on December 11-12, 2006, convened policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, the state of the U.S.-ROK alliance, and notions of a formalized mechanism for security cooperation in Northeast Asia. Gi-Wook Shin, Daniel Sneider, Siegfried Hecker, and Kristin Burke represented the Freeman Spogli Institute.

Seoul, Republic of Korea

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Executive Summary

The first Korea - West Coast Strategic Forum held in Seoul on December 11-12, 2006, convened policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, the state of the U.S.-ROK alliance, and notions of a formalized mechanism for security cooperation in Northeast Asia. Participants engaged in lively and frank exchanges on these issues. Gi-Wook Shin, Daniel C. Sneider, Siegfried S. Hecker, and Kristin C. Burke represented the Freeman Spogli Institute.

Participants were concerned that North Korea's drive toward nuclear weapons has exposed disparate interests among the five parties committed to arresting this ambition, including differences in threat perception between the United States and South Korea. But they also believed that multilateral dialogue still offers the best possibility for resolving the DPRK nuclear issue through peaceful means. Participants argued that in the wake of the nuclear test, pressure and use of force should be discounted as viable options and "rollback" through negotiations should be pursued. Such an approach necessitates clearer articulation of North Korea's options, a new consensus on mutual priorities, hard work on sequencing, and a more developed vision for alternative policies should diplomacy fail.

The U.S.-ROK alliance has entered a new era characterized by new American security imperatives, such as nonproliferation and counterterrorism, as well as a new Korean policy of engagement toward the DPRK. These factors, coupled with domestic political challenges and an evolving regional security environment, call for serious, strategic discussions on the state of the alliance. Though the U.S. and the ROK have exhibited diverging threat perceptions of North Korea the - core of the strategic rationale for the alliance - the instructive precedent set by NATO demonstrates that alliances can survive redefinition of the primary security threat, though not the absence of a common threat.

Participants discussed the prospects for greater regional cooperation in Northeast Asia, including the possibility of converting the six-party talks into a new institutional mechanism for multilateral security cooperation. However, there are serious obstacles to deeper integration in the region, not least unresolved historical issues that still elicit passionate responses. But if understandings on these issues can be reached, a regional security organization could address critical traditional and non-traditional security issues and mitigate uncertainty about China's rise.

The full text of the report can be found at The First Korea-West Coast Strategic Forum.

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If the twentieth century is remembered as a century of war, Asia is certainly central to that story. In Northeast Asia, where issues of historical injustices seem to have generated a vicious circle of accusation and defense, overcoming historical animosities has become one of the most important issues for the future of the region.

Last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest daily paper in Japan, conducted an unprecedented year-long project analyzing the responsibility of Japanese leaders in Pacific war of World War II. The results of the project were published in August in the newspaper and then in a book that was published, both in Japanese and English in late 2006. Mr. Tennichi will discuss the project and the paper's findings. The newspaper articles can be found at Daily Yomiuri.

In 2003, Shorenstein APARC hosted a conference on issues of historical injustice in Korea. The conference produced a book, released in November 2006, titled Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience. Our director, Gi-Wook Shin and Chunghee Sarah Soh, who wrote one of the chapters of the book, will present their research in the second panel.

2:15 - 3:45 Panel One

"Who was Responsible?: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor"

Presenter:

Takahiko Tennichi, editorial writer, Yomiuri Shimbun

Commentator:

Mark Peattie, visiting scholar, Shorenstein APARC

4:00 - 5:30 Panel Two

"Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience"

Panelists:

Chunghee Sarah Soh, professor, anthropology, San Francisco State

Gi-Wook Shin, director, Shorenstein APARC and associate professor, Sociology, Stanford University

Commentator:

Charles Burress, interim bureau chief, East Bay bureau, San Francisco Chronicle

You can read the Financial Times review of the Yomiuri Shimbun book at Financial Times Review

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Takahiko Tennichi editorial writer Speaker Yomiuri Shimbun
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Visiting Scholar
Peattie_web.jpg PhD

Mark R. Peattie was a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawai'i in 1995.

Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focused on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He was also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He is editor, with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, of the Japanese Wartime Empire, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1996). Peattie is the author of the Japanese Colonial Empire: The Vicissitudes of Its Fifty-Year History (Tokyo: Yomiuri Press, 1996).

He coauthored, with David Evans, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 1997), winner of a 1999 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History. A sequel, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.

Peattie is also the author of the monograph A Historian Looks at the Pacific War (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995).

Peattie was a reader for Columbia University, University of California, University of Hawai'i, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and U.S. Naval Institute Presses.

Peattie frequently served as lecturer in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program and in the Stanford Alumni Travel Program.

He was named an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University from 1982 to 1993.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955–57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1958–67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967–68).

Peattie held a PhD in Japanese history from Princeton University.

Mark Peattie Commentator
Chunghee Sarah Soh professor of anthropology Speaker San Francisco State University
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025)Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of SociologyWorld DevelopmentComparative Studies in Society and HistoryPolitical Science QuarterlyJournal of Asian StudiesComparative EducationInternational SociologyNations and NationalismPacific AffairsAsian SurveyJournal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Selected Multimedia

Director of the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director of Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, APARC
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Gi-Wook Shin Speaker
Charles Burress interim bureau chief, East Bay bureau Commentator San Francisco Chronicle
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