Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand are plagued by corruption. Why? What have their governments done to curb the phenomenon? How effective or ineffective have their efforts been, and why? In the course of addressing these questions, Professor Quah will argue for anti-corruption measures that are comprehensive in nature and backed by political will. He will also conclude that Thailand appears to have had greater success in stemming corruption than either the Philippines or Indonesia. In explaining that difference, he will highlight, among other factors, the reform constitution that Thailand adopted in 1997.

Jon Quah is co-editor of the Asian Journal of Political Science and presently a visiting scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. In 1992-98 he chaired the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He has held visiting positions at Stanford University and Harvard University, among other institutions. Relevant publications include Curbing Corruption in Asia: A Comparative Study of Six Countries (2003); "Causes and Consequences of Corruption in Southeast Asia," Asian Journal of Public Administration (2003); and "Democratization and Political Corruption in the Philippines and South Korea," Crime, Law and Social Change(2004). His advisory positions have included being lead consultant for a UN Anti-Corruption Mission to Mongolia.

On 26 December 2004, an earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh in the Indonesian archipelago, killing an estimated 130,000 people. The catastrophe was a catalyst for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government to come together in Helsinki to seek an end to the nationalist/separatist conflict that had wracked the territory since the 1970s. GAM agreed to drop its demand for outright independence in exchange for a high level of genuine autonomy, while the Indonesian government made various concessions, including allowing the creation of local political parties in Aceh. Jakarta wanted to end a costly, debilitating, and seemingly endless conflict; encourage needed foreign investment in the oil and gas sector; and bring the military in Aceh under civilian control. GAM, in turn, realized that the war was unwinnable; the Acehnese people had suffered enough; and many of GAM's aims could be achieved by democratic means in Indonesia's reforming political system.

Based on his unique experience as an advisor to GAM during the 2005 talks, Prof. Kingsbury will outline the peace process, explain how agreement was achieved, and comment on Aceh's future inside Indonesia.

Damien Kingsbury is director of the Masters Program in International and Community Development at Deakin University. His many publications include The Politics of Indonesia (3rd ed., 2005); South-East Asia: A Political Profile (2nd ed., 2005); and Power Politics and the Indonesian Military (2003). He has a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Monash University and an M.S. from Columbia University. He is presently writing a book on political development.

Professor Kingsbury's talk is co-sponsored with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California - Berkeley

Professor Park will address the changes that have occurred in the Chinese labor market over the past quarter century, focusing on the extent to which labor market reforms have successfully created a well-functioning market for labor with a high degree of labor mobility. Like other rapidly growing developing countries, China has experienced rapid structural change featuring a steady flow of labor from agriculture to industry, and from rural areas to urban areas. As a transition economy, China has shifted gradually from planned allocation of labor in state-sector jobs to a more open labor market. Although the large magnitudes of these changes are impressive, reform of the labor market has been halting, uneven, and difficult, with much additional reform still required. Prof. Park will look at several dimensions of the Chinese labor market: labor allocation, wage setting, regional differences, and ownership sectors. He will conclude by discussing the key policy challenges that lie ahead.

Albert Park is Associate Professor of Economics and Faculty Associate of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research affiliate at the Population Studies Center and chairs the faculty steering committee for Michigan's China Data Center. Dr. Park has been a visiting professor and researcher at Harvard University and Peking University, as well as other research institutions in China and Taiwan, and has served as a consultant for the World Bank on several projects analyzing economic development issues in China, including the Bank's current China Poverty Assessment project. Dr. Park earned a Ph.D. in applied economics from the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics at Stanford University in 1996. His research interests include economic development, economic transition, labor, applied microeconomics, and the Chinese economy. He is involved in numerous collaborative research activities in China, including several large survey projects to study labor market developments in urban areas, and rural education, health, and labor outcomes. He has published over thirty journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, and is the coeditor of a forthcoming volume titled Education and Reform in China. At Michigan, he teaches a graduate course on the microeconomics of development and an undergraduate course on the Chinese economy.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

Having developed domain expertise in offshore outsourcing of software development services, some Indian IT companies have moved up the value chain and expanded the sophistication of their offerings. For example, Tata Consultancy Services has developed unique competence and intellectual property in areas such as automation of software development, engineering services, life sciences, and enterprise software products, through investments in R&D. Dr. Shroff's presentation will discuss the increasing role of R&D and intellectual property in the Indian IT industry with TCS as a leading example.

Prior to joining TCS in 1998, Dr. Shroff had been on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, after which he joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. Dr. Shroff graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1985 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA, in 1990.

The South Korean film industry has, in the past few years, achieved astonishing popularity domestically and internationally. This year, for the first time, we are pleased to provide a rare opportunity for the Stanford community and the bay area to enjoy a wide array of recent Korean films and to discuss the films with their directors. Three of these films will be shown here on campus. The details of the campus viewings are below. For more information about the entire festival, please visit http://www.mykima.org/.

Murder, Take One Thursday, Feb. 9, 7 - 9 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Duelist Friday, Feb. 10, 7 - 9 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Following the screening of the film, the director, Myung-Se Lee will be available for questions from the audience.

TaeGukGi: The Brotherhood of War Saturday, Feb. 11, 5 - 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Following the screening of the film, the director, Je-Gyu Kang will be available for questions from the audience.

Please join us for an academic symposium "Globalization & Contemporary Korean Cinema" on Friday, February 10 from 3 - 5 p.m. in the Okimoto Conference Room on the third floor of Encina Hall. Free and open to the public.

Panelists: Young-Lan Lee (Assoc. Prof. Kyung Hee University)

Hyangjin Lee (Senior Lecturer, Sheffield University)

Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (Assoc. Prof. San Francisco State University)

Aaron Magnan-Park (Asst. Prof. University of Notre Dame)

Kyu-Hyun Kim (University of California, Davis)

Moderator: Chul Heo and Aaron Kerner (San Francisco State University)

Korean films have emerged as a unique and influential player in international cinema. Current Korean cinema has combined Hollywood and more traditionally Asian aesthetics in ways that make it well suited for the global film market. This academic seminar will discuss the political, cultural, social, and economic implications of these recent developments for both Korea and international cultural sectors.

The joint Korean-American Film Festival "Korea Studies in Media Arts" is co-presented by Stanford University, San Francisco State University, University of Notre Dame, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Based on recent work in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Taipei, and Hong Kong, this talk will address the relationship of NGO's to political transformation. It will focus in particular on three problems: the relation between state and society under various Chinese regimes, the relation between official and unoffical organizations, and problems of scaling up civil society organizations.

Taiwan/China Seminar Series

Nick Hope will consider the extent to which China has moved closer to the goals of an efficient enterprise system and a functioning banking system, and give his views on what is still needed to atttain both objectives. After China decided to implement the "socialist market economy" in a landmark decision of the Party Congress in November 1993, economic policy makers were challenged to introduce sweeping reforms that affected all aspects of the Chinese economy. Despite the apparent need to advance on all fronts simultaneously, enterprise reform and financial system reform lagged noticeably. But in the new millennium, China has been better positioned to tackle the problems of both enterprises and banks and has approached those problems with more urgency and greater purpose.

Masahiko Aoki, Senior Fellow, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center will moderate.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

China's high technology companies are experiencing a significant shortage of senior and mid-level talent to support the development of their enterprises. Professionals who can operate at world class levels are in very limited supply--and this talent constraint is limiting the growth of the technology sector. How should leading companies in China address this talent shortage?

Heidrick & Struggles and the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) have interviewed over 80 C-level executives in China's knowledge-intensive industries--semiconductor, e-commerce, computer hardware/software, and telecommunications. The result is a view into China's leadership and talent issues, and a playbook on how Chinese companies can accelerate the development of key talent.

Today, China's base is manufacturing, but to drive its economy in the decades ahead, China must rely in part on more knowledge-intensive industries. How successfully Chinese technology executives address today's talent shortages will help to define China's development path.

The profile of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong has changed in significant ways since Hong Kong's reunification with the People's Republic of China in 1997, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the SARS outbreak of 2003. Several changes have also appears, the most striking of which is the influx of about 90,000 Indonesian domestic workers and the relative decrease in the number of Filipinas. Another change is the tenor and scope of the workers' activism.

Drawing from recent migrant worker protests (including the anti-WTO protests of December 2005,) Dr. Constable considers the increasingly global and transnational aspects of foreign domestic worker activism and the increased breadth of their networks and affiliations, as well as the implications of such activism in relation to newly generated and displaced meanings of citizenship and human rights within and beyond the context of the self-ascribed "Asian World City" of Hong Kong.

Nicole Constable received her MA and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. She is a sociocultural anthropologist whose interests include the anthropology of work; ethnicity, nationalism, and history; gender, migration, and transnationalism; folklore; and ethnographic writing and power.

Her geographical areas of specialization are Hong Kong, China and the Philippines. She has conducted fieldwork in Hong Kong on constructions of Hakka Chinese Christian identity and on resistance and discipline among Filipina domestic workers.

Her current research involves Chinese and Filipino immigrants to the U.S. and U.S.-Asian correspondence marriages.