The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Professor Teiwes is a scholar with an international reputation in his main area of research, Chinese elite politics. He has written extensively on re-evaluations of Chinese Communist Party history, 1935-76, and is currently researching leadership politics in the post-Mao era. His wider areas of interest lie in Chinese politics more broadly, communist and post-communist systems, the international communist movement, and American foreign policy. He is the author of several works, including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 2nd ed. 1993), Politics at Mao's Court (1990), The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), China's Road to Disaster (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era (2007) (the latter three studies co-authored with Warren Sun).

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Roderick MacFarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His publications include The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, The Sino-Soviet Dispute, China under Mao; Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971; The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao; the final two volumes of the Cambridge History of China (edited with the late John Fairbank); The Politics of China 2nd Ed: The Eras of Mao and Deng; and a trilogy, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was the founding editor of "The China Quarterly, and has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. In previous personae, he has been a journalist, a TV commentator, and a Member of Parliament. His most recent, jointly-authored book on the Cultural Revolution entitled Mao's Last Revolution was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2006.

More than six decades after the end of World War II, the Japanese government has yet to release an estimated ¥200 billion worth of unpaid wages owed to Korean forced laborers who were brought to wartime Japan. Nor has the government disbursed an additional ¥200 billion worth of financial benefits owed to Korean and Taiwanese military servicemen. During the Allied Occupation of Japan, American authorities directed Japanese officials to compensate these Asian victims of the war effort, setting up a custody account for labor conscripts in 1946 and a foreign creditor's account for military conscripts in 1949. However, the outbreak of the Korean War destroyed any chance of monetary compensation, as the U.S. preoccupation over the new cold-war conflict effectively froze up bank accounts relating to Japan's former colonial subjects. Clarifying the historical record of American involvement in this unresolved issue of war compensation can contribute towards resurrecting efforts to reach regional reconciliation between Japan and its neighbors in Northeast Asia.

Matthew Augustine is the 2009-2010 Northeast Asia History Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from the History Department at Columbia University and his B.A. from the Politics Department at Princeton University. His research interests include military occupations, especially the U.S. occupations in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa after World War II; transnational migrations and border controls; Japan's colonial empire in the Asia-Pacific; and the history and politics of war reparations in Northeast Asia.

Just how easy (or difficult) is it for North Koreans to watch banned American movies or listen to Korean-language news broadcasts that Pyongyang spends a great deal of time condemning and resources trying to block?  The North Korean border has become increasingly porous, with news reports suggesting that American and South Korean films have become so popular that the North Korean authorities have been forced to issue edicts on the length of men’s hair, for example.  At the same time, several American, South Korean and Japanese radio stations are targeting North Korea through short and medium-wave broadcasts.  A growing number of defectors report having tasted such forbidden fruit before leaving North Korea.  To what extent is banned media undermining the regime’s control of the flow of information?  Do such broadcasts encourage North Koreans to defect?

Peter M. Beck is the 2009-10 Pantech Fellow at Stanford University’s Asia Pacific Research Center.  He also teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. and Ewha Woman's University in Seoul.  He also writes a monthly column for Weekly Chosun and The Korea Herald.  Previously, he was the executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and directed the International Crisis Group’s Northeast Asia Project in Seoul.  He was also the Director of Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington.  He has published over 100 academic and short articles and testified before Congress.

Two major unresolved issues from World War II in the Pacific are the use of the atomic bomb by the United States, which destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the use of foreign slave labor for war-related production by Japan. Koreans and Allied POWs were among those who were victims of both atrocities. While limited compensation for non-Japanese hibakusha have been won in Japanese courts in recent years, no compensation has been forthcoming for their labor under armed confinement. The American government was responsible for the use of these atomic bombs, but company contractors such as Du Pont profited from their development as well. Just as Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi that profited from foreign forced labor should contribute to a trust fund for compensation, so too should American companies that contributed to the Manhattan Project. Only when U.S. and Japanese companies and governments mutually accept responsibility through such compensation will there be an honest acknowledgement of the real costs of the use of the atomic bombs and slave labor.

David Palmer is Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Since 2000, his primary focus has been on the history of Japanese workers, especially those in shipbuilding, who experienced World War II and the atomic bombs.
His most recent publications include "The Straits of Dead Souls: One Man's Investigation into the Disappearance of Mitsubishi Hiroshima's Korean Forced Labourers," Japanese Studies, Dec. 2006, and "Korean Hibakusha, Japan's Supreme Court and the International Community: Can the U.S. and Japan Confront Forced Labor and Atomic Bombing?," Japan Focus, Feb. 20, 2008.