The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has challenged itself is to become a single integrated community by 2015.  The prospect has raised high hopes inside the region.  Will they be met?  Efforts to build the community have intensified, yet the clock ticks and the deadline looms.  Although the result will not match what local enthusiasts of regional unification want to see, but it will likely exceed the expectations of skeptical outsiders.  ASEAN is the linchpin of East Asian regionalism, by design and by default.  What happens to the Association over the next several years has far-reaching implications for the United States, China, and not least for the states and peoples of Southeast Asia.  In his talk, Prof. Pongsudhirak will tease out these dynamics, assess their significance, and explore possible futures beyond 2015.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak heads the Institute of Security and International Studies and teaches international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  In 2010 he was an FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor at Stanford and, in spring 2011, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  He has written many articles, chapters, and books on ASEAN and East Asian affairs, and on Thai politics, political economy, and foreign policy.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  He currently serves on the editorial boards of Asian Politics & Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Studies, and South East Asia Research.  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University (School of Advanced International Studies, MA), and the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA). 

China's pace of demographic transition -- both mortality and fertility decline -- have been unparalleled in human populations of significant size. With China's fertility now well below replacement level, what lies ahead for this demographic overachiever? Dr. Wang will discuss the role of the Chinese state in the demographic transition, pointing out how focusing on the role of government overlooks the socioeconomic engines of China's transition and contributes to under-appreciation of the long-term implications of China's demographic transition.

Wang Feng is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. Prior to his current position, Wang Feng taught at the University of California, Irvine (from where he is on leave currently). Professor Wang is an expert on China’s social and demographic change. His recent work on social inequality in China includes Boundaries and Categories, Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China (Stanford University Press, 2008), Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post-Socialist China (co-edited with Deborah Davis, Stanford University Press, 2009), and his work on demographic change in China includes “The Demographic Factor in China’s Transitions” (with Andrew Mason, included in Loren Brant and Thomas Rawski, eds., China’s Great Economic Transformations. Cambridge University Press, 2008).

In addition to the health-protective effects of higher income and social status, better education appears to be an important contributor to good health. However, evidence is limited from developing countries undergoing rapid socioeconomic transition like China. To document the evolution of the educational gradient in health, we analyze the China National Health Services Survey (Ministry of Health, 1998, 2003 and 2008), and the Chinese Family Panel Study (Peking University, 2010). We find patterns consistent with the economic theory of socioeconomic gradients in health, as modified to take account of China's rapid economic, demographic, and epidemiologic transitions over the past quarter century.

Co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University.

KSP's 2011–12 Koret Fellow, recently retired Korean senior career diplomat Ambassador Joon-woo Park, will discuss the U.S. role in current territorial disputes in East Asia. The disputes, which threaten peace and stability in the region and could result in conflict among major powers, have their origin in the incomplete settlement of the Pacific War overseen by the United States. Ambassador Park argues that the United States thus shares responsibility for the current situation. He will review the status of the major territorial disputes in East Asia and explain why the United States has a significant role to play in their peaceful resolution and in promoting cooperative and friendly relations among the countries of the region.

As a career diplomat, Ambassador Park served in numerous key posts, including those of ambassador to the EU and to Singapore and presidential advisor on foreign affairs. Park worked closely for over twenty years with Ban Ki-moon, the former Korean diplomat who is now the United Nations secretary-general.

Ambassador Park also served for seven years at the Korean embassies in Tokyo and Beijing. During his tenure as director general of the Korean foreign ministry’s Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau, he handled sensitive, longstanding issues relating to regional history, such as the depiction of historical events in Japanese textbooks and the treatment of the history of the Goguryeo kingdom in China’s Northeast Project.

The Koret Fellowship has been made possible by the generous support of the Koret Foundation. The Fellowship’s purpose is to promote intellectual diversity and breadth in KSP by bringing leading professionals in Asia and the United States to Stanford to study U.S.-Korea relations. Fellows conduct their own research on the bilateral relationship, with an emphasis on contemporary relations, with the broad aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries.