Drawing on data collected through comparative ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese investments in Zambia in the past five years, this talk seeks to answer the questions: What is the peculiarity of Chinese capital? What are the impacts of Chinese investments on African development? Rejecting both the Western rhetoric of “Chinese colonialism” and the Chinese self-justification of “south-south collaboration”, Lee examines the mechanisms, interests and limits of Chinese power through a double comparison: between Chinese and non-Chinese companies, and between copper and construction.
Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science at Stanford. Her research interests include labor, development, political sociology, global ethnography and China. She is author of Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt and Gender and the South China Miracle. She is working on two book projects, one on Chinese investment and labor practices in Zambia, and the other on forty years of state and society relations in China.
Philippines Conference Room
Ching Kwan Lee
Professor of Sociology
Speaker
University of California, Los Angeles
As the world is distracted by events in Crimea and the missing Malaysian jet, Donald K. Emmerson says that China could hardly have chosen a better time to blockade Phillipine ships and extend its hold over disputed territories. He argues that China is reinforcing its two-track approach: hosting futile discussions in ASEAN, while simultaneously, changing conditions in the South China Sea.
"People with Disabilities in a Changing North Korea" details the situation that people with disabilities face in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK). Despite its reputation as a repressive, closed society where human rights are routinely abused, there are in fact institutions in the DPRK that work to address the needs of the disabled, and a number of non-governmental organizations providing aid to disabled people are active in the country. In this paper, Katharina Zellweger attempts to provide "an informed and balanced view of what it means to live with disabilities in North Korea and current work to assist the disabled."
Katharina Zellweger, a senior aid worker with over thirty years of experience working in Asia, twenty of those years focused on aiding North Korea, was the Pantech Fellow at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's Korea Program from 2011 to 2013.
In a new book, Gi-Wook Shin and Larry Diamond analyze the challenges and opportunities confronting the maturing democracies in South Korea and Taiwan. Much depends on the political leadership in those two countries rising above narrow interests to craft thoughtful and realistic public policies.
Japan has the highest debt to GDP ratio among advanced countries, and many studies find that the current fiscal regime of Japan is not sustainable. Yet, the Japanese government bond continues to enjoy low and stable interest rates. The most plausible explanation for such an apparent anomaly is that the bonds are predominantly held by the Japanese residents, who are willing to absorb increasing amount of Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) without requiring high yields. Even if the Japanese residents continue to invest their new saving into the government bonds, however, Japan's fiscal situation is not sustainable, which this paper shows through simulations under various scenarios. In all of the scenarios that assume the fiscal policy stance of the Japanese government does not change in the future, we find that the amount of government debt will exceed the private sector financial assets available for the government debt purchase in the next 10 years or so. The paper also shows that sufficiently large tax increases and/or expenditure cuts in the future would put the government debt on a sustainable path. Thus, if the market believes that Japan will embark on such fiscal consolidation in the next 10 years, at most, the low JGB yields are justifiable. If and when the expectation changes, however, a fiscal crisis can be triggered even before the government debt hits the ceiling of the private sector financial assets.
Average life expectancy in Mongolia is 65 years, much shorter than that of other East Asian countries such as South Korea (78.5 years) and China (72.5 years). Furthermore, healthy life expectancy in Mongolia is even shorter, rendering the situation even more tragic. The World Health Organization estimates that the healthy life expectancy is 53 years for males and 58 years for females.
This colloquium will provide an overview of health in Mongolia and its healthcare system, with expertise from two speakers. First, Dr. Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa, Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, will discuss her comparative study of how knowledge of cervical cancer risk factors has influenced behavior changes in Mongolia before and after the introduction of the National Cervical Cancer Program.
Second, Dr. Dashdorj will present on overview of the healthcare initiatives of the Onom Foundation, designed to mitigate excess and premature mortality of Mongolians via knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship. He will report on a March national health policy meeting in Mongolia’s capital and recent strides in health improvement made with the support of the Onom Foundation.
Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2013-2014 academic year as the Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow. She joins APARC from the Mongolian National Cancer Center, where she serves as a Gynecological Oncologist.
During her appointment as Health Policy Fellow, she is completing her comparative study of how knowledge of cervical cancer risk factors has influenced behavior changes in Mongolia before and after the introduction of the National Cervical Cancer Program.
Baigalimaa is the Executive Director of Mongolian Society of Gynecological Oncologists and is also a member of the International Gynecological Cancer Society (IGCS) in Mongolia, Russia, and France.
Baigalimaa holds a MD from Minsk Belarussia Medical University. She also received a Masters in Health Science from Mongolian Medical University. She is fluent in both Russian and English.
Dr. Dashdorj hails from very humble beginnings. He was born and raised in the southwestern outskirts of Mongolia known as Gobi-Altay province, where the Altay Mountains border with the bare rock covered desert basins of the Gobi. Because of the unique upbringing, Dr. Dashdorj has a profound commitment for making a tangible difference in lives of fellow Mongols. At the same time, he strongly believes that entrepreneurship is the best vehicle for making a difference.
He obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University in 2005 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health. His research using ultrafast optical spectroscopy and time-resolved x-ray imaging techniques is published in 17 original manuscripts in prominent, peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2010, Dr. Dashdorj became a faculty member at the Argonne National Laboratory. Despite his successes in scientific research, he gave up his academic career in 2013 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams, since he truly believed that he can make a tangible difference via entrepreneurship, experimenting with a model of subsidizing philanthropic actions by a certain percentage of equity and profits of a for-profit company.
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E332
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-5710
(510) 705-2049
(650) 723-6530
0
baigal@stanford.edu
Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow
IMG_4537.jpg
MD
Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2013-2014 acedemic year as the Asia Health Policy Program Fellow. She joins APARC from the Mongolian National Cancer Center, where she serves as a Gynecological Oncologist.
During her appointment as Health Policy Fellow, she will conduct a comparative study of how knowledge of cervical cancer risk factors has influenced behavior changes in Mongolia before and after the introduction of the National Cervical Cancer Program.
Baigalimaa is the Executive Director of Mongolian Society of Gynecological Oncologists and is also a member of the International Gynecological Cancer Society (IGCS) in Mongolia, Russia, and France.
Baigalimaa holds a MD from Minsk Belarussia Medical University. She also received a Masters in Health Science from Mongolian Medical University. She is fluent in both Russian and English.
Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa
Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow
Speaker
Stanford University
Naranbaatar Dashdorj
Founder and Chairman of Onom Foundation and a 2014 Sloan Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
Speaker
In recent years Chinese courts, in particular those in Henan Province, have begun to place a vast quantity of court options online. This talk examines one-year of publicly available criminal judgments from one basic-level rural county court and one intermediate court in Henan in order to better understand trends in routine criminal adjudication in China. The result is an account of ordinary criminal justice that is both familiar and striking: a system that treats serious crimes, in particular those affecting state interests, harshly while at the same time acting leniently in routine cases. Most significantly, examination of more than five hundred court decisions shows the vital role that settlement plays in criminal cases in China today. Defendants who agree to compensate their victims receive strikingly lighter sentences than those who do not. Likewise, settlement plays a role in resolving even serious crimes, at times appearing to make the difference between life and death for criminal defendants. These findings provide insight into a range of debates concerning the roles being played by the Chinese criminal justice system and the functions of courts in that system. Examination of cases from Henan also provides a base for discussing the future of empirical research on Chinese court judgments, demonstrating that there is much to learn from the vast volume of cases that have in recent years become publicly available.
Benjamin L. Liebman is the Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia Law School. His recent publications include “Malpractice Mobs: Medical Dispute Resolution in China,” Columbia Law Review (2013); “A Return to Populist Legality? Historical Legacies and Legal Reform,” in Mao’s Invisible Hand (edited by Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry, 2011); and “Toward Competitive Supervision? The Media and the Courts,” China Quarterly (2011).
Philippines Conference Room
Benjamin L. Liebman
Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and Director, Center for Chinese Legal Studies
Speaker
Columbia Law School
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The US-Japan alliance is the longest, most stable, and most indispensable alliance in the modern history of East Asia. It has served as the foundation for the region's security structure for well over a half-century. However, with China's emergence as a rising economic and military power, and given territorial disputes involving China, Japan, and South Korea, and with escalating nationalistic rhetoric and fundamental disagreements over historical interpretations of the Pacific War, the United States and Japan are now facing worrisome tensions and strains that could undermine the solidarity of the US-Japan alliance. Is the time-tested US-Japan alliance capable of managing both the shifts in the regional balance of power, and the threat of conflict over disputed territories, and the rising thermometer of nationalistic sentiments?
Ambassador Ryozo Kato, former Ambassador of Japan to the United States from 2001 - 08, the longest tenure of any Japanese Ambassador to the United States, and former Commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball from 2008 - 2013, has had a long and distinguished career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Japanese Government. A graduate of Tokyo University Faculty of Law and Yale Law School, he served his country in Australia, Egypt, and the United States, in addition to multiple global assignments within the Ministry in Tokyo.
Positions which Ambassador Kato served in the United States include the Third Secretary in the Embassy (1967–1969), Minister in the Embassy (1987–1990), and Consul-General in San Francisco (1992–1994). He returned to Japan to serve as the Director-General of the Asian Affairs Bureau (1995–1997) and the Deputy-General of the Foreign Policy Bureau (1997–1999). After serving as the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs (1999–2001), he was appointed the Ambassador of Japan to the United States of America from 2001 to 2008. He has been recognized and respected on both sides of the Pacific for his outstanding understanding of the issues and his clarity in direction to resolve them.
Philippines Conference Room
Ryozo Kato
former Ambassador of Japan to the United States
Speaker
Myanmar's opening to the outside world and the country's tentative steps from military rule to democracy has captivated many observers of the region. But Aung Zaw, an exiled Burmese journalist pushing for democratic change, warns that the image of rapid reform does not necessarily match reality these days.
“What we see now is serious backsliding,” Zaw told a packed house at the Bechtel Conference Center on March 6. “The changes have become more superficial; the changes are not real.”
Zaw, the founding editor of The Irrawaddy newsmagazine, delivered these remarks at Stanford upon receiving the Shorenstein Journalism Award. This annual award is conferred upon a journalist who promotes mutual understanding between the U.S. and Asia, and also honors Asian journalists who have been at the forefront of the effort to create an independent media in the Asia-Pacific.
Zaw, who was forced into exile after the abortive democratic revolt of 1988, described Myanmar’s dynamic history as “up and down.” During the long period of military rule in the country, “Burma was a pariah,” he observed. The military government repressed all opposition, enriching itself while Burma slide into deep poverty, while the country was largely cut off from the outside world except for a trickle of tourists. But the regime made a clear decision to open the doors to the outside and, in response to international and domestic pressure, take tentative steps toward political change, including releasing political prisoners and allowing the media to operate more freely.
The panelists agreed that the uprisings within Burma, such as the Buddhist monk led revolt in 2007, and the leadership of Burmese human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi pushed the regime toward change. In addition, Chanda and Emmerson pointed to the geopolitics of Burma, the desire of the regime to free itself from isolation and dependence only on China and North Korea as backers.
Zaw credited these changes with bringing some semblance of “communal balance” to the society. Emmerson argued, however, that the West has colored their view of Burma with a romantic notion of democratization that tends to overlook the still tentative, and somewhat transient, nature of the changes to date.
“The regime has carefully manipulated… international [public] opinion in trying to open the doors to the international community,” Zaw said. Especially in the past year, there have been efforts by the government to curb public protest and censorship has become pervasive once again. A commentary piece written by Zaw provides an analysis of the contemporary media environment in Myanmar.
The panel members pointed in particular to the rise of tensions between the Buddhist Burmese majority and ethnic and religious minorities in the country. In particular, they expressed concern over the discrimination against and violence suffered by minority Muslims, the ethnic Rohingya who live along the border with Bangladesh, often taking place with the complicity of government officials, or at least with their indifference. They suggested the government played upon anti-Muslim feelings to boost its popularity among the majority Buddhist populace.
With elections looming in 2015, the government may now feel it has been “moving too fast” toward reform and begun to ratchet back, warned Zaw. Conservative factions in Myanmar’s leadership who fear losing power may be gaining influence.
Nayan Chanda, the former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and a previous recipient of the Shorenstein Award, pointed to Myanmar’s long tradition of despotism. “Burmese rulers have had a way of governing the country that is still present among the generals we see in Burma today,” he said.
Emmerson focused his remarks on the significance of the changes in Burma to American foreign policy in the region. The Burmese shift away from Chinese domination and its opening to the West has been seen as a key part of the so-called U.S. “pivot” to Asia and its attempts to balance Chinese influence in East Asia. These changes allowed Myanmar to assume its role as chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an annual rotation in leadership. But it is far from clear if the Burmese leadership is prepared to go toward a deeper democratic transformation. The upcoming presidential elections in 2015 remain an uncertainty. Aung San Suu Kyi is still constitutionally barred from running for president but she has been allowed to resume a powerful role in the system itself, no longer simply a “Joan of Arc” symbol of purity sitting on the outside.
In all this, the role of a free press in Burma is even more vital than ever. After his arrest in 1988 for his role in the uprising against General Ne Win’s regime, Zaw had to flee to neighboring Thailand where he has spent 25 years in exile. Zaw created The Irrawaddy, an émigré-based publication that is widely acclaimed for its on-the-ground analysis of Myanmar. In 2012, the publication reopened offices in Burma.
The Irrawaddy’s diverse contributors offer an independent platform to unravel the complex developments within the country. The Shorenstein Award given to Zaw recognizes his history of leadership as a journalist in Burma.
“It is very exciting for us this year to give this award to Aung Zaw,” said Sneider, a member of the jury that selects the awardees. “He has been intimately involved in the process of not only creating independent media for Burma but also in the process of independent change itself, starting with his own activism in the 1980s.”
Zaw received the award at a dinner ceremony later on March 6 attended by students, faculty and prominent members of the Stanford community. “I feel very humbled,” Zaw told the Voice of America in an interview. “It is an acknowledgement to our work, our commitment and our independent journalism as we try to make things different [in Myanmar].”
The video and transcript of the event, and the original press release on Zaw being named the 2013 Award recipient are posted below.
An article was published by The Irrawaddy on Zaw’s acceptance of the award. Interviews conducted with Voice of America's Kyaw Zan Thaw in Burmese and Kaye Lin in English aired internationally on March 13 and are posted below. An interview was also conducted with LinkAsia and is scheduled to air in the upcoming week and will be subsequently posted online.
Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950 and serving two years in the U.S. Army, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class families. In 1960-1961 he was assistant professor at Yale University and from 1961-1964 a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. He retired from teaching on June 30, 2000.
Vogel succeeded John Fairbank to become the second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center and Chairman of the Council for East Asian Studies (1977-1980). He was Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International Affairs (1980-1987) and, since 1987, Honorary Director. He was Chairman of the undergraduate concentration in East Asian Studies from its inception in 1972 until 1991. He was Director of the Fairbank Center (1995-1999) and the first Director of the Asia Center (1997-1999). Vogel was Chairman of the Harvard Committee to Welcome President Jiang Zemin (1998). He has also served as Co-director of the Asia Foundation Task Force on East Asian Policy Recommendations for the New Administration (2001).
Drawing on his original field work in Japan, he wrote Japan's New Middle Class (1963). A book based on several years of interviewing and reading materials from China, Canton Under Communism (1969), won the Harvard University Press faculty book of the year award. The Japanese edition of his book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) is the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. In Comeback (1988), he suggested things America might do to respond to the Japanese challenge. He spent eight months in 1987, at the invitation of the Guangdong Provincial Government, studying the economic and social progress of the province since it took the lead in pioneering economic reform in 1978. The results are reported in One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His Reischauer Lectures were published in The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (1991). His most recent publication is Is Japan Still Number One? (2000). He has visited East Asia every summer since 1958 and has spent a total of over six years in Asia.
Vogel has received honorary degrees from Kwansei Gakuin (Japan), the Monterrey Institute, the Universities of Maryland, Massachusetts (Lowell), Wittenberg, Bowling Green, Albion, Ohio Wesleyan, Chinese University (Hong Kong) and Yamaguchi University (Japan). He received The Japan Foundation Prize in 1996 and the Japan Society Prize in 1998. He has lectured frequently in Asia, in both Chinese and Japanese.
From fall 1993 to fall 1995, Vogel took a two-year leave of absence from Harvard to serve as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington. He directed the American Assembly on China in November 1996 and the Joint Chinese-American Assembly between China and the United States in 1998.
Philippines Conference Room
Ezra Vogel
Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences, Emeritus
Speaker
Harvard University
