A new research collaborative examines diversity issues and challenges in Korea and greater Asia. In both ethnically diverse and homogenous societies in the region, labor migration, the foreign bride phenomenon, and international students—have together contributed to shifting demographics, a greater sense of diversity, and the need to explore better ways to foster effective social cohesion.
The Obama administration’s “rebalance” to Asia is about much more than China’s rise and changing role in the region, but US-China relations are an integral part of the new policy and the way it is perceived and characterized by others in the Asia-Pacific region. The keynote address and comments by American and Chinese scholars with years of government experience will examine the objectives and implications of the “rebalance” and what it means for the United States, China, and US-China relations.
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at Brookings. From 2009-2012, Lieberthal served as the director of the John L. Thornton China Center. Lieberthal was a professor at the University of Michigan for 1983-2009. He has authored 24 books and monographs and over 70 articles, mostly dealing with China. He also served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council from August 1998 to October 2000. His government responsibilities encompassed U.S. policy toward Northeast, East and Southeast Asia. His latest book, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (co-authored with Martin Indyk and Michael O’Hanlon), was published by the Brookings Press in March 2012. Leiberthal earned his B.A. from Darthmouth College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University
Panelists:
Welcome remarks - Dr. Michael Armacost is the Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow. He has been at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) since 2002. In the interval between 1995 and 2002, Armacost served as president of Washington, D.C.'s Brookings Institution, the nation's oldest think tank and a leader in research on politics, government, international affairs, economics, and public policy. Previously, during his twenty-four year government career, Armacost served, among other positions, as undersecretary of state for political affairs and as ambassador to Japan and the Philippines.
Panel Chair - Professor Jean Oi is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Oi is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She leads Stanford's China Initiative, and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Oi directed Stanford's Center for East Asian Studies from 1998 to 2005. 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.
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, CDDRL, TEC, and Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow; and Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Retired U.S. Army Lt. General. Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty. Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General. His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.
Dr. CUI Liru is Senior Advisor to China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a think-tank in China known for its comprehensive studies on current international affairs and prominent role in providing consulting services to the Chinese government and former President of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR). He is a member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and also serves as a member of the Foreign Policy Consulting Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is Vice President of China National Association for International Studies (CNAIS) and serves as Senior Adviser to multiple institutions for the study of national security and foreign relations. As a senior researcher, his specialties cover U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, international security issues and Chinese foreign policy.
Professor Tom Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.
Please note: this event is off-the-record.
Bechtel Conference Center
China’s giant automobile market continues to grow robustly, but its once thriving domestic producers have lost ground recently to global auto giants such as Volkswagen and GM. The excessive optimism of the past, however, has given birth to unwarranted pessimism about the future. The tangled legacy of China’s automotive policy has created numerous dilemmas, but it has also helped to create significant capabilities. A comparison of developments in China with those of other developing economies in East Asia suggests that institutions for promoting industrial upgrading have played a significant role in enabling some countries, such as China and South Korea, to deepen their industrial bases, while others either remain limited to assembling foreign models (as in Thailand and now Indonesia) or have failed to develop a sustainable automobile industry at all (as in the Philippines and even Malaysia). China faces tough policy choices, but it is likely to move, however reluctantly, in a more liberal and competitive direction.
Gregory W. Noble’s specialty is the comparative political economy of East Asia. His many publications include “The Chinese Auto Industry as Challenge, Opportunity, and Partner” in The Third Globalization (2013); “Japanese and American Perspectives on Regionalism in East Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (2008); “Executioner or Disciplinarian: WTO Accession and the Chinese Auto Industry,” Business and Politics (co-authored, 2005); The Asian Financial Crisis and the Architecture of Global Finance (co-edited, 2000); and Collective Action in East Asia: How Ruling Parties Shape Industrial Policy (1999). After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government, he taught at the University of California and the Australian National University before moving to Tokyo.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
President Barack Obama’s trip to four Asian nations – Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines – set out to address an ambitious agenda, including trade negotiations, territorial disputes, and the threat of North Korea. Scholars at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute provided commentary to local and international media about the state tour.
Ambassador Michael Armacost, a distinguished fellow at Shorenstein APARC, evaluated the goals of the trip, saying it aimed to deliver a message of reassurance to East Asia that the U.S. rebalance is intact. Armacost highlighted the efforts to negotiate a 12-nation trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the centerpiece of the Obama trip to Asia. He was interviewed by Weekly Toyo Keizi, a Japanese political economy magazine. An English version of the Q&A is available on Dispatch Japan.
Many foreign policy issues shadowed the outset of President Obama’s Asia trip, the crisis in Ukraine and Syria, among others. Daniel Sneider, associate director of research at Shorenstein APARC, said in Slate that Asian nations notice where the United States focuses its time. Obama’s commitment to the region may have come across as distracted given the breadth of his current foreign policy agenda.
Sneider also spoke with LinkAsia on Obama’s stop in Tokyo. President Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; the two leaders addressed issues surrounding territorial disputes and attempted to reach an agreement on outside market access issues in the TPP negotiations.
Donald Emmerson, director of Shorenstein APARC’s Southeast Asia Forum, offered an assessment of America’s ‘pivot to Asia’ and on the significance of the Malaysia and Philippines visits. He said the trip most notably reinforced America’s efforts to upgrade security commitments and promote freer trade negotiation in that region. The Q&A was carried by the Stanford News Service.
Emmerson spoke with McClatchyDC on two occasions about the Philippines leg of the tour. He commented on Obama’s statement reaffirming the United States’ security commitment to Japan, which recognized Japan’s administrative control over the Senkaku Islands. Emmerson suggested the greater context of claims in the South China Sea must be considered, including Manila’s. He also said maintenance of the security alliance is a positive step, but trade is a an essential part of the the pivot's sustainablility.
When President Barack Obama this week began a high-profile visit to Asia, it called into question how effective the "Asian pivot" in America's foreign policy has been. A few years ago, Obama announced that a rebalancing of U.S. interests toward Asia would be a central tenet of his legacy. Now he is visiting Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines to reassert the message that America is truly focused on Asia – despite finding itself repeatedly pulled away by crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, and political battles in Washington, D.C.
Stanford political scientist Donald K. Emmerson, an expert on Asia, China-Southeast Asia relations, sovereignty disputes and the American "rebalance" toward Asia, sat down with the Stanford News Service to discuss Obama's trip. Emmerson is a senior fellow emeritus at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
President Obama started his Asian pivot a few years ago. Have problems in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and at home detracted from this new approach?
The pivot as practiced continues unabated. The pivot as perceived has suffered from its displacement on various attention spans by superseding events and concerns, both foreign and domestic. President Obama's current trip to Asia is itself a reflection of these distractions. Originally planned for October, it was postponed by extreme political discord in Washington. But the chief elements of the pivot remain in place and in progress. They are most notably the upgrading of American security commitments and the effort to negotiate freer trade.
Why does this rebalancing in U.S. foreign policy make sense – or not?
The pivot certainly serves U.S. interests. Americans cannot afford to deny themselves, or be denied by others, the opportunities for trade and investment that Asia's most dynamic economies will continue to generate. The U.S. also needs to work with China and its neighbors to help ensure that China's rise serves the wider security interests of Americans, Chinese, Asians and the world, however dissonant the day-to-day advocacy of those interests may be. Ironically, by obliterating Obama's proposed reset of U.S.-Russia relations, Vladimir Putin has become an unintentional friend of the rebalance toward Asia. His aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine has made all the more urgent the need for Washington to pursue mutually beneficial relations with Beijing and the rest of Asia that could moderate China's willingness and ability to force its ownfaits accomplis in the East and South China Seas.
Do Chinese leaders view Obama's Asian pivot as a de facto containment approach to a rising China?
China's leaders do question U.S. intentions. But one ought not ignore the dozens and dozens of venues and ways in which the two countries' governments continue to cooperate on multiple fronts. In domestic terms it is politically convenient for Chinese hardliners to disparage American motives. As with the pivot itself, however, perception and practice are not the same thing.
Are Asian countries more rattled than ever by China's behavior in places like the South and East China Seas?
Concerned, yes; rattled, no. There are six or seven different claimants to contested land features and/or sea space in the South China Sea, not to mention the territorial tensions that also bedevil interstate relations in Northeast Asia. East Asian leaders are not lined up in a united front against Beijing. They are themselves divided. The more assertive China becomes, the more pushback it can expect. But most of the states in Southeast Asia do not want to ally with the U.S. against China, or with China against the U.S.
The U.S. and the Philippines are poised to sign a treaty that will expand America's military presence in the island country. What's the significance of the treaty?
Articles 4 and 5 of the treaty commit Washington and Manila to "act to meet the common dangers" implied by "an armed attack in the Pacific Area" on the "metropolitan territory" of either party, or on the "island territories under its jurisdiction," or on "its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific," and to do so "in accordance with its constitutional processes." But these provisions are hardly self-implementing; they require interpretation. Even if China were to forcibly evict the Philippine marines who now occupy Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, the treaty would not automatically trigger an American military response. Applied to that scenario, the treaty would not instantly entrap the U.S. in a war with China. But the treaty would require some action or statement on the part of Washington. In Manila, Obama will try to reassure his Philippine host in this regard without enraging its Chinese neighbor.
Obama will be the first U.S. president in five decades to visit Malaysia. What does that visit mean for that country?
Of the four countries that Obama is visiting, it is in Malaysia that the pivot's third face after security and economy – namely democracy – will be most visible. Obama will be careful not to appear to enter into the domestic political turbulence Malaysia is experiencing, but his visits with civil society actors and university students in Kuala Lumpur will send the nonpartisan message that America remains committed to democratic values for itself and for Asians as well.
Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
Economists and business scholars have long tried to construct theoretical models that can explain economic growth and development in emerging economies, but Western models have not always been fully applicable to developing economies, particularly in Asia, due to differences in political, economic and social systems. Created to address this gap, the ABCD framework of K-Strategy is a more nearly universal approach showing how inherent disadvantages can be overcome and competitive advantages achieved. Using the ABCD framework, the lecturer will analyze Korea’s success at both national and corporate levels since the 1960s and discuss the framework’s implications for Korea’s future government policies and corporate strategies. He will also demonstrate the ABCD framework’s applicability to other countries. Hwy-Chang Moon, dean of Seoul National University’s graduate school of international studies, has done extensive research and theoretical work on the ABCD framework.
Hwy-Chang Moon received his PhD from the University of Washington and is currently a professor of international business and strategy in the graduate school of international studies at Seoul National University. Professor Moon has taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Kyushu University, Keio University, Hitotsubashi University, and other executive and special programs in various organizations. On topics such as international business strategy, foreign direct investment, corporate social responsibility, and cross-cultural management, Professor Moon has published numerous journal articles and books. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business and Economy, an international academic journal. Professor Moon has conducted consulting and research projects for several multinational companies, international organizations (APEC, World Bank, and UNCTAD), and governments (Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and Guangdong Province of China). For interviews and debates on international economy and business, he has been invited by international newspapers and media, including New York Times and NHK World TV.
This event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.
Philippines Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC postdoctoral fellowships offer a unique opportunity for recent graduates to reside at Stanford for a year to further their research and engage with scholars. The Center annually offers multiple Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowships in Contemporary Asia, and one Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asia Health Policy.
Fellows develop their dissertations for publication, present their research, and participate in Center activities related to and beyond their specialty. Most importantly, they establish valuable connections with professionals that continue long after they leave Stanford.
Postdoctoral fellows go on to pursue teaching positions and advisory roles at top universities and research organizations around the world. They often continue to contribute to Shorenstein APARC publications, and participate in conferences and related activities into the future.
Shorenstein APARC is delighted to welcome its latest group of exceptional postdoctoral fellows this autumn:
Jianzhi (Jason) Zhao is completing his PhD in international development and economic policy at the University of Maryland. His current research interests are focused on development economics and empirical and international corporate finance, particularly China. His dissertation focuses on how China’s financial system interacts with state-owned enterprises, and policy perspectives of China’s banking sector and macroeconomic stability. At Stanford, Zhao will continue his dissertation work and extend his research analyzing how a firm’s connection to government affects performance and investment behavior. Zhao holds BAs in finance and business administration from Jiangzi University of Science and Technology, and an MA in economics from Fudan University.
Paul Schuler is a political scientist whose current research focuses on liberalization under authoritarian rule and political change in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. His dissertation focuses on how the Vietnam Communist Party has liberalized the legislature in order to gain information, co-opt opposition and stabilize power sharing. At Stanford, Schuler will develop his dissertation work into a book manuscript and pursue other projects related to governance under authoritarian rule. Schuler will receive his PhD in political science from the University of California, San Diego – Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies in 2014. He holds a BA in journalism and government & politics from the University of Maryland, and an MA in Pacific international affairs from UC – San Diego.
Pham Ngoc Minh is a health researcher and administrator. His main interests are public health, disease prevention and the rural-urban divide in developing countries. At Stanford, Pham will be studying epidemiological trends and policy perspectives of diabetes in Vietnam, particularly those among adults in mountainous areas of that country. Pham has more than six years of experience working as a medical lecturer at the Thai Nguyen University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam, and spent two and a half years conducting postdoctoral research in Japan. He received a Bachelor of Medicine from the Thai Nguyen University of Medicine and Pharmacy, a BA in English from Hanoi University, an MPH from the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in medical science from Kyushu University.
This event has moved to the Philippines Conference Room
Professor Paine will explore China’s outlook on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea within the larger settings of Chinese geography and history, including the lessons Chinese leaders continue to draw from Russia’s experience, and how these contexts shape China’s views of its East Asian neighbors. Earlier paradigms of foreign policy offered by Confucianism before 1911 and by Communism thereafter have undergone serious critiques. Which elements in these partly tarnished legacies will China’s leaders decide to affirm, alter, reject, or ignore as they fashion a foreign policy for the 21st century? The outcome will signally affect not only China, but most particularly its neighbors in Southeast and Northeast Asia.
Sarah Paine is a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI. She is the author of two prize-winning books: The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (Cambridge, 2012) and Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (M. E. Sharpe,1996). Among her other publications are The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (2003); Modern China, 1644 to the Present (co-auth., 2010); Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development (ed., 2010); and four co-edited naval books respectively on blockades, coalitions, expeditionary warfare, and commerce-raiding. She has degrees in in history (Columbia, PhD), Russian (Middlebury, MA), and Latin American studies (Harvard, BA).
Philippines Conference Room
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| Dominik Müller |
As a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC in 2013, Dominik Müller finished worked on revising his doctoral dissertation into publishable form. The manuscript was published in March 2014 as Islam, Politics and Youth in Malaysia: The Pop-Islamist Reinvention of PAS (Routledge). In its pages, Dr. Müller has insightful things to say about the intersections of Malaysian politics, pop culture, and transnationally manifested "post-Islamism," among other topics. Rather than essentialize or overgeneralize "Islamism," with or without the prefix, he views the phenomenon dynamically in plural terms as a political ideology, a life philosophy, and a social phenomenon shaped by local contexts that are themselves diverse.
Southeast Asia Forum offers hearty congratulations to Dr. Müller, along with thanks for acknowledging in the book the hospitality of Shorenstein APARC's "extremely helpful" faculty and staff and the "excellent conditions for writing and research" that he recalls Shorenstein APARC having provided. SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson remembers with particular fondness his conversations with Dr. Müller, and is pleased to be mentioned for having contributed "ingenious thoughts and practical suggestions," although what stands out in Emmerson's recollection are the originality and cogency of Dr. Müller's ideas about Islam, politics and modernity in Southeast Asia.
Upon returning to Germany, Dr. Müller was awarded a prestigious four-year position (2013-17) in the Cluster of Excellence at Goethe-University Frankfurt that will enable him to pursue further scholarly research and writing.
