The movement of people leaving and returning to China from the second half of the 19th century to the present is a vast and complex subject. Among scholars worldwide, none has contributed more to the study of these cycles of migration and settlement in Southeast Asian contexts than National University of Singapore Prof. Wang Gungwu. His extensive writings on the topic richly illustrate the conceptual difficulties involved. 

The very terms used to name the phenomenon are contested: “Greater China,” “Chinese Diaspora,” “Huaqiao,” and “Nanyang Chinese”? Are these migrants and settlers and their descendants “Overseas Chinese” or “Chinese Overseas”? Are they even “Chinese” at all?  Prof. Wang’s struggles with nomenclature will be used by Prof. Huang to discuss larger issues, including how language can bias thought and influence policy and how to navigate the troubled waters at the confluence of scholarship and policy.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006).

On January 1, 2010, China and the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) finally, formally launched a China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that encompasses nearly two billion people engaged in trade worth some $200 billion. For China the agreement is a way of securing supplies of raw materials, while the ASEAN countries hope the agreement will open opportunities in China's huge domestic market. When CAFTA  was first signed in November 2002, Beijing promised that Southeast Asia would reap an “early harvest” of its benefits. Yet the Southeast Asian response to CAFTA in the agreement’s first year has been less than enthusiastic, especially in the Philippines and Indonesia. Is CAFTA a bonanza? A blunder? Something in between? Prof. Mendoza will assess the agreement, its implementation, and the implications for China’s role and image in Southeast Asia going forward.

Amado M. Mendoza, Jr. is a leading policy scholar in the Philippines, where he also serves as the treasurer of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR) Asia, Inc., an NGO dedicated to the promotion of socio-economic and cultural rights. He is the Philippines’ lead contributor to the soon-to-be-released 2010 Global Integrity Report on governance and corruption. Other subjects of his current research include Asian regional integration; Asian summitry and economic crisis management; Philippine economic diplomacy; and China-Taiwan relations within a regional context. In addition to his academic career, he has a background in journalism, banking, and development.

Today is the last day of the Year of the Tiger in Vietnam. Tomorrow is the Year of the Cat (while in China it is Year of the Rabbit).

There was so much talk about Vietnam being an Asian Tiger in the past. Now, there is a growing concern about the country getting into the "middle-income trap." There is a real risk that the country might turn out to be just a cat and not a tiger.

The Party is aware of that threat and is struggling to find the right path to accelerated prosperity for the people while maintaining political monopoly.

This talk will be from the perspective of a man on the ground and will try to separate the smoke from the fire and find the heat.

Mr. Kien Duk Trung Pham is currently the Chairman of Red Bricks Group, a private investment firm. He is the founder of the Vietnam Foundation and the Vice Chairman of the VietNamNet Media Group, the leading multi-channel media company in Vietnam. Prior to VietNamNet he was the founding executive director of the Vietnam Education Foundation.

In business, Mr. Pham was a market development executive in Fortune 500 companies as well as an entrepreneur in technology and consulting startups. In government, he served in the executive branch under Presidents Reagan and Bush, as well as in the U.S. Senate. He has established nonprofit foundations to assist college students, orphans, and the handicapped in Vietnam. Mr. Pham is publicly recognized for his leadership and management abilities.

Mr. Pham is active in international affairs. In 1986, he was chosen a Young Leader by the American Council on Germany, and in 1992 a U.S.-Japan Leadership Fellow by the Japan Society. In 1993, he was elected as a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a participant in the American Assembly. Mr. Pham was the founder and chairman of the Vietnam Forum Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit organization that provides college scholarships, schools, and orphanage support in Vietnam. He was also a Board member of the Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped, a leading humanitarian program to help war victims. In 1996, Mr. Pham was a recipient of the "Never Fear, Never Quit" Award.

Mr. Pham grew up in Saigon, Vietnam. In 1977, at the age of 19, he led his family on a high sea escape and came to the United States where they settled in Colorado. Mr. Pham became a factory worker, learned English, and later attended college on scholarship. He received a BS in marketing and international business from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and won a scholarship to study in England. His graduate degrees, earned concurrently at Stanford University, include an MBA in international and organizational management, an MA in international economics, and a special diploma in public policy management. In 1990, Stanford University named Mr. Pham among of the "Most Outstanding Alumni" in the school's 100 years of history. Mr. Pham is former White House Fellow and a recipient an honorary JD degree from Pfeiffer University.

It takes guts to lead. Technical skill requirements vary across the private, public, and social sectors, but the essentials of good leadership needed to move any organization forward are the same. In all three sectors, Gita Wirjawan has exercised leadership and achieved results. Based on his knowledge and experience, he will offer advice on how to survive and be effective in one, two, or all three of these dynamic environments--how to succeed wherever your passion takes you.

Gita Wirjawan has been closely and causally linked to Indonesia's rising profile as a dynamic emerging-market economy. As head of his country's Investment Coordinating Board since 2009, he has traveled the world stimulating capital inflows. At home he has worked to improve the policy climate for productive investment. His efforts have contributed to boosting Indonesia's ratings as a place to invest and its current six-percent annual rate of economic growth. His own career in business has included founding and managing a successful private equity fund, Ancora Capital, and serving as a former lead executive in the Indonesian affiliates of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In the social sector he has championed education through his Ancora Foundation, whose grants have enabled talented young Indonesians to study at the world's leading universities. A graduate of Harvard's JFK School of Government, he is a classically trained pianist and a jazz buff proficient on several instruments. Another company he founded, Omega Pacific, has produced more than a dozen albums by young Indonesian musicians.

This event is co-sponsored with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Center for Global Business and the Economy

Asian Biotech:  Ethics and Communities of Fate is the title of a new book that Prof. Ong has co-edited with Nancy N. Chen.  It offers the first overview of Asia’s emerging initiatives in the biosciences.  Its case studies include blood collection in Singapore and China; stem-cell research in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan; genetically modified foods in China; and clinical trials in India.  Such projects vary by country, as do the policies that are associated with them.  Discernible nevertheless is a significant trend toward state entrepreneurialism in Asian biotechnology.  Prof. Ong will also explore how political thinking and ethical reasoning are converging around the biosciences in Asia.  Copies of Asian Biotech will be available for signing and purchase at the talk.

Aihwa Ong studies how the interactions of capitalism, technology, politics, and ethics crystallize global situations, frame spaces of problematization, and generate situated solutions.  With these matters in mind, she has done field research in Southeast Asia, Southern China, and California.  A forthcoming volume is Worlding Cities:  Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.  Prior publications include Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (2nd ed., 2010); Privatizing China:  Socialism from Afar (co-edited, 2008); Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (co-edited, 2005); Flexible Citizenship:  The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (1999); Neoliberalism as Exception:  Mutations in Citizenshipand Sovereignty (2006); and Buddha is Hiding:  Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (2003).  Prof. Ong has received many awards and has lectured at universities around the world.  She chairs of the US National Committee for the Pacific Science Association.  Her 1982 PhD is from Columbia University.