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Stanford professor Andrew Walder has been awarded the Founder’s Prize from the journal Social Science History for his paper, “Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966-1971.” The journal’s editorial board selects one recipient annually for exemplary scholarly work.

Using data from 2,213 historical county and city annals, the paper charts the breadth of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, its evolution through time and the repression through which state structures were rebuilt in the post-Mao era.

Walder, who is a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has long studied the sources of conflict, stability and change in communist regimes. He recently published China under Mao, a book that explores the rise and fall of Mao Zedong’s radical socialism.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test in the wake of the G20 summit earlier this month. The United States immediately condemned North Korea’s behavior in a statement delivered by the White House, and a few days later, flew a set of bombers near the U.S. military base in Osan, South Korea.

Writing for Toyo Keizai, Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said a consistent strategic and military reasoning drives the North Korean regime’s decision to test nuclear missiles. His analysis piece can be viewed in English and Japanese.

Sneider also spoke with Slate about how the next U.S. administration could respond, suggesting that a deployment of additional nuclear-capable aircraft at U.S. bases in Asia would send a strong signal to Pyongyang. The Slate article is available at this link.

South Korea has been seeking stronger international sanctions against North Korea since the test. As the country’s biggest trading partner, China is considered an important actor in the ability to influence North Korea. In the Korea Times, Sneider said a way to motivate China to augment their role in sanctions against North Korea is to remind Beijing that a continuation of North Korea's nuclear program would only lead to greater scale and capability of American military presence in the region. The Korea Times article is available at this link.

Last month, Admiral Scott H. Swift, the commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, spoke to an audience at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) and at Stanford via their linked Highly Immersive Classrooms (HIC). Against the backdrop of increasing tensions and hostility in the South China Sea, Swift stressed the importance of building a trust-based relationship between China and the United States. Stanford professor Jean Oi opened the roundtable by introducing Swift at SCPKU while Karl Eikenberry, director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, chaired the session at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

After his formal remarks, Swift engaged in a roundtable discussion with Chinese and American scholars on both sides of the Pacific. The participants at SCPKU included experts from Peking University and Chinese think tanks. Participants at Stanford included a diverse group of scholars from across campus with a number from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. The HIC allowed a lively interactive session where Swift fielded questions from SCPKU and Stanford.

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Seventy-one years ago today, Japan formally surrendered in World War II. Though the end of war may seem part of the distant past, the cultural and political legacy of that conflict still looms large over the international stage, particularly in Asia. U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit this past May to Hiroshima did more than pay homage to the victims of the atomic bombing carried out by the United States more than seven decades ago. The President also stepped into the complex and often treacherous realm of wartime historical memory, Daniel Sneider and Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin write in a piece for the Stanford University Press blog.

Shin and Sneider, director and associate director for research of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, respectively, are co-authors of the book Divergent Memories and lead a multiyear research project that examines historical reconciliation in Asia.