China’s contemporary legal reform is characterized by the coexistence of two ideologies, professionalism and populism, in legal discourses and law practice. The conflicts between the two ideologies are best characterized in the trial of Li Zhuang during the anti-crime campaign in Chongqing in 2009-2011. In this case, the fate of an individual criminal defense lawyer was linked with the broadest legal policies and the highest-level political struggles in the Chinese state. By a scholarly analysis of the Li Zhuang case, this study demonstrates that, although populism remains an intimidating force in China’s legal practice, professionalism has gained the support from a wider range of legal professionals, state officials, and the public through the media and professional mobilization.
This is a SCP-CEAS co-sponsored event.
Philippines Conference Room
Sida Liu
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Law
Speaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
This year is one of elections and leadership changes throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Earlier in 2012, Taiwan reelected President Ma Ying-jeou to a second term. North Korea and Russia have already seen transfers of power this year; it will be China’s turn in the fall. The United States holds its presidential election in November. And South Korea will elect a president in December. Individually and collectively, these leadership changes hold crucial implications for Northeast Asian nations as well as the United States.
In this article, Gi-Wook Shin explores the possible implications of South Korea's upcoming presidential election.
Guoqiang Zhao is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for 2012-13. Zhao has been working for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) since 1990. He previously worked as deputy general manager of ICBC’s Seoul branch for four years, as general manager of its Busan branch for seven years, and then as general manager of its Almaty (Kazakhstan) branch for six years. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he served as a senior specialist on risk management for ICBC. Zhao received his bachelor's degree in science from Hebei Normal University and his master's degree in economics from Nankai University.
Wei Shi is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2012-13. He has worked at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) for 17 years. Currently, he is the deputy head of ICBC’s Qinghai regional headquarters, and he previously served in the company’s Beijing Branch and in the Supervision Department of its central headquarters. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of China, his master's degree in economics from the People's University of China, and his MBA from the University of Hong Kong.
May 2013 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Over the three decades of the Center’s existence, immense change has taken place in the Asia-Pacific.
The early 1980s were a time for tremendous, transformative ripples of social, political, and economic change in many Asian countries; many of those changes set in motion trends, institutions, and events that are prominent aspects of the Asian landscape today.
In Northeast Asia, China embraced market reforms and opened its doors to foreign investment and trade, setting the stage for its role as a contemporary global leader. Japan experienced the peak of its post-war boom, consolidating its role as a pioneer in technology and manufacturing. South Korea underwent a dramatic transformation that, paired with its rapid economic growth, created a regional powerhouse. Southeast Asia emerged from the shadow of war to become a region of economic tigers and emerging powers.
At Stanford, the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy and the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) were established in May 1983 as independent, but complementary, entities. The Northeast Asia-United States Forum later grew into the Asia/Pacific Research Center and, in 2005, was endowed as the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). The two centers still closely collaborate on research and events. In the ensuing three decades, Shorenstein APARC expanded its reach beyond core expertise on Northeast Asia to the fast-developing region of Southeast Asia and to South Asia, which has emerged as a new center of power in the Asia-Pacific. The Center has focused increasingly on the crosscurrents of growing economic, cultural, and institutional integration in the region alongside a troubling rise of tensions driven by intensifying nationalism.
Today, Shorenstein APARC boasts five vibrant programs focusing on contemporary Asia and engaged in policy-oriented research, training, and publishing: the Asia Health Policy Program, Japan Studies Program, Korean Studies Program, Southeast Asia Forum, and the Stanford China Program. It also takes great pride in its unique Corporate Affiliates Program, whose alumni roster of over 300 Asian business, government, and media professionals continues to expand. Rounding out Shorenstein APARC’s Asia expertise, its South Asia Initiative has produced many important publications and events for over a decade.
On May 2, 2013, Shorenstein APARC will celebrate its anniversary with a special public symposium exploring Asia’s transformation over the past three decades, developments in U.S.-Asia relations, and the trajectory of Shorenstein APARC’s own history. You are invited to join us in marking this historic occasion.
From Shanghai to São Paulo, people around the world are living longer than ever, challenging long-held ideas about retirement and well-established national retirement systems. Stanford health economists Karen Eggleston and Victor R. Fuchs offer an innovative view of the global aging phenomenon in an article published recently in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Drawing on a century of demographic data from 17 countries, Eggleston and Fuchs show that the share of increases in life expectancy realized after age 65 was only about 20 percent at the beginning of the 20th century but close to 80 percent by the dawn of the 21st century. Expected lifetime labor force participation as a percent of life expectancy is now declining. Eggleston and Fuchs share four interrelated responses to the economic and social challenges posed by this “new demographic transition:”
Increase the retirement age.
Encourage savings.
Strengthen education.
Emphasize healthy lifestyles early to ensure productivity in old age.
Eggleston is director of the Asia Health Policy Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Fuchs is Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., Professor Emeritus, in Stanford’s Department of Economics and Department of Health Research and Policy, and a senior fellow at FSI and SIEPR.
Of the four policy responses the article proposes, is one especially critical?
Fuchs: The most important solution in terms of its potential impact would be people changing their attitudes toward retirement. This would mean people postponing retirement and saving more during their working years. If you work five years longer, for example, you would have greater savings and a shorter period of time when you would need the money.
Eggleston: We tend to think of the solutions as being interrelated. To address this longstanding and inevitable global demographic transition, organizations and policy structures need to support changes in individual behavior. In the case of the retirement age in the United States and European countries, policymakers need to change the many incentives that encourage people to retire younger. What do you most hope policymakers will take away from the article?
Fuchs: We hope they will recognize the absolute need for individuals and organizations to plan for later retirement.
What are the special challenges faced by China and India, the world’s largest populations?
Eggleston: Longer lives in China and India contribute to improved human development, yet population aging also brings special challenges. China’s population is aging more rapidly than India’s and both countries need to invest more in the education and health of their young people, especially in poor rural areas.
In India, nutrition and education will help to reap a one-time boost to economic growth if the large cohorts of the working age population can be productively employed, while building a foundation for sustained improvement of living standards. China’s youth need to be as productive as possible to support the elderly while continuing to improve the national living standard.
The coming decade will be crucial in China, as the country transitions into a new economic phase and expands its fledging social protection system. The goal should be to ameliorate disparities and protect the vulnerable, while maintaining a financially sustainable and culturally appropriate balance of government and family responsibility for old-age support.
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Elderly athletes listen to instructions before a competition in Taibei, Dec. 2007.
Beijing and Pyongyang already share close political ties. In a World Politics Review interview, Daniel C. Sneider discusses North Korea's growing economic dependence on China.
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Bridge spanning the Yalu River between China and North Korea, October 2007.
Japan's coast guard recently detained a group of Chinese activists in the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The longstanding territorial tug-of-war in the region is a legacy of World War Two, said Daniel C. Sneider in an interview.
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A small rocky outcropping in the East China Sea, similar to those disputed over between Japan and China.
Education has provided the critical foundation for Asia’s rapid economic growth. However, in an increasingly globalized and digital world, higher education faces an array of new challenges. While the current strengths and weaknesses of educational systems across Asia differ considerably, they share many of the same fundamental challenges and dilemmas.
The fourth annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue examined challenges and opportunities in reforming higher education in Asia. At its core, the challenge facing every country is how to cultivate relatively immobile assets—national populations—to capture increasingly mobile jobs with transforming skill requirements. This raises fundamental questions about skills needed for fast-paced change, domestic inequality, the role of government, and choices of resource allocations.
Scholars and top-level administrators from Stanford University and universities across Asia, as well as policymakers, journalists, and business professionals, met in Kyoto on September 6 and 7, 2012, to discuss questions that address vital themes related to Asia’s higher education systems. These included:
Can higher education meet the challenges of economic transformations?
As skill requirements change with the increasing use of IT tools that enable manufacturing and service tasks to be broken apart and moved around, how can higher education systems cope? How can education systems address the increasing need for global coordination across languages and cultures? How can countries deal with demographic challenges, with developed countries facing overcapacity and developing countries with younger populations facing an undercapacity of educational resources?
How are higher education systems globalizing?
What are the strategies for the globalization of higher education itself? How are universities positioning themselves to attract top talent from around the world, and what are their relative successes in achieving this? What are the considerations when building university campuses abroad? Conversely, what are the issues surrounding allowing foreign universities to build within one’s own country?
How can higher education play a greater role in innovation?
What is the interplay between private and public institutions and research funding across countries, and what are the opportunities and constraints facing each? What is the role of national champion research initiatives? For developed East Asian countries, a focus on producing engineers raised the economic base, but many are discovering that they are still not at the leading edge of innovation. What are ways to address this dilemma? For developing countries, the challenge is how to improve basic education from the level of training basic factory workers to creating knowledge workers. How might this be accomplished? Is there room for a liberal arts college model?
What are the challenges and opportunities in reforming higher education?
What are effective ways of overcoming organizational inertia, policy impediments, and political processes that hinder reform? What are the debates and issues surrounding ownership, governance, and financing of higher education?
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) established the Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue in 2009 to facilitate conversation about current Asia-Pacific issues with far-reaching global implications. Scholars from Stanford University and various Asian countries start each session of the two-day event with stimulating, brief presentations, which are followed by engaging, off-the-record discussion. Each Dialogue closes with a public symposium and reception, and a final report is published on the Shorenstein APARC website.
Previous Dialogues have brought together a diverse range of experts and opinion leaders from Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Australia, and the United States. Participants have explored issues such as the global environmental and economic impacts of energy usage in Asia and the United States; the question of building an East Asian regional organization; and addressing the dramatic demographic shift that is taking place in Asia.
The annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko.
Kyoto International Community House Event Hall
2-1 Torii-cho, Awataguchi,
Sakyo-ku Kyoto, 606-8536
JAPAN
Mao Xie is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2012–13. Xie has over 20 years of work experience in China's petroleum industry. He participated in the restructuring of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) in the late 1990s, and in the listing of PetroChina (the listed arm of CNPC) in international stock markets in 2000. He was also involved in the formulation and implementation of CNPC/PetroChina’s oil products marketing strategy, and in the designing of the oil products marketing and retailing management system. Xie has participated in the consolidation and specialized management of PetroChina’s city gas business since 2008, and played a part in the formation of a complete industrial chain of PetroChina’s gas business. He also contributed to the designing and implementation of PetroChina’s city gas organizational structure. Xie received his bachelor's degree in petroleum storage and transportation from Harbin University of Commerce and his MBA from Zhejiang University.
