The stated purpose of the Trade Act of 1974 was to promote free trade. Section 301 authorized the U.S. President to impose retaliatory trade sanctions if negotiations were unsuccessful in reducing unreasonable limits on trade. The Act was reinforced in 1984, became known as “Super 301”, and made annual assessment and retaliatory measures mandatory.

Because of trade imbalances, four emerging Asian countries gave the US firms access to cigarette markets: Japan (1987), Taiwan (1987), South Korea (1989) and Thailand (1990). These forced market opennings were called the “Second Opium War” by local protestors in these countries, challenging U.S. export of unwelcome and unhealthy products.

A sea change occurred in the decades that followed the cigarette market opening in Taiwan. Of particular interest are changes in areas marketing skills and market share; lower cigarette prices; paradoxical increased smuggling; increased youth consumption; evolution of the powerful tobacco industry lobby; and a sharp increase in tobacco-related cancer deaths. Accompanying the increased cigarette consumption, a special, unusual habit of chewing betel quid started and grew into a mainstream practice among adult males (nearly one out of four). Oral and esophageal cancer increased sharply soon after the market opened. At the same time, the patriotic protectionists, NGOs, and government galvanized an anti-smoking movement, which gradually transformed Taiwan's culture so that smoking in public is no longer socially acceptable. A new term, “de-normalization,” was coined about the favorable effect of market opening.

 The ironic outcome of Super 301 is that while the market was forced open solely by the US, in only ten years, US market share, once leading, shrunk to a distant fifth, after Japan, UK, Germany and domestic producers. The trade imbalance was little affected by the opening of the cigarette market.

Dr. Wen's colloquium continues the colloquium series on tobacco control in East Asia, sponsored by the Asia Health Policy Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in coordination with FSI’s Global Tobacco Prevention Research Initiative.

Seymour Martin Lipset famously claimed that the more well-to-do a nation is, the greater the chance that it will sustain democracy.  This "law" fits the experience of several countries in Northeast and Southeast Asia.  Formerly authoritarian South Korea and Taiwan grew rich and became stable democracies with active civil societies, as Lipset would have expected.  His "law" fits the Philippines and Thailand as well- -poor countries with tenuous holds on democracy where uncivil societies have mobilized to defend elite hegemony against mass-based electoral challenges.

The case of Indonesia, in contrast, limits Lipset's Law.  Poor yet stably democratic, Indonesia is free of regime-threatening social conflicts.  Arguably, despite its poverty, its democracy is already consolidated.  India's record of sustaining democracy is another case in point.  These poor yet successfully democratic polities amount to large stakes in the heart of modernization theory.

Prof. Thompson will contend that Indonesia's democracy is neither middle-class-based nor dominated by big business, but is instead still characterized by traditional cross-cutting ethno-religious cleavages that limit the impact of money politics, reduce the risk of populism, foster elite consensus, and thereby encourage democratic stability. He will link his argument not only to Lipset's Law but to the intellectual legacies of Alexis de Tocqueville, Antonio Gramsci, and Barrington Moore among other students of democracy and modernity.

Mark R. Thompson is a professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.  A Chicago native, he took his first degree in religious studies at Brown University followed by postgraduate work at Cambridge University and the University of the Philippines.  Fascinated by Philippine people power, he wrote his dissertation at Yale University on the anti-Marcos struggle (Yale University Press, 1996).  After moving to Germany, he witnessed popular uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe, inspiring him to conceptualize democratic revolutions in essays later published as a book (Routledge, 2004).  He is in residence at Stanford from February through April 2009.

Some theorists of modernization have influentially claimed that successful "late industrialization" led by developmental states creates economies too complex, social structures too differentiated, and (middle-class-dominated) civil societies too politically conscious for non-democratic rule to be sustained.  Probably nowhere has this argument-that democratic transitions are driven by economic growth-been more celebrated than in Northeast and Southeast Asia (Pacific Asia).  South Korea and Taiwan, having democratized only after substantial industrialization, seem to fit the narrative well.  Prof. Thompson will argue, however, that "late democratizers" have been the exception rather than the rule.  Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand democratized much earlier in the developmental process, before high per capita incomes were achieved.  Malaysia and especially Singapore are more wealthy than they are democratic.  The communist "converts" to developmentalism, China and Vietnam, are aiming for authoritarian versions of modernity.  "Late democratization" via modernization is only one scenario.  The experiences of Pacific Asia support Barrington Moore's thesis that there are other "paths to the modern world." 

Mark R. Thompson is a professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.  A Chicago native, he took his first degree in religious studies at Brown University followed by postgraduate work at Cambridge University and the University of the Philippines.  Fascinated by Philippine “people power,” he wrote his dissertation at Yale University on the anti-Marcos struggle (Yale University Press, 1996). After moving to Germany, he witnessed popular uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe, inspiring him to conceptualize “democratic revolutions” in essays later published as a book (Routledge, 2004).  He is in residence at Stanford from February through April 2009.

Two images tend to dominate conceptions of the modern Cambodian experience.  Angkor represents heaven, referring to the magnificent temples that capture Cambodia's past glory and future aspirations.  Angkar represents hell, referring to the merciless Khmer Rouge organization that littered the countryside with corpses in the late 1970s.  In many respects, contemporary Cambodian life can be seen as a difficult journey from Angkar toward Angkor.

This panel will discuss challenges that Cambodians face as they seek to move from a dark modern past to a brighter future.  It will address a number of critical questions.  The panel will begin by putting Cambodia's transition in modern historical context.  How have the country's politics and society evolved since the demise of the Pol Pot regime thirty years ago?  How did the Khmer Rouge tribunal take shape, and why has that forum been the subject of such intense political contestation?  The panel will then shift to an analysis of the present day.  How are Cambodians coming to terms with the country's tragic history on personal and societal levels?  What are their views on the adequacy and effectiveness of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in advancing justice, human rights, and other ends? Lastly, the panel will focus on problems beyond the Khmer Rouge legacy.  What are the principal contemporary barriers to democracy and development under the Hun Sen government?  What are the keys to overcoming those obstacles?

About the Panelists
Joel Brinkley assumed his post at Stanford in 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times, where he was a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent.  He has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other reporting and writing awards.  He writes a nationally syndicated weekly op-ed column on foreign policy and has reported from over 50 foreign countries.  He has a long-standing interest in Cambodia, which is the subject of his latest book.

Seth Mydans (2009 Shorenstein Journalism Award recipient) Since taking up his post as the New York Times Southeast Asian correspondent in 1996 he has covered the fall of Suharto and rise of democracy in Indonesia; the death of Pol Pot, the demise of the Khmer Rouge and the trauma and slow rebirth of Cambodia; repeated attempts at People Power in the Philippines; the idiosyncracies of Singapore and Malaysia; the long-running political crisis in Thailand and the seemingly endless troubles of Myanmar.

John Ciorciari is a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and was a 2007-08 Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He is also Senior Legal Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent institute dedicated to promoting memory and justice with respect to the abuses of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Shorenstein Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. It is awarded jointly by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

This year’s recipient is Seth Mydans. Seth Mydans covers Southeast Asia for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune from his base in Bangkok, Thailand. Since taking up the post in 1996 he has covered the fall of Suharto and rise of democracy in Indonesia; the death of Pol Pot, the demise of the Khmer Rouge and the trauma and slow rebirth of Cambodia; repeated attempts at People Power in the Philippines; the idiosyncracies of Singapore and Malaysia; the long-running political crisis in Thailand and the seemingly endless troubles of Myanmar.

In the 1980s he covered the fall of Marcos and struggles of Corazon Aquino in the Philippines and was in Burma for the massacres that led to the emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi and the current junta.
        
He worked for a construction company in Vietnam during the war after graduating from Harvard, and has followed the Vietnam story since then, through the exodus of refugees, to their resettlement in the United States, to the shaping of a new post-war Vietnam.

Asia’s economies have been hard hit by the current global financial crisis, despite in most cases enjoying strong macroeconomic fundamentals and stable financial systems.  Early hopes were that the region might be “decoupled” from the Western world’s financial woes and even able to lend the West a hand through high growth and the investment of large foreign exchange reserves.  But that optimism has been dashed by slumping exports, plunging commodity prices, and capital outflows.  The region’s most open, advanced and globally-integrated economies—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—are already in severe recession, with Japan, Korea and Malaysia not far behind, and dramatic slowdowns are underway in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.  What role did Asian countries play in the genesis of the global crisis, and why have they been so severely impacted?  How is their recovery likely to be shaped by market developments and institutional changes in the West, and in Asia itself in response to the crisis?  Will the region’s embrace of accelerated globalization and marketization following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis now be retarded or reversed?

Linda Lim is a leading authority on Asian economies, Asian business, and the impacts of the current global financial crisis on Asia, and she has published widely on these topics. Her current research is on the ASEAN countries’ growing economic linkages with China.

Forthcoming in 2009 are Globalizing State, Disappearing Nation: The Impact of Foreign Participation in the Singapore Economy (with Lee Soo Ann) and Rethinking Singapore’s Economic Growth Model. She serves on the executive committees of the Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for International Business Education at the University of Michigan, where formerly she headed the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Before coming to Michigan, she taught economic development and political economy at Swarthmore. A native of Singapore, she obtained her degrees in economics from Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA), and Michigan (PhD).