The concept of "soft power" is central for the multi-dimensional rise of China as well as the evolving global strategy of the United States. Beijing is increasingly concerned with projecting soft power to neutralize perceptions of China as a threat while Chinese global influence grows. Washington, meanwhile, looks to employ soft power in remaking its post-Iraq international image, countering terrorist ideological extremism, and attracting the cooperation of international partners to deal with global challenges.

This seminar will address several key questions about soft power:

- What are the different implications when governments use "hard power" in "soft" ways versus when they try to use "soft power" in "hard" ways?

- How is soft power understood and operationalized differently in China than in the United States?

- What are the different visions for projecting soft power among various political actors in China?

- Can soft power be threatening? How can we disentangle capabilities and policies that may be threatening from those that are attractive to other states and encourage cooperation?

About the speakers

Qinghong Wang is currently coordinating the Education Exchange Program for the East-West Center in Honolulu. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2010. His dissertation is entitled, Reinventing Democracy through Confucianism: Representation, Application and Reorientation of Western Transnational Nonprofit Organizations (WTNPOs) in Post-Mao China. Dr. Wang earned his MA in Asian studies from the University of Hawaii in 2003 and his BA in Chinese language and literature from Peking (Beijing) University in 1999. Dr. Wang is originally from Beijing. He was the Lloyd (Joe) R. and Lilian Vasey Fellow with the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2006 to 2007, and has since remained an adjunct fellow with the Forum. His research focuses on the development of civil society in China, U.S.-China relations, traditional and nontraditional security issues in the Asia Pacific, and comparative politics and philosophies of East and West.

Leif-Eric Easley is the 2010-11 Northeast Asian History Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. Dr. Easley completed his Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government in 2010, specializing in East Asian international relations. His dissertation presents a theory of national identity perceptions, bilateral trust between governments, and patterns of security cooperation, based on extensive fieldwork in Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing. At Stanford, he is teaching a course on nationalism, contested history, and the international relations of Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States. Dr. Easley is actively involved in high-level U.S.-Asia exchanges (Track II diplomacy) as a Sasakawa and Kelly Fellow with the Pacific Forum CSIS. His research appears in a variety of academic journals, supplemented by commentaries in major newspapers.

With regional perspective commentary by:

Donald Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Forum, Shorenstein APARC

Daniel Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC

David Straub, Associate Director, Korean Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC

Former President Gerhard Casper launched the Asia-Pacific Scholars Program (AP Scholars Program) in 1997 to strengthen and expand Stanford University's ties with Asia. The program was loosely modeled on Oxford University's Rhodes Scholarship. Led by renowned China scholar Michel Oksenberg of the Asia/Pacific Research Center (the predecessor organization of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), the first program brought together a highly diverse class of nineteen graduate students from the United Kingdom, the United States, and numerous countries in Asia. The AP Scholars Program thrived under Oksenberg's direction, but fell dormant for nearly a decade following his death in 2001.

Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, re-launched the AP Scholars Program in September 2010. "I am delighted to have been asked to revive it," states Fingar.

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The film Pacific Vision: The Asia-Pacific Scholars Program at Stanford University was released to commemorate the program's inaugural year. A clip from Pacific Vision, featuring interviews with Casper and Oksenberg, is available here courtesy the Stanford University Archives.

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Augmented Reality (AR), created in the 1960s, has recently attracted attention due to the progress of Information Technology. AR is supplementary text/visual data superimposed over the surrounding real world. For example, in a football game on television, the yard lines and logos displayed on the screen use AR technology. AR technology has been applied to the entertainment world, such as in computer games, in film, and in advertisement. However, there are few examples of the application outside of the entertainment field. In his research presentation, Kondo proposes some possible AR applications outside of the entertainment industries.

Makoto Murata, "Developing New Facilities Strategy and Added Value in "Smart Grid"

Smart Grid is a new concept of power supply and management, and it receives a great deal of public attention. Electricity is the fastest-growing component of total global energy demand. In this environment, there are increasing needs for minimizing costs and environmental impacts while maximizing electric system reliability. Smart grid is thought to be a key solution for them. The deployment of smart grid affects facilities strategy. Murata analyzes facilities strategy for smart grid deployment from the viewpoints of regulations and area characteristics.

 
Eiichi Yamamoto, "Management of Intellectual Assets such as Patents, in the United States and Japan"

In a knowledge economy where there is global competition, intellectual assets become a key factor in a company's performance. The United States government recognized the significance of intellectual assets as a company's value earlier than Japan and has promoted a pro-patent policy since the early 1980s. The policy has encouraged U.S. companies to take advantage of the profitability of patents, much more than Japanese companies have done. In this presentation, Yamamoto analyzes the differences in the management of intellectual assets, such as patents, between the United States and Japan, and tries to explain the reasons for those differences.

Minoru Aosaki, "International Banking Regulation after the Financial Crisis: Economic Impacts and Policy Challenges in the US, Japan, and the EU"

To address lessons of the financial crisis, the Basel Committee introduced a new international framework on banking regulations, known as Basel III. The world leaders subsequently committed to implement it at the last G20 summit meeting. A current key issue is how regulators in each country should/can transform their current regulatory regime to the new regime under their own economic and regulatory environments. To consider the issue, Aosaki examines how economic costs and benefits of the regulatory reform would vary among countries and discusses policy challenges of the regulators to ensure the benefits and mitigate the costs.

Pradnya Palande, "Population Dynamics: A New Approach in Understanding Cancer Development"

Cancer, the most vicious and hard to cure disease, results from an accumulation of genetic alterations best known as mutations, in our body. These mutations constantly keep evolving by natural selection. A consequence of this evolution is that a cancer treatment will tend to kill the susceptible cells but will leave the resistant ones to flourish. A few months later, the cancer will reappear and will be resistant to previous treatment. Hence studying the population dynamics of cancer will provide insight into development of cancer and will help in developing better methods for cancer prevention and therapy.

Palande has concentrated her research on population dynamics of cancer cells in chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer. She is trying to study the role of the antibody diversification enzyme, namely Activation Induced cytidine Deaminase (AID), in the generation of mutations associated with cancer progression and drug resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia.

Naoki Takeuchi, "Energy Policies, Clean Technologies, and Business Innovations in the United States"

In January 2011, at his State of the Union speech, President Obama suggested setting a goal that 80% of electricity will come from clean energy sources in the United States by 2035. He also suggested that the United States will become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. 

In Takeuchi's research, he tries to understand the dynamic interactions among government energy policies, clean technologies, and business innovations in the United States. His research includes an overview of federal energy policies (both regulations and incentives), an overview of California State government policies, recent trends of clean technologies, venture capital investments in cleantech companies, and major areas of clean technologies and business innovations. In this presentation, Takeuchi will present case studies focusing on cleantech companies in the Silicon Valley.

In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Wataru Ishii, "Promotion of Tourism in Japan:  Policies and Plans for Development and Involvement of Local Institutions"

Tourism is an industry that covers a lot of areas, such as hotels, transportation, food services and one of a few industries where growth can be expected in the future.  Because of the economic importance of tourism, the Japanese National Government established the Japan Tourism Agency in 2008 and has begun to try to make Japan "Tourism Nation" and local governments are following suit.  Ishii studies the significance of tourism in Japan and policies to attract foreign tourists that will compensate for stagnant domestic tourists.

Yuichi Moronaga, "The Essential Value - Connecting and Sharing Emotions - Storytelling in the Social Media Era"

Customers have high expectations when making purchases.  They expect products to provide value and, at the same time, satisfy their sense of emotions.  Storytelling is an important factor when it comes to these customer purchases.  Knowing the story behind the product or company can create strong attachments and this "essential value" is an important factor in the buying cycle.  These emotions may encourage our next behavior, whether it's repeat buying or long-term usage.  With the increased usage of social media, this type of cycle that is created is vital for a company's marketing plan as well as providing increased motivation of a company's employees.  In this presentation, Moronaga shares examples of storytelling, demonstrating how dynamically storytelling is changing people's purchasing behaviors and the opportunities presented.

Hirofumi Takinami, "Political Economy of the Financial Crises in Japan and the United States:  Why the Difference in Speed to Respond and Recover?"

Within the last two decades, the United States and Japan each experienced the same type of financial crisis, notably triggered by the collapse of major financial institutions.  Both were under the political economic conditions of one of the largest economies in the world as well as of an advanced democratic country.  However, it is symbolically different that Japan let the institutions go into chain-reaction bankruptcies without injecting public money in 1997, while the U.S. undertook a bailout of AIG just after the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008.  And now the U.S. economy is showing earlier recovery compared to what Japan experienced. -- What made this difference in speed to respond and recover?  To explain this puzzle, Takinami focuses on (a) existence of precedent & learning, (b) speed and process of economic downturn toward the crisis, (c) action by national leader & secretarial organization, and (d) status of global standard setter, together with assessing the alternative explanations.  Then, he argues some implications of these analyses.

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Toshifumi Kadowaki, "The Keys to Successful M&As in High-Tech Industries - Based on a Study of the HP-Compaq Merger"

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are tactics, not strategy.  Successful M&As, however, can be considered one of the most useful tactics in realizing corporate strategy because M&As often save time and can even save money and reduce risk.  Many high-tech companies, therefore, have made a large number of M&As recently.  Numerous empirical studies, though, have shown that most M&As fail. Through the case study of the Hewlett Packard-Compaq merger, Kadowaki analyzes what makes M&As successful and what causes them to fail.

Oshie Sato, "Dawn of a new Era in the Video Industry - Impact of Smart TVs from a Historical Perspective of Broadcasting and Movie Industries in the United States and Japan"

After prospering for more than a half century both in the United States and Japan, the broadcasting and movie industries have reached a turning point of their business models.  This is due mostly to the rise of competition with the Internet since the late 1990s and a global recession led by Lehman's fall in 2008.  What will happen to these industries in the U.S. and Japan over the next decade?  Sato analyzes a future picture of the broadcasting and movie industries, focusing on the impact of smart TVs - next-generation video devices such as Google TV and Apple TV.

Sonya Vasudeva, "Pharmacogenetics in Cancer:  Steps Towards Personalized Medicine"

The variability in clinical response to drug treatment has been well known for decades.  An era of pharmacogenetics started almost fifty years ago when it was recognized that a part of this variation is inherited, and can therefore be predictable.  With the wealth of information readily available online, the promise of personalized medicine looms large, but the generalization into clinical applications of pharmacogenomics has been more challenging.  In Vasudeva's research, she shares examples of tests, which are integrated by USA FDA and EMA into drug lables, one example being K Ras mutation for metastatic colorectal cancer.  Vasudeva argues that the increased availability of such tests may transform the field of medical oncology, moving treatment from the "one size fits all" approach to a personalized therapy based on variations in an individual genome.