Early returns suggest that it may not be business as usual in state-society relations, with the Party-state being compelled to respond to an increasingly discontented and vocal society, and that a partial loosening of the tight censorship in media and culture may also be forthcoming. Indicators include changes in CCTV programming—e.g., a more interesting evening news report and the broadcast of the previously banned film V for Vendetta—media coverage of sensitive issues ranging from air pollution to the work of rights lawyers, and the relatively “enlightened” resolution of the Southern Weekend crisis, among other recent developments. What are we to make of these changes and, more importantly, how have these changes been received within China, for example on the ubiquitous and increasingly important Chinese microblogs?

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Stanley Rosen is a professor of political science at USC specializing in Chinese politics and society and was the director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from 2005–2011. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China over 40 times over the last 30 years. His courses range from Chinese politics and Chinese film to political change in Asia, East Asian societies, comparative politics theory, and politics and film in comparative perspective. The author or editor of eight books and many articles, he has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He is the co-editor of Chinese Education and Society and a frequent guest editor of other translation journals. His most recent books include Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market [Routledge, 2010 (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries)] and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema [Hong Kong University Press, 2010 (co-edited with Ying Zhu)]. Other ongoing projects include a study of the changing attitudes and behavior of Chinese youth, and a study of Hollywood films in China and the prospects for Chinese films on the international market, particularly in the United States.

In addition to his academic activities at USC, Professor Rosen has escorted eleven delegations to China for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (including American university presidents, professional associations, and Fulbright groups), and consulted for the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office and a number of private corporations, film companies, law firms and U.S. government agencies.

For years former diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani has closely studied the changing relationship between Asia and the United States and its consequences in works like Can Asians Think? and The New Asian Hemisphere. In The Great Convergence, his new book, he assesses East and West at a remarkable turning point in world history and reaches an incredible conclusion.

China stands poised to become the world’s largest economy as soon as 2016. Unprecedented numbers of the world’s population, driven by Asian economic growth, are being lifted out of poverty and into the middle class. And with this creation of a world-wide middle class, there is an unprecedented convergence of interests and perceptions, cultures and values: a truly global civilization.  

A full 88% of the world’s population lives outside the West and is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. But while the world changes, our way of managing it has not and it must evolve. The Great Convergence outlines new policies and approaches that will be necessary to govern in an increasingly interconnected and complex environment. Multilateral institutions and world-wide governing organizations must be strengthened. National interests must be balanced against global interests. The United States and Europe must share power and China, India, Africa and the Islamic world must be integrated. And the world’s increasing consumption must be balanced against environmental sustainability.

About the Speaker

From 1971 to 2004 Kishore Mahbubani served in the Singapore Foreign Ministry, where he was Permanent Secretary from 1993 to 1998, served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), and in January 2001 and May 2002 served as President of the UN Security Council.

Mahbubani is the author of Can Asians Think?, Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World, and The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines have listed him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, and in 2009 the Financial Times included him on their list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. In 2010 and 2011 he was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

The world has undergone major drastic changes in the last two decades driven by several major factors, eg, explosion of human population and connectivity. Such changes seem further accelerated in recent years and it seems that our future becomes more uncertain and unpredictable. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident awakened us and led to creation of Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan; The Commission Report revealed some of the fundamental issues of Japan’s nuclear policy. Meanwhile, multi-stakeholders’ engagement has become critical in various social affairs and in policy making domains within and across national boundaries, and has contributed in significant ways to affect the processes of addressing and impacting global agenda, such as climate change, food and water, energy, urbanization, biodiversity, human capital with shifting the balance of economy and power. In my view, the principles of our society may be changing quite fast heading somewhat differently from our conventional norm. The science community can and should contribute to these issues in nurturing future leaders, but in what way?

Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a graduate of University of Tokyo School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine and nephrology, in US 1969-84; Professor of Med, Dept Med ofUCLA Sch Med (79-84), Chair, Univ Tokyo Faculty of Med (89-96), Dean of Tokai Univ School of Med (96-02, President of Science Council of Japan (03-07), Science Advisor to Prime Minister (07-09), Board member of A*STAR (06-00), Bibliotheca Alexandria (04-08), Khalifa University (08- ), Okinawa Institute of Science and Tech (06- ), Global Science and Innovation Advisory Board of the Prime Minister of Malaysia (11-); President of Intl Soc Nephrology (97-99), Inst of Medicine of US Academies (92). Recently, chaired Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan (Dec 11-July 12). AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (2012), ‘100 Top Global Thinkers 2012” of Foreign Policy.

In recent years, China has had several confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines and most recently Japan, over maritime sovereignty issues in the South and East China Seas. The popular press and specialists alike often portray these disputes as a clear indication of Beijing's growing willingness to coerce or intimidate its neighbors and disregard international norms and laws in the pursuit of its national objectives. Some observers associate Chinese behavior with a long-term strategic plan to dominate the Asia-Pacific. Dr. Michael D. Swaine, a senior associate in the Asia Program and a China national security specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will offer his interpretation of the interests, motives, and policies driving Chinese behavior in this potentially volatile area, and assess the implications for the United States and other Asian powers.

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Michael Swaine joined the Carnegie Endowment as a senior associate after twelve years at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in Chinese security and foreign policy, U.S.–China relations, and East Asian international relations. One of the most prominent U.S. analysts in Chinese security studies, he is the author of more than ten monographs on security policy in the region. At RAND, he was a senior political scientist in international studies and also research director of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy.

Swaine was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security in recognition of the exceptional contributions he has made in his field.

Prior to joining RAND in 1989, Swaine was a consultant with a private sector firm; a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley; and a research associate at Harvard University. He attended the Taipei and Tokyo Inter-University Centers for Language Study, administered by Stanford University, for training in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

The road to the 18th Party Congress was contentious, leading to its delayed convocation. Nevertheless, the processes of generational turnover in China’s leadership at the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress extended patterns of formal politics that trace their roots to Deng Xiaoping’s political reforms of the 1980s, that advanced in the Jiang Zemin era in the 1990s, and that matured under outgoing General Secretary Hu Jintao in the 2000s.  As such, the transition in the party leadership at the 18th Congress marked another step forward in the institutionalization of Chinese leadership politics.

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Alice Lyman Miller is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and teaches in the Departments of History and Political Science at Stanford. She is also a senior lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 1999, Miller taught at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. from 1980–2000. From 1974–90, Miller worked in the Central Intelligence Agency as a senior analyst in Chinese foreign policy and domestic politics, and branch and division chief, supervising analysis on China, North Korea, Indochina, and Soviet policy in East Asia. Miller has lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and the PRC, and she speaks Mandarin Chinese.

Miller's research focuses on foreign policy and domestic politics issues in China and on the international relations of East Asia. She is editor and contributor to the Hoover Institution’s China Leadership Monitor, which has since 2001 offered online authoritative assessments of trends in Chinese leadership politics to American policymakers and the general public. Miller has published extensively on policy issues dealing with China, including several articles and book chapters, as well as two books: Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge (University of Washington Press, 1996), and, with Richard Wich, Becoming Asia: Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations Since World War II (Stanford University Press, 2011). She is currently working on a new book, tentatively entitled The Evolution of Chinese Grand Strategy, 1550–Present, that brings a historical perspective to bear on China's rise in the contemporary international order.

Miller graduated from Princeton University in 1966, receiving a B.A. in Oriental Studies. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University in 1969 and 1974.  Formerly H. Lyman Miller, she transitioned in 2006.