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Professor Paine will explore China’s outlook on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea within the larger settings of Chinese geography and history, including the lessons Chinese leaders continue to draw from Russia’s experience, and how these contexts shape China’s views of its East Asian neighbors. Earlier paradigms of foreign policy offered by Confucianism before 1911 and by Communism thereafter have undergone serious critiques. Which elements in these partly tarnished legacies will China’s leaders decide to affirm, alter, reject, or ignore as they fashion a foreign policy for the 21^st century? The outcome will signally affect not only China, but most particularly its neighbors in Southeast and Northeast Asia.

Sarah Paine is a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI. She is the author of two prize-winning books: The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (Cambridge, 2012) and Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (M. E. Sharpe,1996). Among her other publications are The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (2003); Modern China, 1644 to the Present (co-auth., 2010); Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development (ed., 2010); and four co-edited naval books respectively on blockades, coalitions, expeditionary warfare, and commerce-raiding. She has degrees in in history (Columbia, PhD), Russian (Middlebury, MA), and Latin American studies (Harvard, BA).

Over the past 23 years, Mongolia’s democracy has advanced on many fronts. The initial transition to democracy was peaceful in both economic and political areas. Since embracing democracy in 1990, democratic development in Mongolia has been coupled with rapid economic growth, sustained by a neo-liberal economic policy. Regionally, Mongolia is often seen as a successful case of democratic transition and development. However, in recent years, the fragilities in Mongolian democracy have revealed themselves, especially domestically, in the booming economic climate that is unparalleled in the country's history.

Mongolia, located in north East Asia, locked between China and Russia, has a unique geopolitical situation, unlike any other country in the world. With these two large, powerful and politically changing neighbors, Mongolia pays constant and careful attention to maintaining diplomatic balance. Russia's historical, political, and cultural influence on Mongolia's 20th century cannot be underestimated. China, in complicated and important areas, represents vast economic opportunities. These economic opportunities, and the development that they drive, are viewed with increased suspicion domestically and regionally. However, Mongolia’s rapid economic development and democratic reforms may create additional opportunities and positive political developments in the region.

Average life expectancy in Mongolia is 65 years, much shorter than that of other East Asian countries such as South Korea (78.5 years) and China (72.5 years). Furthermore, healthy life expectancy in Mongolia is even shorter, rendering the situation even more tragic. The World Health Organization estimates that the healthy life expectancy is 53 years for males and 58 years for females.

This colloquium will provide an overview of health in Mongolia and its healthcare system, with expertise from two speakers. First, Dr. Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa, Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, will discuss her comparative study of how knowledge of cervical cancer risk factors has influenced behavior changes in Mongolia before and after the introduction of the National Cervical Cancer Program.

Second, Dr. Dashdorj will present on overview of the healthcare initiatives of the Onom Foundation, designed to mitigate excess and premature mortality of Mongolians via knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship. He will report on a March national health policy meeting in Mongolia’s capital and recent strides in health improvement made with the support of the Onom Foundation.

Gendengarjaa Baigalimaa joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2013-2014 academic year as the Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow. She joins APARC from the Mongolian National Cancer Center, where she serves as a Gynecological Oncologist.

During her appointment as Health Policy Fellow, she is completing her comparative study of how knowledge of cervical cancer risk factors has influenced behavior changes in Mongolia before and after the introduction of the National Cervical Cancer Program.

Baigalimaa is the Executive Director of Mongolian Society of Gynecological Oncologists and is also a member of the International Gynecological Cancer Society (IGCS) in Mongolia, Russia, and France.

Baigalimaa holds a MD from Minsk Belarussia Medical University. She also received a Masters in Health Science from Mongolian Medical University. She is fluent in both Russian and English.

Dr. Dashdorj hails from very humble beginnings. He was born and raised in the southwestern outskirts of Mongolia known as Gobi-Altay province, where the Altay Mountains border with the bare rock covered desert basins of the Gobi. Because of the unique upbringing, Dr. Dashdorj has a profound commitment for making a tangible difference in lives of fellow Mongols. At the same time, he strongly believes that entrepreneurship is the best vehicle for making a difference.

He obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University in 2005 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health. His research using ultrafast optical spectroscopy and time-resolved x-ray imaging techniques is published in 17 original manuscripts in prominent, peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2010, Dr. Dashdorj became a faculty member at the Argonne National Laboratory. Despite his successes in scientific research, he gave up his academic career in 2013 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams, since he truly believed that he can make a tangible difference via entrepreneurship, experimenting with a model of subsidizing philanthropic actions by a certain percentage of equity and profits of a for-profit company.

Mr. Rudd served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning to the Prime Ministership in 2013. As Prime Minister, Mr. Rudd led Australia’s response during the Global Financial Crisis. Australia's fiscal response to the crisis was reviewed by the IMF as the most effective stimulus strategy of all member states. Australia was the only major advanced economy not to go into recession. Mr. Rudd is also internationally recognized as one of the founders of the G20 which drove the global response to the crisis, and which in 2009 helped prevent the crisis from spiraling into a second global depression.

As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mr. Rudd was active in global and regional foreign policy leadership. He was a driving force in expanding the East Asia Summit to include both the US and Russia in 2010. He also initiated the concept of transforming the EAS into a wider Asia Pacific Community to help manage deep-routed tensions in Asia by building over time the institutions and culture of common security in Asia. On climate change, Mr. Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and legislated in 2008 for a 20% mandatory renewable energy target for Australia. Mr. Rudd launched Australia's challenge in the International Court of Justice with the object of stopping Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. Mr Rudd drove Australia’s successful bid for its current non-permanent seat on the United Nation’s Security Council and the near doubling of Australia's foreign aid budget.

Mr. Rudd remains engaged in a range of international challenges including global economic management, the rise of China, climate change and sustainable development. He is on the International Advisory Panel of Chatham House. He is a proficient speaker of Mandarin Chinese, a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University and funded the establishment of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. He was a co-author of the recent report of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Global Sustainability – “Resilient People, Resilient Planet" and chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Fragile States. He also remains actively engaged in indigenous reconciliation.

There are four serious island disputes in East Asia: from north to south, the Southern Kurile dispute (Russia vs. Japan), the Liancourt dispute (two Koreas vs. Japan), the Pinnacle dispute (Japan vs. two Chinas) and the Paracel-Spratly dispute (two Chinas vs. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei). All of these territorial disputes involve a perception of historical injustice by one of the parties. Japan's territorial claim against Russia is closely linked to the rancor over the Siberian Deportation (1945-56); Korea's territorial claim against Japan reflects the rancor over Japan's colonization (1910-45); Chinese territorial claims against Japan are rooted in the response to Japan's major invasion of mainland China going back to the Manchurian Incident (1931-45); and Vietnamese passion for the territorial claim against China is linked to the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979-89), among other things.

In this talk, the speaker will argue that the four territorial disputes over relatively unimportant islands in East Asia have persisted for such a long time not because of the contest for natural resources or the inherent importance of those territories but because of perceived historical injustice. If these disputes are to be settled now, the solutions therefore have to be political, taking perceived justice and injustice in consideration

Tetsuya Toyoda, has been teaching international law and constitutional law at Akita International University since 2007. Before that he was a project researcher at the University of Tokyo (2006-2007) and an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1994-2000). He graduated from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Law) and obtained his Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris II-Panthéon-Assas. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia. 

The Korea Colloquium on History and Culture