Why did India, and not China, become the world's back office? Why didn't China, the world champion of the outsourcing of goods, translate its success into exporting services? What lessons does this hold for Silicon Valley? Drawing from his new book, The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds The World Together Through Commerce, Chander will explore these questions, focusing on the importance of trust to developing Internet services.

Anupam Chander's research focuses on the regulation of globalization and digitization. He earned an A.B., magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard University in 1989 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1992.

The digital Information Technology (IT) revolution currently underway is profoundly reshaping economic activity, influencing politics, and transforming societies around the world. It is also forcing a reconceptualization of the global and local; many of the technologies, platforms, and fundamental disruptions are global in nature, but national or local contexts critically influence the uses and effects of IT.

Digital media— broadly conceived as digital platforms for information creation, transmission, and consumption—is a core driver of the IT revolution. Information is the very essence of civilization itself, and the advent of digital media fundamentally transforms our relationship to information. We have already seen: 1)  the Internet maturing as a platform for posting, disseminating, and consuming information, such as online news startups, video such as Youtube, microblogs to evade censorship, and a global marketplace for selling software, advertising and even personal information; 2) the diffusion of mobile communications, making information available across  geographic and socio-economic boundaries, and 3) the widespread adoption of social networking services that represent exploration into the next stage of relationships between people, groups, firms, and other entities.

Digital media is also at the crux of the “global meets local” dynamic, since digital media is by nature global, but differences in economic, political, and social conditions across countries lead to wide variation in its impact. For example, digital media is argued to have been a catalyst in the Arab Spring demonstrations that led to regime shifts in Tunesia, Egypt, and then Syria, but digital media in itself may not lead directly to a regime shift in China— due to government success in sophisticated censorship and physical network design.

The Asia-Pacific provides a fascinating array of countries for examination of the political, economic, and socio-cultural effects of digital media on the modern world. Economies range from developing to advanced. Governments include varied democracies as well as one party regimes. The press enjoys relative freedom in some countries, undergoes limited constraints in others, and is tightly controlled in a few. Populations range from dense to sparse, and from diverse to relatively homogenous.

The panels were divided to discuss four major themes:

Digital Media versus Traditional Media
Around the world, digital media is disrupting traditional media such as newspapers and television. Traditional business models are undermined, new entrants proliferate, and experimentation abounds with no end-game in sight. Questions for countries with well-established traditional media include: what are the patterns for the emergence of new players? To what degree do they threaten the traditional? In countries with less diffused traditional media, what are the opportunities enjoyed by digital media? 

Beyond business models, the social and political functions of digital media may differ from those of traditional media—particularly where traditional media is subject to close governmental control. Who are the new entrants, and what new functions do they provide?  Have traditional media failed as sources of information? What shifts have occurred in how people get information, and how does this differ across countries?

Digital Media and Political Change in Asia
Digital media opens up vast new information flows that can influence political change. From the perspective of grass-roots movements and civil society, digital media provides new tools to congregate, coordinate, and demonstrate. Governments that strongly control civil society, such as China and Vietnam, were alert to the role digital media played in the Arab Spring. What is the potential for digital media in civil society and democratization? In democratic countries such as Japan, South Korea, or India, how is digital media transforming civil society? For example, Japan’s peaceful anti-nuclear demonstrations, coordinated through digital media, displayed an entirely new pattern.

From the perspective of governments, digital media presents not only challenges, but new opportunities to monitor, gather information, and respond to the public. In strong state countries, control of information flows to the people, and gathering of information about people are the cornerstones of state control. How are these states adapting their attempts at controlling media in the face of pervasive digital media? In democratic systems, deciding what information to channel to which voters at what point in election cycles is a critical part of any electoral strategy. How are governments and parties using digital media to reach their constituencies, and what is their effectiveness?

Social Change and Economic Transformation
As a core part of the IT revolution, digital media has opened up new domains of innovation that transforms industries and economies. For advanced countries, it raises serious questions about how best to profit from digital platforms whose underlying technology is increasingly controlled by American multinational firms. For developing countries, the question is how to best take advantage of the world-class computing resources, global markets, and extensive reach enabled by the technological platforms underlying digital media. Instruments such as smartphones and the digital content conveyed on those devices are altering interpersonal relations and even the struggle against poverty in societies such as India.

The advent of social network services is also altering how we conceive of social connections. How do these networks affect groups such as the Korean or Filipino diasporas, and what are the implications for identity, “imagined communities,” and group identification. In what ways is the cohesiveness of groups enhanced by connections such as Facebook or Twitter, and in what ways are groups fragmented along interest cleavages, with people exposed to only ideas and groups of their choice. How does digital media impact social change and how does that impact lead to economic transformation in both developed and developing countries?

Digital Media and International Relations
The growth of digital media produces a powerful and sometimes troubling impact on international relations in the Asia-Pacific region. It can provide greater cultural understanding and regional integration but also aggravate tensions.  Cultural phenomenon such as the wildly popular Korean pop star Psy (of “Gangnam Style” fame) arise from the availability of digital media allowing a video to ‘go viral’ on a global scale in weeks. Conversely, tensions over territorial and historical issues in Northeast and Southeast Asia gain credence and momentum from discussion on digital media platforms, often pushing governments to act in ways detrimental to peace and stability. How does digital media influence international relations in the region? Is it a force for positive change or a source of instability? Finally, the rules governing critical parts of the physical infrastructure upon which digital media depend, such as governance of the Internet are increasingly contested in the international domain.

The fifth Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue focused on these issues surrounding the impact of digital media. The Dialogue brought together scholars, policy experts, and practitioners from the media, from Stanford University and from throughout Asia. Selected participants will start each session of the Dialogue with stimulating, brief presentations. Participants from around the region engaged in off-the-record discussion and exchange of views. The final report from the Dialogue will be published on this page as soon as it has been completed.

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.

Koret Distinguished Lecture Series: Lecture I

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement but the situation on the Korean peninsula remains tense and uncertain. Eight months after stepping down as the Republic of Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kim Sung-Hwan will address the difficult challenges to achieving sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Minister Kim will examine North Korea’s policies toward South Korea and the United States in light of major developments on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. He will also address international efforts to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. He will share his insights into the current situation in North Korea, including the differences in North Korea’s policies and behavior since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father Kim Jong Il two years ago as the supreme leader. Minister Kim will conclude by offering his policy recommendations for dealing with the North Korea of today.

Minister Kim completed thirty-six years as a career diplomat in the Republic of Korea’s foreign service in March of this year. His final two positions in government were as Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs and National Security (2008 to 2010) and as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2010-2013). Earlier assignments in the ministry headquarters included vice minister (2010) and deputy minister for planning and Management (2005). From 2001 to 2002, he served as director-general of the North American Affairs Bureau, in charge of the Republic of Korea’s relations with the United States. Overseas, Minister Kim’s postings included service in the United States, Russia and India. He was Ambassador to the Republic of Austria and Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna (2006-2008) and Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan (2002-2004). In July 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appointed Minister Kim as a member of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Minister Kim graduated from Seoul National University and studied at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Currently, Minister Kim is Chair of the Institute for Global Social Responsibility and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.

China and the World

This multiyear project, coordinated by Thomas Fingar, Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, looks sequentially and systematically at China’s interactions with countries in all regions and across many issue areas. The project seeks to clarify China’s objectives and policies to achieve them, but it also seeks to identify and explain the goals and policy calculations of other countries that see opportunities and perils associated with China’s greater activism on the world stage.

Phase one of the project examined China’s engagement with Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Scholars and foreign policy practitioners from China, Japan, the ROK, Russia, and the United Stated discussed these questions at a two-day workshop in Beijing in March 2012. Participants from several Southeast Asian countries also attended the workshop to ensure that questions explored were broad enough to facilitate comparisons and the search for patterns and learning across issues and areas at the follow-on regional workshop held in Singapore in November 2012.

The Singapore workshop, phase 2, discussed China's objectives and policies with respect to Southeast Asia, but focused primarily on the ways in which China's approach and actions are perceived by individual countries in the region and what regional countries seek to achieve with respect to China. Implicit in some of the presentations was the notion that China was trying to restore its traditional primacy in the region and to prevent any country inside or outside of Southeast Asia from exercising greater regional influence. Other participants emphasized material goals, including access to resources, markets for Chinese goods, and fostering economic dependence on China. Participants agreed that China's influence and impact are large and growing, and that states in the region are pursuing different strategies to advance their own interests and maximize their own freedom of action.

The third workshop, to be held at Stanford University on June 20-21, 2013, will examine China’s relationship with South and Central Asia. While there is a focus on the bilateral relationship between China and India, the largest and most powerful regional actor, the conference will also look at other key bilateral relationships, such as with Pakistan, and at interactions on a regional level, including in the economic sphere. The workshop will explore the management of cross border issues such as migration flows, water, and energy resource development. The sessions on Central Asia will offer broader understanding of China’s intersection with other powers such as Russia and India in that region.