The pace of China-U.S. strategic competition has accelerated in the Asia-Pacific, causing heightened concern among U.S. allies and partners in the region over China’s economic expansion, Belt and Road Initiative, and maritime ambitions that challenge U.S. dominance in the region.  Even U.S. allies as reliable as Australia are wondering openly about the capacity of the U.S. to balance Chinese influence.  The Trump administration’s isolationist rhetoric, abandonment of TPP, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, and “flinch” during the recent trade war has increased this concern.  China meanwhile has demonstrated increased sophistication in diplomacy and in neutralizing historical U.S. advantages.  The new frontiers of cyber and space are the most likely domains in which these challenges will play out from a security perspective.  The choices that the U.S. makes in these realms in the next two years may establish a course for the region that cannot be corrected later.

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Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich is the former US ambassador to Australia and Special Counsel to President Obama in the White House.  He is currently a partner at Dentons and CEO of Dentons Diplomatic Solutions, where he focuses on privacy and data security, internal investigations, market access, and cross-border disputes involving the Indo-Pacific region.

As ambassador, his term was marked by the US "rebalance" to the Asia­ Pacific, with Australia being the focal point for that shift. His efforts included overseeing record growth in trade and investment between the US and Australia, bringing the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty into force, establishing new alliance agreements for satellites and cybersecurity, executing a new space cooperation agreement that supported the Mars Curiosity rover landing, leading joint US-Australia efforts in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, and promoting regional human rights efforts. For his federal service, Amb. Bleich has received numerous awards, including the highest civilian honors awarded by the Director of National Intelligence and the United States Navy. In 2014, he received the State Department's highest award for a non-career ambassador, the Sue Cobb Prize for Exemplary Diplomatic Service.

Amb. Bleich currently serves as Chair of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (appointed by President Obama) and as a member of the East-West Center (appointed by Secretary Kerry). He also serves by appointment of the Governor on the Governor's 11-member International Trade and Investment Council. He was formerly the President of the State Bar of California, and the Chair of the California State University Board of Trustees, and currently serves on the Board of Stanford’s Center For the Advanced Study of Behavior Science, and the Board of Amherst College.  He has been elected as a life member to both the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Amb. Bleich received his B.A. from Amherst College (with high honors), M.P.P. from Harvard (with highest honors), and J.D. from U.C. Berkeley (with highest honors) where he also served as Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review.  He clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the DC Circuit, Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge Howard Holtzmann of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague, before becoming a partner at Munger Tolles & Olson.  Amb. Bleich has been regularly listed among the Daily Journal's Top 100 attorneys in California, honored as a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year and listed in Lawdragon 500 and in America's Best Lawyers as a top “Bet the Company” lawyer.

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This event is part of the China Program’s Colloquia Series entitled "A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations " sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's China Program.

A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations

Trade conflict has exploded. The media is rife with stories of China’s unfair trade practices, cyber theft, IP theft and forced technology transfers. Who will first scale the commanding heights of technological supremacy? Who will be the first mover in AI, robotics and biotechnology? What are the implications of Beijing’s ambitious infrastructure projects, including its Belt and Road Initiative? How is China’s “sharp power” deployed, and what are its implications for political and civic life in the U.S.? Can the Trump administration and Beijing’s leadership reach agreement on our trade disputes? Are these just the beginning salvos of an increasingly turbulent future? As U.S. policy towards China sharply veers away from “constructive engagement” to “strategic competition,” the Stanford China Program will host a series of talks by leading experts to explore the current state of our bilateral relations, its potential future, and their implications for the world order.

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/china/research/new-cold-war-sharp-power-strategic-competition-and-future-us-china-relations

EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series

RSVP required by February 22, 2019 at: https://goo.gl/forms/ZCwcHC0qTec2rzj63

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

ABSTRACT: The United States has been the world’s dominant power for more than a century.  Now many analysts believe China is taking its place. Is China an emerging superpower? Should the United States gear up for a new cold war in Asia? In this seminar, I show that China actually lags far behind the United States by the most important measures of national wealth and power—and will probably fall further behind in the coming decades. The most likely threat to American security, therefore, is not a confident Chinese peer competitor, but a deeply insecure China that lashes out after failing to live up to the global hype about its rise. I will discuss how the United States can contain this threat without starting a cold or hot war with Beijing.   

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EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series

RSVP required by February 8, 2019 to: https://goo.gl/forms/dht3i9iX06mGpNyC3

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

ABSTRACT: Most North Korean refugees and defectors live in South Korea, but in the past decade a growing number have moved beyond the Korean peninsula to create exile communities in North America, Europe, and other locations around the world. These movements have contributed to the emergence of a new and more globally distributed North Korean diaspora. What factors have shaped the emergence of this diaspora, and what effect is it likely to have?  I find that contestation over conceptions of citizenship, at both the level of the individual and the level of government policy, have combined to shape the migration and resettlement of North Korean defectors and refugees over time and across geographic space. I then draw on a comparison with other authoritarian diasporas and extra-territorial opposition movements to show how changing North Korean resettlement patterns are likely to have significant geopolitical implications--not just for the individuals and families that migrate out of North Korea, but for American and international security and human rights policies toward North Korea.  

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UPDATE: This event will be live streamed on our Facebook page. Follow us there to make sure you don't miss the start.

This event is open to the Stanford community and the public, but a Stanford or government-issued ID must be presented for admission.

The event is on-the-record but off-camera. No photography or video recording will be permitted. Cameras will not be permitted inside the venue.

Members of the media: registration is required; please follow the directions below.

Please note venue change to Bechtel Conference Room (Encina Hall, 1st Floor)

This panel aims to bring together a diverse spectrum of speakers to generate discussion and debate regarding Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance, a report jointly issued on November 29, 2018 by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society.

Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance has sparked sharp reactions as it urges American governments, organizations and individuals to engage in “constructive vigilance” to counter China’s illicit, influence-seeking operations across a broad spectrum of American political and civic life, including U.S. federal and state governments; university campuses; and the technology sector.  What is the evidence behind these claims? What are the implications of these claims? Is the Chinese threat real or speculative? How can we responsibly assess the difference? 

Link to report found

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Gordon H. Chang is the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and professor in the Department of History at Stanford University. With degrees from Princeton and Stanford, Chang specializes in the history of U.S.-China relations and Asian American history. He has written and edited many books and essays on these topics. Among these are Friends and   Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford University Press, 1990); Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writing, 1942-1945 (Stanford University Press, 1997); Asian Americans and Politics: Perspectives, Experiences, Prospects (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001); Chinese American Voices From the Gold Rush to the Present (University of California Press, 2006); Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (Stanford University Press, 2008); and Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (Harvard University Press, 2015). At Stanford, he is co-directing the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project that is   recovering and interpreting the history of Chinese workers who toiled on the first transcontinental rail line and other lines in the 19th century.

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Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-   editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around in the world, and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.  His 2016 book, In Search of Democracy,  explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his writing and research, particularly on Africa and Asia.  He has just completed a new book on the global crisis of democracy, which will be published in 2019, and is now writing a textbook on democratic development.

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Elizabeth C. Economy is the C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Her most recent book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State,   (Oxford University Press, 2018) analyzes the contradictory nature of reform under President Xi Jinping. She is also author of By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest is Changing the World(Oxford University Press, 2014) with Michael Levi, and The River Runs   Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (Cornell University Press, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010; Japanese edition, 2005; Chinese edition, 2011). She has published articles in policy and scholarly journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Harvard   Business Review; and op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post, among others. In June 2018, she was named one of the "10 Names That Matter on China Policy" by Politico Magazine.

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David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and Research Scholar at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He also is Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Having started his academic career at The Ohio State University, Lampton has been   Chairman of the The Asia Foundation (2015-2018), president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations (1988-1997), and former Dean of Faculty at SAIS (2004-2012). He is the author of: Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000 (2001); The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and   Minds (2008); and, The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy (editor, Stanford University Press, 2001). He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University where, as an undergraduate student, he was a fireman. Lampton has an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies. His   newest book, Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, was first published in January 2014 and will be reissued in paperback with a new Preface early in 2019 by the University of California Press. His current field research and book-length project focuses on Beijing’s effort to build high-speed and other rail lines to Singapore from southern China.

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Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of FSI at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at Shorenstein APARC. Professor Oi also is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems.  Oi has written extensively on China’s political economy. Her most recent works include, Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, with Steven Goldstein (2018); Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017); Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (2011); and Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China’s Transformation, with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou (2010).

This event is part of the China Program’s Colloquia Series entitled "A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations " sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's China Program.

A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations

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Trade conflict has exploded. The media is rife with stories of China’s unfair trade practices, cyber theft, IP theft and forced technology transfers. Who will first scale the commanding heights of technological supremacy? Who will be the first mover in AI, robotics and biotechnology? What are the implications of Beijing’s ambitious infrastructure projects, including its Belt and Road Initiative? How is China’s “sharp power” deployed, and what are its implications for political and civic life in the U.S.? Can the Trump administration and Beijing’s leadership reach agreement on our trade disputes? Are these just the beginning salvos of an increasingly turbulent future? As U.S. policy towards China sharply veers away from “constructive engagement” to “strategic competition,” the Stanford China Program will host a series of talks by leading experts to explore the current state of our bilateral relations, its potential future, and their implications for the world order.

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/china/research/new-cold-war-sharp-power-strategic-competition-and-future-us-china-relations

For a recap, audio, transcript and pictures of the event, please see the following link.

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/china/multimedia/transcripts-chinese-influence-real-or-perceived

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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

In this talk, David Leheny (Waseda University) discusses his new book Empire of Hope (Cornell University Press, 2018), which challenges current trends in debates about emotion and politics, arguing that we should instead look at the role of narrative in shaping emotional representation. In the book, Leheny draws from debates about status in international relations theory and from debates about affect and narrative in literary and historical studies to analyze cases from Japan’s Bubble and post-Bubble eras. This talk will focus especially on a 2001 crisis in US-Japan relations over a collision between a US Navy nuclear submarine and a fisheries training boat that resulted in the deaths of nine Japanese, including four high-school students. By presenting grief as both a national emotion and as one that could be narrated through the lens of timeless cultural difference, the US and Japanese governments crafted a crisis resolution that ostensibly rested on “mutual understanding” but that also hid the messier realities of power and of loss in the collision’s aftermath.

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