The U.S.-Japan relationship has grown from strength to strength, benefitting both countries in terms of diplomacy, security and trade. Now, at a time when China is moving forward with its policy of expansionism in the East and South China Seas, and North Korea continues to threaten both the U and Japanese mainland, how can the two countries best work together to ensure regional stability? At this seminar, up-and-coming scholars from Japan and the United States will explore the potential opportunities and challenges for the U.S.-Japan relationship under the new Trump administration.

Panelists:

Phillip Lipscy
The Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, and the politics of East Asia, particularly Japan.

Satoru Mori
Professor, Hosei University.  Former official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Dr. Mori holds a PhD in Law from the University of Tokyo. His research interests include contemporary American diplomacy, especially with Asian countries.  Previously he was a visiting researcher at Princeton University and George Washington University. He has delivered remarks at the U.S. Department of State, CSIS, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and other symposiums in the U.S.

Shino Watanabe
Associate Professor, Sophia University.  Dr. Watanabe obtained her PhD in International Relations from the University of Virginia, followed by a Master’s degree from Tufts University. She also studied at School of International Studies, Peking University in China.  Her main research interests are Chinese foreign policy and international relations of East Asia. She published a number of articles on China’s foreign economic policy and foreign relations.

Moderated by Daniel Sneider, Associate Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

*Refreshments will be served*

In the two decades since the countries of Central Asia declared independence, China has become one of their main partners, eclipsing many other actors. This has impacted the international relations of the new states, and structured their economic development. China's influence in the region has, however, raised many questions, ranging from issues of national integrity to economic stability and geopolitical policies.

In terms of economics, hydrocarbons and trade are at the forefront of Chinese activity in the region. Beijing has become a key positive element in the development of a service economy and new technologies, while China's geographical proximity has supported regional development and the insertion of Central Asian countries into world markets. However, Beijing also has played a negative role by using the local economies as mere sources for raw materials and by destroying, through dominating competition, the already very fragile post-Soviet industrial fabric.

On the geopolitical level, how does Central Asia handle its relations with a diverse array of international actors and thus competing interests in order to achieve a positive balance? Central Asian governments have been playing a careful balancing game between the two main actors, Beijing and Moscow. However, many Central Asians argue for countering what they see as an impasse in their countries' partnerships with Russia and China by developing relations with other actors, particularly Muslim countries (such as Turkey, Iran or the UAE) and Western countries. This presentation will address questions at both the economic and geopolitical levels, where Beijing has made it possible to act as a catalyst for political debates about the choices made by Central Asia governments. 

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Sebastien Peyrouse is the Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs of The George Washington University. He was a doctoral and postdoctoral Fellow at the French Institute for Central Asia Studies in Tashkent (1998-2000 and 2002-2005), a Research Fellow at the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University in Sapporo (2006), and a Research Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington (2006-2007). In 2008-2012, he was a Senior Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program (SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C.) and with the Institute for Security and Development Policy (Stockholm). He is an Associated Scholar with the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS, Paris), and with the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE, Madrid) and a member of the Brussels-based EUCAM (Europe-Central Asia Monitoring). 

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Dr. Peyrouse is the author of Turkmenistan. Strategies of Power, Dilemmas of Development (M. E. Sharpe, 2011), and the co-author of The 'Chinese Question' in Central Asia. Domestic Order, Social Changes, and the Chinese Factor (Hurst, Columbia University Press, 2012) and of Globalizing Central Asia. Geopolitics and the Challenges of Economic Development (M.E. Sharpe, 2012). He has also co-edited China and India in Central Asia. A new "Great Game"? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and Mapping Central Asia: Indian Perceptions and Strategies (Ashgate, 2011). His articles have appeared in Europe Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Nationalities Papers, China Perspectives, Religion, State & Society, Journal of Church and State. He has authored or co-authored seven books on Central Asia in French.

This event is co-sponsored by the Shorenstein APARC's China Program and The Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES).

This event is part of the winter colloquia series entitled "China: Going Global" sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's China Program.

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China: Going Global

Beijing’s new Silk Road initiative links old trade corridors from Asia to Africa and Europe. Many perceive that President Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative as well as China’s many other trade, investment and finance projects transcend their economic calculus and reflect Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions to reposition China’s standing on the global stage. The China Program brings leading experts to explore the drivers and motivators of China’s international initiatives, their reach and scope as well as the implications of China’s increasing activism on the world stage.

http://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/research/china-going-global

Since assuming the presidency of the Philippines in June 2016 Rodrigo Duterte has been the focus of considerable international attention because of his brusque personality and two dramatically new policies: 1) a take-no-prisoners war on illegal drugs that has resulted in the deaths of over 6,000 alleged drug pushers and users; and 2) an abrupt distancing of relations with the United States coupled with an enthusiastic embrace of China. But considerably less attention is being paid to the Duterte government’s other policies or to the underlying political dynamics that will determine the efficacy of his government and, perhaps, the future of liberal democracy in the Philippines. The speaker will situate the Duterte government in the context of Philippine’s democratic experience, identify the political dynamics that are likely to determine its future, and assess the multiple threats to liberal democracy in the Philippines.

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Due to venue capacity limits, we are no longer accepting RSVPs for this event.

India prides itself on being the "world's largest democracy". In some respects it is certifiably democratic; as in the regular conduct of free and fair elections. But in other respects there are deficits. One such area is freedom of expression. While Indian writers, artists and film-makers are certainly freer than their counterparts in totalitarian countries such as China, they are less free when compared to their colleagues in democracies such as Sweden or the United States. This lecture identifies eight distinct threats to freedom of expression in India, the most important of which are the presence of archaic colonial laws and the rise of identity politics.

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Guha’s books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002). India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, and Outlook, and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu. His most recent book is Gandhi Before India (Knopf, 2014), which was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times.

Apart from his books, Guha also writes a syndicated column, that appears in six languages in newspapers with a combined readership of some twenty mllion. Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The New York Times has referred to him as ‘perhaps the best among India’s non fiction writers’; Time Magazine has called him ‘Indian democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler’.

Ramachandra Guha’s awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the Republic of India’s third highest civilian honour. In 2008, and again in 2013, Prospect Magazine nominated Guha as one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities by Yale University. In 2015, he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies.

About the colloquia:

In 2014, Indian voters gave Narendra Modi and the BJP a mandate to accelerate India’s economic reforms and revitalize its foreign relations, in particular with the United States and with partners in East Asia. But the pace and depth of reforms and economic transformation have not met the high expectations, despite strong GDP performance. Economic growth remains uneven, job creation sluggish, and massive infrastructural and administrative problems continue to trouble many sectors of the economy. After twenty-five years of economic reforms, India’s potential as a new global industrial hub has still not been realized and its vast resources of labor and talent remain underdeveloped.

During the 2017 winter and spring quarters Shorenstein APARC and the Center for South Asia will host a series of lectures and discussions that explore what makes India democratic and dynamic, and the obstacles that prevent the country from realizing its enormous potential.

Also, in 2017, the next Global Entrepreneur Summit will be in India, sequel to the 2016 Stanford-hosted Summit. This colloquium will help prepare for that event by reaching out to scholars, students, interested stakeholders, business leaders and others in the Bay Area.

This colloquia is co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for South Asia 

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Since its independence, India’s statesmen, policymakers and social scientists all firmly believed that the entrenched hierarchical caste order and the deep divisions between religious communities would become less salient, and perhaps wither away, as the country developed a modern economy and a new division of labor based on skill and merit rather than a ‘traditional’ inherited status. Today, after seven decades of democracy and steady economic growth, it is clear that both caste and religious community are as important as ever. Rather than disappearing, these cultural identities and social networks have evolved along with the economy. A closer look at how the Indian economy is organized reveals that caste and community fundamentally shape how labor is organized, how markets function, how urban development happens, and how industry is owned and organized. Two case studies, one of skilled labor in South India and another of the structure of industrial growth in a city in central India, will illustrate how India actually works.

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As the Director of Stanford’s Center for South Asian Studies, Hansen is charged with building a substantial new program. He has many and broad interests spanning South Asia and Southern Africa, several cities and multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism..

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Aruna Ranganathan studies questions of work and employment in the context of economic development. By applying novel methods that combine field-experimental and quantitative research designs with ethnography and interviews, Aruna's research investigates how low-income occupations in developing countries are governed, organized, seek meaning through their work and navigate the market. Through her research, Aruna strives to advance our theoretical understanding of work, while informing the design of labor-market institutions and policy for the developing world. In previous projects based in India, Aruna has studied the boom of IT and business process outsourcing, the professionalization of plumbing, price-setting behavior among handcraft artisans and the transition of women into formal employment in garment factories.

About the colloquia:

In 2014, Indian voters gave Narendra Modi and the BJP a mandate to accelerate India’s economic reforms and revitalize its foreign relations, in particular with the United States and with partners in East Asia. But the pace and depth of reforms and economic transformation have not met the high expectations, despite strong GDP performance. Economic growth remains uneven, job creation sluggish, and massive infrastructural and administrative problems continue to trouble many sectors of the economy. After twenty-five years of economic reforms, India’s potential as a new global industrial hub has still not been realized and its vast resources of labor and talent remain underdeveloped.

During the 2017 winter and spring quarters Shorenstein APARC and the Center for South Asia will host a series of lectures and discussions that explore what makes India democratic and dynamic, and the obstacles that prevent the country from realizing its enormous potential.

Also, in 2017, the next Global Entrepreneur Summit will be in India, sequel to the 2016 Stanford-hosted Summit. This colloquium will help prepare for that event by reaching out to scholars, students, interested stakeholders, business leaders and others in the Bay Area.

This colloquia is co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for South Asia 

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Long a laggard on human rights, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is being pressed from within to reconsider its indifference. In 2009 an ASEAN Human Rights Commission (AICHR) was created and tasked with promoting (not protecting) human rights in Southeast Asia. In 2012 its members agreed to issue a first-ever ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. Most observers dismissed these moves as symbolic—an effort mainly to assuage foreign critics and  gain international legitimacy. Prof. Jetschke differs.  She will argue that the AICHR’s formation was prompted in part by the swelling flows of refugees across borders inside Southeast Asia, especially from Myanmar, and the problems thereby created for the region’s states and societies. She will also explore the extent to which these factors have eroded one of ASEAN’s strongest regional norms—the taboo on interfering in members’ domestic affairs. That erosion could strengthen ASEAN as something more than the sum of its sovereign members.

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PLEASE NOTE VENUE CHANGE TO ENCINA HALL,

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The election of Donald Trump has introduced a big question mark into America’s relations with China. Will the new president start a trade war with the world’s second biggest economy? Will Trump attempt to refashion America’s relations with Taiwan and thus infuriate Beijing? Will Trump’s vow to build more U.S. naval vessels place the United States and China on a path to conflict in the South China Sea? How will Trump handle the prospects of a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and an intercontinental ballistic missile with which to deliver them? As for China, how will it react to this new administration, which espouses a decidedly different view of China than the one that predominated in Washington over the past several decades? Will China adopt the role of “responsible [global] stakeholder” in contrast to Trump’s “America first” ideology? Or will China join the United States in a race to the bottom, precipitating further ideological, economic and geostrategic competition that pulls the world down with it?

A book signing will follow. Copies of Mr. John Pomfret’s book will be available for purchase 

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This event is co-sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's China Program and the Center for East Asian Studies