The concept of "soft power" is central for the multi-dimensional rise of China as well as the evolving global strategy of the United States. Beijing is increasingly concerned with projecting soft power to neutralize perceptions of China as a threat while Chinese global influence grows. Washington, meanwhile, looks to employ soft power in remaking its post-Iraq international image, countering terrorist ideological extremism, and attracting the cooperation of international partners to deal with global challenges.

This seminar will address several key questions about soft power:

- What are the different implications when governments use "hard power" in "soft" ways versus when they try to use "soft power" in "hard" ways?

- How is soft power understood and operationalized differently in China than in the United States?

- What are the different visions for projecting soft power among various political actors in China?

- Can soft power be threatening? How can we disentangle capabilities and policies that may be threatening from those that are attractive to other states and encourage cooperation?

About the speakers

Qinghong Wang is currently coordinating the Education Exchange Program for the East-West Center in Honolulu. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2010. His dissertation is entitled, Reinventing Democracy through Confucianism: Representation, Application and Reorientation of Western Transnational Nonprofit Organizations (WTNPOs) in Post-Mao China. Dr. Wang earned his MA in Asian studies from the University of Hawaii in 2003 and his BA in Chinese language and literature from Peking (Beijing) University in 1999. Dr. Wang is originally from Beijing. He was the Lloyd (Joe) R. and Lilian Vasey Fellow with the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2006 to 2007, and has since remained an adjunct fellow with the Forum. His research focuses on the development of civil society in China, U.S.-China relations, traditional and nontraditional security issues in the Asia Pacific, and comparative politics and philosophies of East and West.

Leif-Eric Easley is the 2010-11 Northeast Asian History Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. Dr. Easley completed his Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government in 2010, specializing in East Asian international relations. His dissertation presents a theory of national identity perceptions, bilateral trust between governments, and patterns of security cooperation, based on extensive fieldwork in Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing. At Stanford, he is teaching a course on nationalism, contested history, and the international relations of Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States. Dr. Easley is actively involved in high-level U.S.-Asia exchanges (Track II diplomacy) as a Sasakawa and Kelly Fellow with the Pacific Forum CSIS. His research appears in a variety of academic journals, supplemented by commentaries in major newspapers.

With regional perspective commentary by:

Donald Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Forum, Shorenstein APARC

Daniel Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC

David Straub, Associate Director, Korean Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC

Former President Gerhard Casper launched the Asia-Pacific Scholars Program (AP Scholars Program) in 1997 to strengthen and expand Stanford University's ties with Asia. The program was loosely modeled on Oxford University's Rhodes Scholarship. Led by renowned China scholar Michel Oksenberg of the Asia/Pacific Research Center (the predecessor organization of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center), the first program brought together a highly diverse class of nineteen graduate students from the United Kingdom, the United States, and numerous countries in Asia. The AP Scholars Program thrived under Oksenberg's direction, but fell dormant for nearly a decade following his death in 2001.

Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, re-launched the AP Scholars Program in September 2010. "I am delighted to have been asked to revive it," states Fingar.

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The film Pacific Vision: The Asia-Pacific Scholars Program at Stanford University was released to commemorate the program's inaugural year. A clip from Pacific Vision, featuring interviews with Casper and Oksenberg, is available here courtesy the Stanford University Archives.

Please join us on April 25 and 26 for two evenings devoted to an examination of and conversation about the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake in northern Honshu, Japan, and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear accident. In talks and panel discussions, experts from the School of Earth Sciences and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies will focus on what happened, the impacts of the events, and what the future holds for Japan and other earthquake- and tsunami-zone regions of the world.

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APRIL 25 PARTICIPANTS

Moderator:

Pamela A. Matson is the Chester Naramore Dean of the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies at Stanford, and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Panelists:

Gregory Beroza is the Wayne Loel Professor in the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences and chair of the Department of Geophysics. He works to develop and apply techniques for analyzing seismograms—recordings of seismic waves—in order to understand how earthquakes work and the hazard they pose to engineered structures.

Gregory G. Deierlein is the John A. Blume Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford. His research focuses on improving limit states design of constructed facilities through the development and application of nonlinear structural analysis methods and performance-based design criteria.

Katherine Marvel is the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Perry Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford. Her research interests include energy security and nuclear nonproliferation, renewable energy technologies, energy security, nuclear power and nonproliferation, sustainable development, and public understanding of science.

For more information, please visit the symposium website.