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Maritime issues are increasingly at the heart of security issues between the United States and China. Historically, the Taiwan issue had dominated the relationship, but increasingly issues such as close in reconnaissance, the South China Sea, and different views on exclusive economic zone rights are shaping the security agenda. In each of these areas, the two sides are far apart. U.S. routine practices of air and sea-based reconnaissance well outside territorial waters is met with indignation by Chinese leaders. Chinese assertive policy regarding its claims of the Spratly islands has provoked several Southeast Asian nations and drawn U.S. diplomatic attentions to the region. Chinese claims on EEZ rights are outliers internationally, however the United States stands outside the key international treaty that governs such rights.

Overlaying these potentially conflicting national interests, both sides have engaged in military shifts. China has maintained double-digit growth in its military budget for nearly 20 years, with substantial attention to the naval realm. Chinese diesel submarines and advanced combat aircraft have brought the People’s Liberation Army to modern levels. New types of systems such as ballistic missile launching submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles are changing the vary nature of China’s maritime capabilities. As the United States winds down two wars in the Middle East, its military remains attentive to these changes and includes doctrinal and force posture changes. New deployments in Singapore, Guam, and Australia supplement enhanced partnerships with the Philippines and Vietnam, and a reinvigoration of traditional alliances.

The interaction between potentially conflictual national interests and a dynamic military situation raises concerns about the future between the two giants astride the Pacific.

About the panelists

Admiral Gary Roughead is a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. Among his six operational commands, Admiral Roughead was the first officer to command both classes of Aegis ships, having commanded USS Barry (DDG 52) and USS Port Royal (CG 73). As a flag officer, he commanded Cruiser Destroyer Group 2, the George Washington Battle Group; and U.S. 2nd Fleet/NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic and Naval Forces North Fleet East. Ashore, he served as Commandant, United States Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy’s Chief of Legislative Affairs, and as Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Command. He is one of only two officers to have commanded the fleets in the Pacific and Atlantic, commanding the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Joint Task Force 519, as well as U.S. Fleet Forces Command, where he was responsible for ensuring Navy forces were trained, ready, equipped and prepared to operate around the world, where and when needed.

Roughead’s awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and various unit and service awards.

Roughead became the 29th Chief of Naval Operations Sep. 29, 2007. He retired from active duty, Sept. 23, 2011.

Christopher P. Twomey is an associate professor of national security affairs (with tenure) at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif. In 2004, he received his PhD in politcal science from MIT and joined the NPS faculty, later serving as associate chair for research and as director of the Center for Contemporary Conflict from 2007 to 2009. Today, he works closely with the Departments of Defense and State on a range of diplomatic engagements across Asia and regularly advises PACOM, STRATCOM, and the Office of Net Assessment. His book—The Military Lens: Doctrinal Differences and Deterrence Failure in Sino-American Relations (Cornell, 2010)—explains how differing military doctrines complicate diplomatic signaling, interpretations of those signals, and assessments of the balance of power. He edited Perspectives on Sino-American Strategic Nuclear Issues (2008), and his work has appeared in journals such as Asian Survey, Security Studies, Arms Control Today, Contemporary Security Policy, Asia Policy, Current History, and Journal of Contemporary China. He has previously taught or researched at Harvard, Boston College, RAND, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and IGCC, and is currently a research fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. He has lived in China several times, speaks and reads Chinese, and regularly travels to Asia.

His research interests center on security studies, Chinese foreign policy, general nuclear strategy, strategic culture, statecraft, and East Asian security in theory and practice.

Additional information about his research and teaching can be found here.

In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

 

Minoru Aosaki, "Banking System and Sovereign Risk in Japan"

After the financial crisis of 2008, European financial markets have experienced sharp increases of sovereign risk. This adversely affected the solvency of banking institutions as they suffered losses from their sovereign holdings and deterioration in their funding conditions. Meanwhile, Japan's sovereign market remained stable, but market participants were cautious as the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest in the world, and its banking sector holds as much as 44% of domestic sovereign debt. The question is how Japanese policy makers should address the sovereign risk in the banking system. In pursuit of this question, Aosaki compares the market environment in Japan and the Euro Area, examining the reasons banks hold sovereign bonds and the channels that connect sovereign risk with the banking system.

Prashant Pandya, "Cell-based Therapies -- Current Trends and Future Prospects"

Stem cells have been the subject of considerable excitement and debate over the last decade. Stem cell therapy is emerging as a potentially revolutionary new way to treat disease and injury, with wide-ranging medical benefits. Stem cell research provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of human biology and treatment of various diseases. In Pandya’s research, he shares his experience about major challenges related to the commercial development of stem cell therapies and key technology drivers. This research is based on consultations with several prestigious regulatory agencies—including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia—as well as interviews with 45 CEOs and senior scientists of large and small biotech companies and professors from leading universities across five countries. Pandya’s research reveals that there are many intriguing aspects of stem cells still remaining to be elucidated. Stem cells have the potential to treat an enormous range of diseases and conditions that plague millions of people and offer exciting promise for future therapies. But significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research, and successful commercialization of cell-based therapies requires more than proving safety and efficacy to regulators. Ultimately the therapy must be commercially viable.

Ramnath Ramanathan, "Designing Toxicology Studies for Small Interfering Ribo Nucleic Acid"

The field of medicine has improved drastically over the period of time. Medical treatment has evolved from using plant extracts to chemical drugs to stem cell and gene therapies. Discovery of small interfering Ribo Nucleic Acid (siRNA) was one of the most important recent breakthroughs in the field of medicine. This was due to siRNA’s capability of posttranscriptional gene silencing by destruction of mRNA and thereby reducing the protein synthesis. Though the efficacy studies conducted in vitro and in animal models are promising, there have also been circumstances where there were adverse effects including mortality of animals treated with siRNA. Since RNA interference is a relatively new technique, it is very important to understand the toxicity involved before using it as a therapy. For this purpose, toxicology studies have to be designed in order to address all questions on the safety aspects of siRNA. In addition to the traditional toxicity studies, several other tests will have to be conducted. These additional studies will have to address issues specific to siRNA therapy such as immune activation, formation of tetraplex DNA, down regulation of non-target mRNA, interaction with cellular proteins, etc. Through Ramanathan’s work, he has designed a battery of toxicology studies to understand the side effects so that only relatively safe therapy is tried on humans during clinical trials. Ramanathan will present his findings.

 

After the submission of the Sachar Committee Report, several studies have undertaken data-based analysis of the socioeconomic and educational conditions of Muslims in India. Many researchers, policy makers, and Muslims believe that education can be the only mechanism to enhance their socioeconomic status and enter into better-paid jobs, businesses, and professions. This seminar will review the available evidence on the patterns of Muslim participation in education and workforce outcomes. Comparing the estimates derived from the most recent round of the National Sample Survey for the year 2009–2010 with the earlier years, it will assess how these patterns have changed in recent years. To the extent feasible the correlates of these changes will also be explored.

Rakesh Basant's current teaching and research interests focus on firm strategy, innovation, public policy, and regulation. His recent work has focused on capability building processes in industrial clusters; FDI in R&D; innovation-internalization linkages; competition policy; inter-organizational linkages for technology development (especially academia-industry relationships); strategic and policy aspects of intellectual property rights; linkages between public policy and technological change; economics of strategy; and the small-scale sector in India. His sectoral focus of research in these areas has been on the pharmaceutical, IT, electronics, and suto-component industries. Basant was a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee (also known as Sachar Committee) to write a report on the social, economic, and educational conditions of Muslims in India. In continuation of this work, part of his current research focuses on issues relating to affirmative action, especially in higher education. Basant has also been a recipient of the of the Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Economics, and has spent two years at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University as a visiting research fellow. In addition, he has worked as a consultant to several international organizations.

This seminar series is co-sponsored by the South Asia Initiative,

   

  

 

Muslim minorities in China are often depicted as either forces for integration (i.e., sinicization and assimilation) or disintegration (as separatists, radical Islamists, or ethnic nationalists). Yet, many of the challenges China’s Muslims confront remain the same as they have for the last 1400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society, though clearly many are new as a result of China's transformed and increasingly globalized society, and especially since the watershed events of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the subsequent Sino-U.S. cooperation on the “war on terrorism.”

Muslims in China live as minority communities amid a sea of people, in their view, who are largely pork-eating, polytheist, secularist, and kafir ("heathen"). Nevertheless, many of their small and isolated communities have survived in rather inhospitable circumstances for over a millennium. 

This seminar will examine Islam and Muslim minority identity in China. Through comparing the two largest Muslim minorities in China (Uyghur and Hui), it will be argued that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in China can be seen to be a measure of the extent to which Muslims have been able to reconcile the dictates of Islamic identiy to their host culture. This goes against the opposite view that can be found in the writings of some analysts of Islam in China, that Islam in the region is almost unavoidably rebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to a non-Muslim state. The history of Islam in China suggests that both within each Muslim community, as well as between Muslim nationalities, there are many alternatives to either complete accommodation or separatism.

Dru C. Gladney is the author of over 50 academic articles, as well as Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic (Harvard University Press, 1996, 2nd edition); Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (Wadsworth, 1998); Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the U.S. (Editor, Stanford University Press, 1998). Former president of the Pacific Basin Institute and dean of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Gladney is also the author of  Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Sub-Altern Subjects  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). He is currently working on a comparative study of Muslim adaptations in China as well as a study of new media in helping to build a Uyghur "virtual" nation. 

 This seminar series is co-sponsored by the South Asia Initiative,
 

   

    

 

More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed gave rise to one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the twentieth century.

Published for the first time in English, Peacemaker is the memoir of Lim Dong-won, former South Korean unification minister and architect of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine policy toward North Korea. Lim will present a talk at Stanford in conjunction with the book’s U.S. release, highlighting major themes from it and discussing them within the context of recent developments on the peninsula.

As both witness and participant, Peacemaker traces the process of twenty years of diplomatic negotiations with North Korea, from the earliest rounds of inter-Korean talks through the historic inter-Korean summit of June 2000 and beyond. It offers a fascinating inside look into the recent history of North-South Korea relations and provides important lessons for policymakers and citizens who seek to understand and resolve the tragic—and increasingly dangerous—situation on the Korean Peninsula.

About the Speaker

Following a thirty-year career in the South Korean military, Lim Dong-won’s government service began with his tenure as ROK ambassador to Nigeria and then Australia; under the Roh Tae-woo administration, he served as chancellor of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security and director of arms control planning. During the Kim Dae-jung administration Lim held numerous key national-level posts, including head of the National Intelligence Service and minister of unification. He currently is chairman of the Korea Peace Forum and the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture.

This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.