On March 26, 2011, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Stanford Korean Studies Program (Stanford KSP) and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, presented the keynote address "Teaching Korea to Korean American Students" at a gathering of two hundred Korean-language instructors organized by the Korean Schools Association of Northern California (KSANC).

Shin pointed to the connection between language and identity, emphasizing the importance of developing Korean-language skills in children of Korean ethnicity growing up in the United States. He noted the dual significance of having a strong, well-rounded Korean American identity: one rooted in a solid understanding of Korean language, culture, and history, with also a firm sense of being American.

KSANC is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing Korean-language instruction and programming about Korean culture and history to children and adults. Through its outreach activities, Stanford KSP helps to support the mission of KSANC and numerous other non-profit education organizations throughout Northern California.

Over the past three decades, China's government, economy, and society have been undergoing a transformation, the momentum of which has intensified in recent years. Stanford sociologist Xueguang Zhou has been conducting a detailed ethnographic study in a rural township a few hours' drive from Beijing in order to understand these changes, especially in terms of China's political institutions. He is also beginning research about the behavior of urban government organizations and about the trajectory of personnel mobility in the Chinese bureaucracy.

Zhou (PhD '91), a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development with the Department of Sociology, chose to conduct his ethnographic research project in a rural township because it afforded him a chance to stay in one place over a long period of time and to get closer to the everyday life of local residents. "It is easier to conduct this kind of research in rural areas because people are always there and once they get to know you, you can gain access to and make sense of their experiences, feelings and views, and their coping strategies in response to large-scale social changes," he notes.

Zhou's rural governance study branched out into three interrelated directions. He has been studying agricultural markets, including: how they have been taking shape and evolving over time, how harvests are conducted, and where local elites and farmers interact with large outside companies. China's rural election system, which Zhou suggests has become more institutionalized in the past six to eight years, has been another area of focus. He has examined how the system was first established, and how it has evolved into its current shape. Finally, he has followed patterns of government behavior within the context of the significant changes now underway in China.
"From a research point of view, this is really a critical moment in the Chinese economic transformation.

-Xueguang Zhou

FSI Senior Fellow and Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development
Gradually shifting his focus to the study of China's urban political institutions, Zhou has been working with a doctoral candidate from Peking University to study the behavior of urban government bureaus for the past three years, and they are now working on articles highlighting the major findings from this research. In addition, Zhou is in the process of selecting urban sites in which to conduct a more prolonged and detailed study similar to his rural township project. He is also working with a Stanford master's student to analyze twenty years of government personnel data, tracing the movement of specific individuals across offices and bureaus as they have been promoted through the bureaucratic system. "It is all a public record," says Zhou, "but once you piece these trajectories together, they shed light on the inner working of, and dynamics in, the Chinese bureaucracy."

China's overall transformation has greatly accelerated in the past decade, and even as urban life is changing, life in rural areas around China's coastal megalopolises is perhaps changing even more quickly. Zhou suggests that within the next five to ten years the contribution of China's shrinking rural areas towards the country's GDP will become quite insignificant. "The speed is really just astonishing," he emphasizes. As cities expand, local governments purchase up land from rural residents for commercial development projects like shopping centers and apartment complexes. Real estate is a huge source of income for city governments and so there has been an aggressive push toward urbanization. As a result, says Zhou: "Millions of rural residents lost their land and became urban overnight without any relevant work skills." Although they are compensated to various degrees for their land, the bigger question is how this will affect the new city dwellers and their families in the future as they must develop new skills and adapt to the social and environmental conditions of urban life.

"From a research point of view," states Zhou, "This is really a critical moment in the Chinese economic transformation: the way that they deal with the process of urbanization will have tremendous consequences for the years to come because it is creating so much tension and social conflict." Even away from coastal areas, government-driven urbanization is taking place everywhere in China—even in provinces with vast expanses of remote land like Xinjiang. "This is exactly why you want to study government," maintains Zhou. "Because they play a key role in this process." Understanding China's government institutional structures, its decision-making processes, and the way that resources are mobilized will lead the way to better understanding about the future impact of these decisions that are now so rapidly changing both the rural and urban landscape.

From how failure drives innovation to the role of government in supporting entrepreneurship, two expert professors at Stanford led a training session for executives from Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE) as part of the 2011 Cisco China 21st Century Enterprise Leader Program (ELP) hosted by Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) on March 22, 2011.

Professor William F. Miller, Co-Director of SPRIE, kicked off the session with a stimulating presentation on Silicon Valley's habitat for innovation. He pointed out that turning technology into business was the essence of Silicon Valley, and a favorable business, social and political environment in the region had facilitated the process. Despite the emergence of other venture capital locations, Silicon Valley scooped up almost 40% of venture deals and dollars across the U.S. in the last quarter of 2010, according to the MoneyTree Report.

The "restless pioneer spirit" of Stanford had always played a crucial role in the effective interaction between research institutes and industry, Miller argued.

Following Miller's discussion of features of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial habitat, William Barnett, Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, shared his thoughts on how to discover successful business models.

"Having great technologies is not enough," said Barnett. "Entrepreneurs are like scientists. Successful business models are learned from failures." Barnett encouraged the leaders present to create a working environment within which failure would be tolerated. He further urged them to accelerate the learning process by asking what might go wrong.

The purpose of the SPRIE session, which is part of a 12-day US-based program organized by Cisco Systems and China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), is to help the SOE executives understand how to foster innovation and to drive operational excellence. The delegation is composed of SASAC officials, Peking University professors and leaders from 17 SOEs in China, including Southern Power Grid, Three Gorges Corporation, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, China FAW Group, Harbin Electric Corp., Anshan Iron and Steel Group, Baosteel Group, China Ocean Shipping Company, China Eastern Airlines, China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation, State Development and Investment Corporation, China Merchants, China Railway Group and China Railway Construction.

 

In September, Crystal Chang and Jeremy M. Menchik will join the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as its Shorenstein Fellows for the 2011–2012 academic year. 

Crystal Chang, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, is currently completing her dissertation on China's growing independent automotive industry. Her research examines Chinese automakers alongside historical case studies from Japan and Korea. During her time at Shorenstein APARC, she will expand her dissertation to include a comparative study of India's contemporary automotive industry, which, like China's, has experienced domestic and international success. She will also continue research that she is currently conducting about China's private energy sector, with a focus on the solar power industry. Chang holds an MPIA degree in international management from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in international relations from Stanford University.

Jeremy Menchik, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), is finishing his dissertation, which poses the question: what is the basis for religious tolerance in Indonesia, and why does it sometimes break down? He addresses this question through a study of Indonesian civil society and of three of the country's largest and oldest Islamic organizations: Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah, and Persatuan Islam. Menchik has conducted extensive field research in Indonesia during the course of his graduate studies. At Shorenstein APARC, he will prepare his dissertation for publication and develop related projects on Islamic law, political tolerance, and political symbolism in Indonesian elections. Menchik holds an MA in political science from UW-Madison and a BA, also in political science, from the University of Michigan.

 

Established in 2002 through the generosity of Walter H. Shorenstein, the Shorenstein Fellowship in Contemporary Asia is an exciting opportunity for junior scholars to spend a year at Shorenstein APARC, engaging with other scholars and experiencing the world-class resources—ranging from libraries to events—that Stanford University has to offer. Shorenstein APARC looks forward to welcoming Chang and Menchik to the center in the coming academic year.

Thomas Crampton, who oversees social media strategy in the Asia-Pacific region for the marketing and communications company Ogilvy and Mather, spoke to a standing room only audience at a seminar hosted by SPRIE about how controls imposed by the Chinese government have created a vibrant and unique social media domestic ecosystem.

Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein Asian-Pacific Research Center, also shared his views on the issue of the role of the internet and social media in social and political change.

Much has been written of late about the PRC government's efforts to control and censor the internet. The government's censorship of websites is an important issue, but it is not the top priority of the country's 420 million internet users or netizens. Their top priority is to connect with other Chinese online. The internet has opened access to information for ordinary Chinese citizens in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Coming from a world where information was pre-filtered by editors at state-run media, China's internet is freewheeling by comparison.

"China's government officials are the most savvy in understanding the power of social media and actively trying to shape its use," Crampton noted at the talk. Rather than eliminate social media, restrictions on foreign websites and social media have resulted in a flourishing home-grown, state-approved ecosystem in which Chinese-owned properties thrive. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have faced blockage in China, but their Chinese equivalents are expanding. According to the official statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) , the number of Chinese netizens reached 420 million at the end of June 2010. But their patterns of use vary from those in other countries. Quoting a 2008 MTV Music Matters survey, Crampton showed a graph that young people across Asia have made a similar number of friends online and offline. Only in China, however, young people actually have more friends online than offline. This points to a convergence of the offline and online worlds, where it is less important to distinguish between what happens online from the "real world." In China, more than in many countries, social media has become deeply integrated into people's lives.

China's government officials are the most savvy in understanding the power of social media and actively trying to shape its use.

- Thomas Crampton, Ogilvy and MatherIn China, as elsewhere in Asia, local variations of internet usage are driven by language, culture, levels of economic development, and the underlying digital ecosystem. For example, rather than short videos popular on YouTube, China's Youku and Tudou are filled with longer form of content, up to 70 percent of which is professionally produced, though individual Chinese users produce and post videos too. Users in China spend up to an hour per day on these sites, compared with less than 15 minutes spent by Americans on YouTube. In the way they present programs, the Chinese sites seem more like online television stations or a replacement for digital video recorders.

Twitter vs. Sina Weibo

Crampton cited another difference between Chinese and foreign social media that is rooted in language. At first glance, Sina Weibo is a latecomer to the microblog phenomenon. Launched in 2009, just about three years after Twitter, it is by far the most popular microblogging platform in China.

Similar to Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post 140-character messages, and users can follow friends and find interesting comments posted by others. Small but important differences in the platform have made some say it is a Twitter clone, but better. For example, unlike Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post videos and photos, comment on other people's updates, and easily add comments when re-posting a friend's message.

Though mobile phones are used to send less than 20 percent of Twitter updates in the United States, nearly half of Sina Weibo's updates are sent via mobile phone. This phenomenon points to the growth of China's mobile internet, one of the biggest trends in China and Asia.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Chinese and foreign social media, however, is the length of communications expressed via microblogs in Chinese versus English. One measure is to look at what Dell Inc., a company skilled at social media, can communicate on microblogs in Chinese compared to English. Twitter holds messages to 140 characters, which is quite short in English, especially if users want to include a URL. Dell often uses its Twitter feed, @delloutlet, to promote special offers, such as this posting: "Today's Deal: Get FREE Eco-Lite Sleeve with the purchase of any Dell Outlet Insprion Mini 10 or 10v Netbook! http://bit.ly/77fUFG." This message came in at 136 characters, almost the maximum length.

Since each character in Chinese is a word, @delldirect, Dell's Chinese-language feed, can write much more using the Chinese-language Zuosa microblogging platform. As translated by Ogilvy's Beijing team, a similar message reads: "Dell's National Day Sale runs from Sept. 11 to Oct. 8. To celebrate the 60th anniversary with the motherland, Dell Home Computers is offering 6 cool gifts and deals on 10 computer models. These exciting offers will run non-stop for 4 weeks. Also, get a free upgrade to color casing and a 512MB independent graphics card, as well as other service upgrades. All offers are on a first-come, first-served basis. What are you waiting for? Act now!" Even with a message of this length-114 characters in Chinese-there is still enough space to put in a webpage link. In other words, 114 characters in Chinese translates into 434 characters in English, well beyond the text limit of a "tweet" in English. This language efficiency turns microblogging in China into a more blog-like platform.