The Stanford China Program, in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies, will host a special series of seminars to examine China as a major political and economic actor on the world stage.  Over the course of the autumn and winter terms, leading scholars will examine China actions and policies in the new global political economy.  What is China's role in global governance?  What is the state of China's relations with its Asian neighbors?  Is China being more assertive both diplomatically as well as militarily?  Are economic interests shaping its foreign policies?  What role does China play amidst international conflicts? 

Seiichiro Takagi is a professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Communication at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan and a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. He specializes in Chinese foreign relations and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, he was the director of the Second Research Department, which was responsible for area studies, at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo. He also served on the Graduate School of Policy Science of Saitama University (which became the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies) for over 20 years, and has been a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution and Beijing University. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Japan Association for International Security, and is a member of several other organizations, including the Japanese Committee, Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific (CSCAP); the Japan Association for International Relations; and the Japan Political Science Association. His recent publications in English include China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States, 2007 and in Japanese The U.S.-China Relations: Structure and Dynamics in the Post-Cold War Era, 2007.. He earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, California.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

In an emerging economy like China's, institutions are not yet institutions. They are often the playthings of politics and bureaucratic rivalries. China's banking system is a case in point.  Since 1949, banks have bounced around China's institutional landscape as the government tried out first one then another banking model.  This mattered little to the outside world until the last decade when reform brought banks to the international capital markets in search of massive amounts of new capital.  This did not, however, stop institutional in-fighting.  It spread so that today the domestic struggle over bank roles, responsibilities and ownership has expanded to involve international markets, investors, regulators and the reputations of market professionals at a growing cost to the Chinese government and to the banks themselves.

Carl Walter brings to JPMorgan over 20 years of professional experience in a number of senior banking positions across Asia and primarily in China.  Currently Mr. Walter is Managing Director, JPMorgan China.

Prior to joining JPMorgan, Mr. Walter was a Managing Director and a member of the Management Committee at China International Capital Corporation ("CICC"), a joint venture of Morgan Stanley and China Construction Bank. He played a key role in the execution of CICC's international and domestic equity and fixed income transactions. 

While at Credit Suisse First Boston Mr. Walter was responsible for organizing the firm's China investment banking team and established its Beijing Representative Office in 1993 serving as Chief Representative. During this time, he was involved in a number of significant equity and debt offerings. 

A fluent Mandarin speaker, Mr. Walter received an MA in economics at Beijing University in 1979-80 supported by a grant from National Academy of Science. He received his PhD in Political Science from Stanford University in 1981 and earned his BA from Princeton University. He is also the author of "Privatizing China: Inside China's Stock Markets" which has been published in a Chinese edition "Minyinghua zai Zhongguo".

This event is part of the China and the World series.

Edwin O. Reischauer, Harvard Professor and U.S. Ambassador to Japan, was a seminal figure in both American education about and policy toward East Asia. In his detailed new biography, Dr. George Packard brings together his scholarship and his personal experience working for Reischauer in the early 1960s.

Re-centering the U.S.-Japan Alliance after the turmoil of the 1960 Security Treaty Riots, Ambassador Reischauer relied on his deep understanding of and sympathy for Japan, stabilizing the bilateral relationship for decades. Packard's insights on this history have bearing today as the United States and Japan seek to build a new partnership to cope with emerging challenges.

George R. Packard, president of the United States-Japan Foundation, is the former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he founded Johns Hopkins's Foreign Policy Institute, The SAIS Review, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. He has been a military intelligence officer, Foreign Service Officer, journalist, scholar, educator, and author.

Professor Lee will examine why South Korean labor unions have engaged in militant activism since the country's transition to democracy in 1987.  This situation contrasts with Taiwan, to which Korea's economic and political development is otherwise very similar.   Professor Lee will argue that the militant unionism reflects the weakness of Korea's democratic institutions, particularly its political parties.

Professor Lee received her doctoral degree in political science from Duke University and has been teaching at the State University of New York at Binghamton since 2006.  Her research has appeared in Studies in Comparative International Studies, Critical Asian Studies, Asian Survey, Korean Observer, and Asia-Pacific Forum.  Her book, tentatively entitled Democratic Politics and Labor Activism in East Asia, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2011.