Tensions over unresolved territorial issues and problems of wartime history in Northeast Asia are again on the rise. Japan and China are locked in an increasingly dangerous face-off over competing claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu island group, marked by street demonstrations in China and mobilizations of maritime forces. The long-standing dispute between Japan and the Republic of Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands has also resurfaced, overlain with problems over how to compensate the so-called "comfort women" from World War Two.
Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center
Encina Hall, Room E301
616 Serra St.
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 798-9129
(650) 723-6530
0
mingjian@stanford.edu
Visiting Scholar
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James (Mingjian) Chen is the chairman of Hollyhigh International Capital, the first investment banking firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Mainland China. He is also an adviser of the Beijing Olympics organization. Chen is a member of the liaison committee in the China National Democratic Construction Association, the chairman of the M&A Elite Club, as well as a member of the Fuping Foundation for poverty alleviation. He also serves as the chief editor of the China M&A Review, and has published Winning the Deal and M&A Revolution.
Chen graduated from Tsinghua University’s Department of Economics and Management in 1993. After graduation, he worked as a trader at China Great Wall Financial Company for several years. He then established Tsinghua Unisplendour and Hollyhigh Investment Company, in 1997 and in 1998 respectively. In addition to his work at Hollyhigh, Chen is actively engaged in M&A projects for international corporations, such as Lafarge, Shell, SK, and Scottish & Newcastle.
Chen’s deal between Teda and the Meilun Group was used as the first M&A case study at Tsinghua University. He has lectured at many renowned institutions, including Harvard University and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
John Everard spoke candidly with NK News about his experiences as UK ambassador to North Korea. In a related review, his new book, Only Beautiful, Please, is described as "a real commodity, offering an up to date snapshot of life on the ground."
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Young orphan girl, Tanchon, April 2008. | John Everard
About the Topic: The Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989 remains a taboo topic in the People’s Republic of China (PRC); the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) still detains participants and suppresses online, popular, and scholarly discussions of it. The twentieth anniversary of the end of the transatlantic Cold War, however, saw the release of new sources from high-level contacts between the CCP and foreign leaders. These new sources, combined with older ones, show the extent to which Chinese political leaders were obsessed with the democratic changes in Eastern Europe and were willing to take violent action to prevent similar events on their territory.
About the Speaker:Mary Sarotte is professor of history and professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. Her most recent book, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, was called a new "classic" by Foreign Affairs and selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times. It received the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies and became the first book to win both the Ferrell Prize for the best book on US foreign policy and the Shulman Prize for the best book on Communist foreign policy. Professor Sarotte received her PhD in History from Yale. She has been a White House Fellow and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Professor Sarotte is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
CISAC Conference Room
Mary Sarotte
Professor of History and Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California
Speaker
May 2013 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Over the three decades of the Center’s existence, immense change has taken place in the Asia-Pacific.
The early 1980s were a time for tremendous, transformative ripples of social, political, and economic change in many Asian countries; many of those changes set in motion trends, institutions, and events that are prominent aspects of the Asian landscape today.
In Northeast Asia, China embraced market reforms and opened its doors to foreign investment and trade, setting the stage for its role as a contemporary global leader. Japan experienced the peak of its post-war boom, consolidating its role as a pioneer in technology and manufacturing. South Korea underwent a dramatic transformation that, paired with its rapid economic growth, created a regional powerhouse. Southeast Asia emerged from the shadow of war to become a region of economic tigers and emerging powers.
At Stanford, the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy and the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) were established in May 1983 as independent, but complementary, entities. The Northeast Asia-United States Forum later grew into the Asia/Pacific Research Center and, in 2005, was endowed as the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). The two centers still closely collaborate on research and events. In the ensuing three decades, Shorenstein APARC expanded its reach beyond core expertise on Northeast Asia to the fast-developing region of Southeast Asia and to South Asia, which has emerged as a new center of power in the Asia-Pacific. The Center has focused increasingly on the crosscurrents of growing economic, cultural, and institutional integration in the region alongside a troubling rise of tensions driven by intensifying nationalism.
Today, Shorenstein APARC boasts five vibrant programs focusing on contemporary Asia and engaged in policy-oriented research, training, and publishing: the Asia Health Policy Program, Japan Studies Program, Korean Studies Program, Southeast Asia Forum, and the Stanford China Program. It also takes great pride in its unique Corporate Affiliates Program, whose alumni roster of over 300 Asian business, government, and media professionals continues to expand. Rounding out Shorenstein APARC’s Asia expertise, its South Asia Initiative has produced many important publications and events for over a decade.
On May 2, 2013, Shorenstein APARC will celebrate its anniversary with a special public symposium exploring Asia’s transformation over the past three decades, developments in U.S.-Asia relations, and the trajectory of Shorenstein APARC’s own history. You are invited to join us in marking this historic occasion.
Education has provided the critical foundation for Asia’s rapid economic growth. However, in an increasingly globalized and digital world, higher education faces an array of new challenges. While the current strengths and weaknesses of educational systems across Asia differ considerably, they share many of the same fundamental challenges and dilemmas.
The fourth annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue examined challenges and opportunities in reforming higher education in Asia. At its core, the challenge facing every country is how to cultivate relatively immobile assets—national populations—to capture increasingly mobile jobs with transforming skill requirements. This raises fundamental questions about skills needed for fast-paced change, domestic inequality, the role of government, and choices of resource allocations.
Scholars and top-level administrators from Stanford University and universities across Asia, as well as policymakers, journalists, and business professionals, met in Kyoto on September 6 and 7, 2012, to discuss questions that address vital themes related to Asia’s higher education systems. These included:
Can higher education meet the challenges of economic transformations?
As skill requirements change with the increasing use of IT tools that enable manufacturing and service tasks to be broken apart and moved around, how can higher education systems cope? How can education systems address the increasing need for global coordination across languages and cultures? How can countries deal with demographic challenges, with developed countries facing overcapacity and developing countries with younger populations facing an undercapacity of educational resources?
How are higher education systems globalizing?
What are the strategies for the globalization of higher education itself? How are universities positioning themselves to attract top talent from around the world, and what are their relative successes in achieving this? What are the considerations when building university campuses abroad? Conversely, what are the issues surrounding allowing foreign universities to build within one’s own country?
How can higher education play a greater role in innovation?
What is the interplay between private and public institutions and research funding across countries, and what are the opportunities and constraints facing each? What is the role of national champion research initiatives? For developed East Asian countries, a focus on producing engineers raised the economic base, but many are discovering that they are still not at the leading edge of innovation. What are ways to address this dilemma? For developing countries, the challenge is how to improve basic education from the level of training basic factory workers to creating knowledge workers. How might this be accomplished? Is there room for a liberal arts college model?
What are the challenges and opportunities in reforming higher education?
What are effective ways of overcoming organizational inertia, policy impediments, and political processes that hinder reform? What are the debates and issues surrounding ownership, governance, and financing of higher education?
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) established the Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue in 2009 to facilitate conversation about current Asia-Pacific issues with far-reaching global implications. Scholars from Stanford University and various Asian countries start each session of the two-day event with stimulating, brief presentations, which are followed by engaging, off-the-record discussion. Each Dialogue closes with a public symposium and reception, and a final report is published on the Shorenstein APARC website.
Previous Dialogues have brought together a diverse range of experts and opinion leaders from Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Australia, and the United States. Participants have explored issues such as the global environmental and economic impacts of energy usage in Asia and the United States; the question of building an East Asian regional organization; and addressing the dramatic demographic shift that is taking place in Asia.
The annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko.
Kyoto International Community House Event Hall
2-1 Torii-cho, Awataguchi,
Sakyo-ku Kyoto, 606-8536
JAPAN
Bin Wang is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2012-13.
From 1993 to 98, Wang worked for the Ministry of Electronic Industry of China (MEI). At MEI, he was in charge of managing the Electronic Industry Development Fund, which invested in companies engaged in information technology in China. He also participated in the research and formulation of industrial policy. In 1999, Wang set up a high-tech company and served as its CEO. The company specialized in developing embedded software and finally became the only provider of mobile payment solutions for China UnionPay. This company was acquired in 2010 as a price of $47.5 million USD and generated over 100x returns for the initial investors. Wang joined Infotech Ventures, a leading venture investment company in China, as a venture partner in 2010. His current responsibilities include identifying potential investment projects in the IT industry and doing research in venture investment and entrepreneurship. Wang received his bachelor's degree in management engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology and his master's degree in public administration from Sichuan University.
Masashi Suzuki is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2012–13. Suzuki has over 11 years of experience in the information technology arena at Sumitomo Corporation, one of the major trading and investment conglomerates in Japan, and its subsidiaries. His experience in the IT industry includes system development, project management, sales, business development and strategy planning. While at Stanford, Suzuki is researching the difference in the profitability and structure of IT businesses between the United States and Japan. Suzuki is interested in applying his knowledge gained here to his work and overall helping to revive the economy in Japan. Suzuki graduated from Chuo University with a degree in business administration.
Ryo Masuda is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2012-13. Masuda has more than six years of experience in media markets working for Sumitomo Corporation, one of Japan's major trading and investment conglomerates. Most recently, Masuda worked for Japan's largest CATV operator, one of Sumitomo Corporation's affiliated companies, where he was responsible for business development. Masuda graduated from Hitotsubashi University with a bachelor's degree in commercial science.
