Asia’s transformation presents both challenges and opportunities at international, regional, and domestic levels. One key to a peaceful, prosperous Asia in the 21^st century is good relations between the United States and China. But other challenges exist: nuclear proliferation, maritime security, violent conflict, environmental degradation, natural disasters, food security, cyber-security, and social and gender inequality, among others. Social transformation is outpacing political and institutional reform in many Asian countries, and the widening gap between state and society is a potent force for change. How will Asians address these challenges over the next one to two decades? What role will Asian women play in this transformation? How should the United States respond? The panelists and the discussant have contributed answers to these and other questions regarding Asia’s future in the latest iteration of The Asia Foundation’s quadrennial investigation and dissemination of Asian views of America’s role in Asia, including policy recommendations for the Trump administration. Stanford’s Southeast Asia Program director Don Emmerson will chair the session.

Chheang Vannarith

is a co-founder and vice-chairman of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies and an adjunct senior fellow and member of the board at the Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Peace. He was a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, China Institute of International Studies in China, IDE-JETRO in Japan, and East-West Center in the US. He was a lecturer in Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Leeds, and he served as executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace from 2009 to 2013. His research interests include Asia-Pacific international politics, regionalism, governance, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship. Chheang earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam in 2002, a master’s degree in International Relations from the International University of Japan in 2006, the Graduate Certificate in Leadership from the East-West Center in the United States in 2008, and a doctoral degree in Asia-Pacific Studies from the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in 2009. He was honored as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2013.

Sylvia Mishra is a researcher with Observer Research Foundation New Delhi and is presently with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey, California. Her current research is focused on South Asian security issues and nuclear dynamics, India’s foreign policy, defence and security cooperation with the United States and disruptive technologies. She is a former CNS Visiting Fellow and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Project on Nuclear Issues scholar. She has presented papers and delivered talks at national and international conferences and at platforms like the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, the United States Strategic Command, Air Force Technical Applications Center Patrick Air Force Base (Florida), Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and The Asia Foundation, among others. She has a number of publications to her credit, including chapters in books, articles in journals such as the Indian Foreign Affairs Journal, Global Policy, and commentaries/opinion pieces for CSIS, RUSI, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Crawford School of Public Policy ANU, CNS, Stimson, The Diplomat, Hindustan Times and several other publications. She holds a master’s degree in History of International Relations from London School of Economics and has received a Certificate for completing a course on ‘International Safeguards Policy and Information Analysis’ from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Duyeon Kim is a visiting senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum, a non-partisan think tank in Seoul, and a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Her specialties include East Asian security, the two Koreas, nuclear nonproliferation, and arms control. She has been an associate on nuclear policy and Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and, earlier, a senior fellow and deputy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. Kim has written in leading publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the National Interest. Previously, as a correspondent for South Korea’s Arirang TV News, she covered the Six-Party Talks, inter-Korean relations, and U.S. foreign policy, among other topics. Her degrees are from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (MS) and Syracuse University (BA).

 

John Brandon is the Senior Director of International Relations Programs in The Asia Foundation’s Washington, DC office. He has been responsible for many of the Foundation’s publications including Asian Views on America’s Role in Asia (2016). Trained as a Southeast Asianist, he lectures and publishes widely on US-Asian relations. Publications he has co-authored, edited, or contributed to include three books on Burma/Myanmar and one on US-Southeast Asia relations. His MA in political science and Southeast Asian studies is from Northern Illinois University.

 

 

This panel discussion is co-sponsored by The Asia Pacific Research Center and The Asia Foundation with support from The Carnegie Corporation of New York

 

Abstract 

Scholars have credited a model of state-led capitalism called the developmental state with producing the first wave of the East Asian economic miracle. Using historical evidence based on original archival research, this talk offers a geopolitical explanation for the origins of the developmental state. In contrast to previous studies that have emphasized colonial legacies or domestic political factors, I argue that the developmental state was the legacy of the rivalry between the United States and Communist China during the Cold War. Responding to the acute tensions in Northeast Asia in the early postwar years, the United States supported emergency economic controls in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to enforce political stability. In response to the belief that the Communist threat would persist over the long term, the U.S. strengthened its clients by laying the foundations of a capitalist, export-oriented economy under bureaucratic guidance. The result of these interventions was a distinctive model of state-directed capitalism that scholars would later characterize as a developmental state.

I verify this claim by examining the rivalry between the United States and the Chinese Communists and demonstrating that American threat perceptions caused the U.S. to promote unorthodox economic policies among its clients in Northeast Asia. In particular, I examine U.S. relations with the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, where American efforts to create a bulwark against Communism led to the creation of an elite economic bureaucracy for administering U.S. economic aid. In contrast, the United States decided not to create a developmental state in the Philippines because the Philippine state was not threatened by the Chinese Communists. Instead, the Philippines faced a domestic insurgency that was weaker and comparatively short-lived. As a result, the U.S. pursued a limited goal of maintaining economic stability instead of promoting rapid industrialization. These findings shed new light on the legacy of statism in American foreign economic policy and highlight the importance of geopolitics in international development.

Bio

James Lee is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He specializes in International Relations with a focus on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and relations across the Taiwan Strait. James also serves as the Senior Editor for Taiwan Security Research, an academic website that aggregates news and commentary on the economic and political dimensions of Taiwan's security.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), both part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Dr. Forbes chairs the Steam Engineering Companies of Forbes Marshall, India’s leading Steam Engineering and Control Instrumentation firm. 

Dr. Forbes was an occasional Lecturer and Consulting Professor at Stanford University from 1987 to 2004, where he developed courses on technology in newly industrializing countries. He received his Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees from Stanford University.

Dr. Forbes is on the Board of several educational institutions and public companies. He is the Chairman of Centre for Technology, Innovation and Economic Research in Pune. He has long been an active member of CII and has, at various times, chaired the National Committees on Higher Education, Innovation, Technology and International Business. He was President of CII from 2016-2017.

 

About the Colloquia:

In 2016, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in collaboration with the Stanford Center for South Asia, launched a series of public lectures to broaden our understanding and discussion of contemporary India — its enormous domestic potential and problems, its place in the region and the world, and the ambitious agenda of the new Modi administration. Building on the strong engagement of those issues from across the university community and beyond, we are continuing the series, with generous support from the U.S. India Business Council, in the 2017-2018 academic year. We will  draw business, political, diplomatic and academic experts from the U.S. and India to explore topics including India’s innovation economy, India-China relations, India’s pivotal role in global health, and U.S.-India relations. 

 

This Colloquia is co-sponsored with