Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
The Chinese Communist Party's 17th Congress held in October was yet another landmark event in shaping the future leadership and policy direction of China. It selected the next generation of leaders and defined broad policies for Hu Jintao's second term. The Congress had major implications for both domestic policies as well as China's relationship to the United States and the world.
Distinguished experts from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's China Program and UC San Diego will discuss the outcome of the party congress and the signposts it provides for the future. They will look at leadership trends, political succession, socio-economic policy and Chinese foreign policy. Professor Jean Oi will moderate.
Philippines Conference Room
Department of Political Science
Stanford University
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-26044
Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Professor Oi is also the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.
A PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, Oi first taught at Lehigh University and later in the Department of Government at Harvard University before joining the Stanford faculty in 1997.
Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems. Oi has written extensively on China's rural politics and political economy. Her State and Peasant in Contemporary China (University of California Press, 1989) examined the core of rural politics in the Mao period—the struggle over the distribution of the grain harvest—and the clientelistic politics that ensued. Her Rural China Takes Off (University of California Press, 1999 and Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1999) examines the property rights necessary for growth and coined the term “local state corporatism" to describe local-state-led growth that has been the cornerstone of China’s development model.
She has edited a number of conference volumes on key issues in China’s reforms. The first was Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), co-edited with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou, which examined the earlier phases of reform. Most recently, she co-edited with Thomas Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press, 2020). The volume examines the difficult choices and tradeoffs that China leaders face after forty years of reform, when the economy has slowed and the population is aging, and with increasing demand for and costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social benefits.
Oi also works on the politics of corporate restructuring, with a focus on the incentives and institutional constraints of state actors. She has published three edited volumes related to this topic: one on China, Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (Shorenstein APARC, 2011); one on Korea, co-edited with Byung-Kook Kim and Eun Mee Kim, Adapt, Fragment, Transform: Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in Korea (Shorenstein APARC, 2012); and a third on Japan, Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan, co-edited with Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu (Brookings Institution, 2013). Other more recent articles include “Creating Corporate Groups to Strengthen China’s State-Owned Enterprises,” with Zhang Xiaowen, in Kjeld Erik Brodsgard, ed., Globalization and Public Sector Reform in China (Routledge, 2014) and "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018.
Oi continues her research on rural finance and local governance in China. She has done collaborative work with scholars in China, including conducting fieldwork on the organization of rural communities, the provision of public goods, and the fiscal pressures of rapid urbanization. This research is brought together in a co-edited volume, Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization (Brookings Institution Shorenstein APARC Series, 2017), with Karen Eggleston and Wang Yiming. Included in this volume is her “Institutional Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in the People’s Republic of China,” with Niny Khor.
As a member of the research team who began studying in the late 1980s one county in China, Oi with Steven Goldstein provides a window on China’s dramatic change over the decades in Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County (Stanford University Press, 2018). This volume assesses the later phases of reform and asks how this rural county has been able to manage governance with seemingly unchanged political institutions when the economy and society have transformed beyond recognition. The findings reveal a process of adaptive governance and institutional agility in the way that institutions actually operate, even as their outward appearances remain seemingly unchanged.
by Sabrina Siddiqui, intern, BusinessWeek, and a senior at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
There is no doubt that over the last decade, India fortified its rule over the shared services and outsourcing (SSO) sector. Access to low-wage yet skilled workers allowed local global technology services giants Infosys (INFY), Tata Consultancy Services (TACSF), and Wipro (WIT) to employ tens of thousands of Indians to do work for such multinational corporate clients as Bank of America (BAC), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ericsson (ERIC).
But a recent study by Frost & Sullivan consolidates the idea that India's outsourcing has already peaked, and there are a number of factors to blame:
The Rupee Riddle. Earlier this year, the Indian rupee appreciated 8.4% against the U.S. dollar and touched 41.14 to the dollar, its highest rate in nine years. A significant reason for concern for the outsourcing sector, the upward value of the rupee continues to put a squeeze on earnings. By April, 2007, it had cut margins by about 2.5 percentage points.
Cost (In)Efficiency. Companies looking to outsource have long seen India as their most cost-efficient vehicle. But with wage inflation running 15% to 25% per year, India can no longer use the siren song of its labor being the cheapest. Competitors like China can offer their services at a lower cost, while firms like Infosys are stuck recruiting from outside the country, because the comparable Indian staff is growing too expensive.
That Age-Old Infrastructure. As much as the economy continues to boom, how long can it sustain its position when IT operations spend considerably on backup systems to fight regular blackouts? And the 300,000 engineering students who graduate each year may be short of the level needed to support modernization of infrastructure and industry growth. (Not to mention that the peculiarly accented "Doug Smith" on the computer help desk is a little too hard for U.S. callers to comprehend.)
So if you assume you're being rerouted by tech support to a call center in Bangalore, guess again. It seems India's grasp on the SSO market is at long-term risk, and it just so happens that your call might be answered by someone in Shanghai.
by Rafiq Dossani, Stanford University and Martin Kenney, University of California, Davis
Notwithstanding the occasional news stories about companies returning work earlier offshored to India, the logic behind offshoring and its financial impact (both on outsourcing firms operating in India and their American clients) remains intact. First, the logic: A fresh engineer costs $8,000, including benefits, on average in Bangalore. Even a "Google-quality", presumably equivalent to the best Google can hire anywhere (in fact, Google offers its India recruits the option of working in Silicon Valley if they so desire) costs $30,000. These wages are much lower than in the U.S. and will remain that way for at least a decadeespecially if the ambitious graduation targets of Indian education policymakers are realized.
Of course, there are problems in doing work long distance: Coordinating the work of global teams is costlier than coordinating such work locally. The intellectual property issues could be important. But offshoring is now tried and tested enough, and large corporations are deeply committed to it.
By 2010, many large multinational corporations like IBM (IBM) will have their largest workforces in India. This is creating a relatively rich ecosystem in a number of Indian cities, especially Bangalore.
Already, for a number of these firms, their Indian operations are being declared global centers of excellence, whose value goes well beyond just cost savings. Undoubtedly, some smaller firms have faced high initial costs, but even they, particularly the technology firms of Silicon Valley, have committed to Indian operations. Firms such as Infinera (INFNO) and HelloSoft have substantial Indian operations that are critical to their success. For them to retreat would require a major reorientation of their business strategy.
The appreciating rupee will, like rising wages, affect offshoring decisions. However, the Indian system integrators such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, which are also being squeezed by costs, have experienced profits rising at about 35% a year for the past decade and enjoy margins in excess of 20%. This provides ample room to absorb rising costs.
There can be little doubt that the Indian ecosystem is maturing. However, the growth of offshoring to India has not peaked.
Reprinted by permission from BusinessWeek.
Unarmed mass uprisings, celebrated as "people power" revolutions, have ended authoritarian regimes in various countries. But have these movements ushered in polities that fulfilled democratic expectations? The record is disappointing, and especially so in the Philippines after the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos. Why? Much of the answer lies in the ability of elites to ride, hijack, and redirect the trajectories of "people power" movements. Such elites take advantage of the tension between the regular politics of stable institutions and the irregular politics of extraordinary moments. The large mobilizations associated with "people power" cannot be sustained for long periods. The masses will soon delegate power to, and rely on, their leaders, who will represent them as the polity settles down to the business of normal--institutional--politics. The very minute the new regime is inaugurated, it ceases to be revolutionary and starts to be conservative. It has a country to run, and state power to defend and consolidate, for its enemies are not likely to have given up. The institutional technology of popular rule has yet to be developed beyond grand first principles and banal motherhood statements. The supposedly revolutionary leaders of the new regime lapse into using the already well known methods of minority or elite rule. But recourse to such stratagems may in time trigger the formation of new "people power" movements against these self-entrenched incumbents--prolonging the cycle and preventing the conversion of contingent power into legitimate authority.
Amado Mendoza's current research is on the political economy of organized crime and anti-state violence in the Philippines. His many writings on that country include a book-in-progress on tax reform and two edited volumes, Debts of Dishonor (1992) and From Crisis to Crisis: A History of BOP [Balance of Payments] Crises in the Philippines (1987). He has been a visiting scholar at Tufts University, the Jean Monnet Institute, the University of Turku (Finland), and the Amsterdam Insti¬tute for International Relations. In addition to pursuing his academic career, he has worked as a business journalist, a merchant banker, a stockbroker, and on development issues for an NGO.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Tectonic shifts have underscored the gradual Islamization of mainstream politics in contemporary Malaysia. This is so despite popular media representations of the country as an epitome of moderate and progressive Muslim governance -- a portrayal regularly belied by the actions of its leaders as well. Recently, these shifts have been expressed in heated debates over apostasy, religious freedom, and constitutional rights. Insofar as the media have acknowledged Islamization, they have attributed it to the Islamist opposition party (PAS). Prof. Liow will show, however, that the ruling party (UMNO) has proven no less strident in expressing its own Islamist predilections, with significant implications for the dynamics of UMNO-PAS relations and, beyond them, the country's political future.
Joseph Chinyong Liow is head of research at S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His books include Muslim
Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, and Politics (2006); The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (2005); and (as co-editor) Order and Security in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2006). He is associate editor of Asian Security, and guest-edited "Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: The Nature, Legitimacy and Changing Role of the State," a special issue of that journal (2007). He has published numerous articles on Malaysian politics and the conflict in Southern Thailand. His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
The Third Annual Globalization of Services Conference will explore the following questions:
All participants will receive a copy of Dr. Dossani's newest book India Arriving: How this Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business. Details of this can be found through the link below. Provided through the generosity of Arada Systems.
Details about the previous two events can be found at:
The Second Annual Globalization of Services Conference
Conference Sponsors:
Bechtel Conference Center
SPRIE kicked off the fall quarter with two special events: first was a seminar on October 9 presented by Min Zhu, co-founder of WebEx, who spoke on "Beyond Beijing and High Tech: Chinese Entrepreneurship on the Edge." Min discussed the entrepreneurship scene in China and suggested that Silicon Valley venture capitalists investing there may be heading for trouble. John Boudreau covered the talk in the "Tech Notebook" section of the San Jose Mercury News.
Then, on October 10, Martin Eberhard, Tesla Motors' Co-Founder and President of Technology, spoke at the launch of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network (SEN), a federation of organizations, including SPRIE, that focus on entrepreneurship acrosss the Stanford campus. Eberhard spoke of taking Tesla from the beginning stages of a start-up and formulated six lessons he learned from the experience. For more information about the SEN, visit the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network.
Dr. Lee currently holds the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Endowed Chair in Economics and is a professor in the Department of Demography at University of California - Berkeley (Berkeley). He has taught courses in economic demography, population theory, population and economic development, demographic forecasting, population aging, indirect estimation, and research design, as well as a number of pro-seminars.
Professor Lee is also the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at Berkeley, funded by the National Institute of Aging. His current research includes including modeling and forecasting demographic time series, the evolutionary theory of life histories, population aging, Social Security, and intergenerational transfers.
He has received several honors, including Presidency of the Population Association of America, the Mindel C. Sheps Award for research in mathematical demography, the PAA Irene B. Taeuber Award for outstanding contributions in the field of demography. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding member of the British Academy. He has chaired the population and social science study section for NIH and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population, and served on the National Advisory Committee on Aging (NIA Council).
Professor Lee holds an MA in demography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Philippines Conference Room
