Cloud Computing is rapidly transforming not only computing, but the very fundamentals of how we process, store, and use information—and information is the very basis of civilization.  Cloud Computing is historically unique by simultaneously being an innovation ecosystem, production platform, and global marketplace. While the technology and business models are almost inherently global in scale, national politics and regulations will powerfully influence how Cloud Computing unfolds across the world. Critical issues such as information privacy (who gets to see and use information), security (how to protect information from unauthorized access), and communications network policy (the political economy of broadband and wireless networks) will be settled at the national or regional level. There are powerful tensions as US-based multinational firms are rapidly taking over the global Cloud Computing industry. What are the appropriate frameworks to understand how the competitive dynamics are unfolding? What are the options for national-level players? How should we understand the policy issues as they unfold? What is the role of Japan and Asia as this transformation unfolds?

Kenji Kushida is the Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a graduate research associate at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida has an MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Officials, scholars, and activists have long believed in improving environmental policy in developing countries by fostering desirable values and practices through networks of experts. Tim Forsyth will question this faith by arguing that all too often such networks ignore the limitations of global environmental assessments and the politics involved in producing and using expert opinion. Using preliminary evidence from Indonesia and Thailand, he will show how Procrustean advice and local agendas affect efforts to mitigate climate change, and what that can mean for the generation of greenhouse gas (through energy use) and its absorption in sinks (through forest conservation). Forsyth argues that more deliberative institutions of environmental information, judgment, and decision can better accommodate local knowledge and vulnerabilities, strike productive balances between mitigation and adaptation, and thereby address climate change in Southeast Asia in more timely and effective ways.

Tim Forsyth is Reader in Environment and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely on matters of politics of environmental science and policy in Southeast Asia including Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (Routledge, 2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (with A. Walker, Washington University Press, 2008); and International Investment and Climate Change: Energy Technologies for Developing Countries (Earthscan, 1999). He was a co-author of the chapter on climate change in the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).

Motoshige Itoh, Professor, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo. He has served as President of the National Institute for Research Advancement since February 2006, and held the post of Dean at the Gradual School of Economics from 2007 to 2009. He was professor of the Graduate School of Economics and the Faculty of Economics since 1993, and Assistant Professor in Economics since 1982. He has served in various government committees, including the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning Agency, Fair Trade Commission, and others and was a member of Economic Strategy Council in 1998-1999. He has been an advisor to the Statistical Division at the Bank of Japan, and a visiting scholar at various institutions, including the Department of Economics at Harvard University, the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Australian National University, and Research Institute at the Bank of Japan. He has published numerous books and papers on Japan’s economy and finance. He received his BA from Tokyo University and PhD from University of Rochester, both in Economics.

Hideaki Miyajima, Director, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study(WIAS), Professor of Japanese Economy, Graduate School of Commerce, Waseda University. He teaches Japanese Economy, and Corporate Governance in Japan.  He stayed at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University as a visiting scholar for 1992-94 and 2004-05. He was asked to consult by several institutions such as the World Bank, Hawaii University, Hebrew University, and Korean Development Institute. He was also appointed to numerous positions: Faculty Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry, a Special Research Fellow of Policy Research Institute (Ministry of Finance), Research Fellow of EHESS (Paris), and an Adjunct Professor of Chung-Ang University (Seoul). He wrote several books and numerous papers including: Corporate Governance in Japan, Oxford University Press, 2007 (co-edited), Changes and Continuity in Japan, Curzon Press, 2002 (co-edited), Policies for Competitiveness, Oxford University Press, 1999 (co-edited), He received his Ph.D in Economics from the University of Tokyo.

Takeo Hoshi, Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, and professor of finance (by courtesy), Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining S/APARC, he was Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in International Economic Relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Hoshi also serves on the Board of Directors at Union BanCal Corporation. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research (TCER). His main research interests include the study of the financial aspects of the Japanese economy, especially corporate finance, banking, and monetary policy. He received numerous awards for his publications including Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001), co-authored with Anil Kashyap (Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago), and his other publications include, “Japanese Government Debt and Sustainability of Fiscal Policy” (with Takero Doi and Tatsuyoshi Okimoto), Journal of the Japanese and International Economies,2011; “Corporate Restructuring in Japan during the Lost Decade” (with Satoshi Koibuchi and Ulrike Schaede), Japan’s Bubble, Deflation, and Long-term Stagnation, MIT Press, 2011 (Koichi Hamada, Anil K Kashyap, and David E. Weinstein, eds.) He has been the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies since 1999. Hoshi received his BA in social sciences from the University of Tokyo in 1983, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.

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In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book many have been waiting for—a sweeping account of China's growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China's role in global affairs beyond its immediate
East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. As Shambaugh charts, though, China's expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere—from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China's global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or "soft power," its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions. But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China's global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power—what he terms a "partial power."

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David Shambaugh is professor of political science and international affairs and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. His most recent books include Tangled Titans: The United States and China; Charting China's Future: Domestic & International Challenges; and China's Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation.

**Books will be available for purchase at the talk.**

In this talk, Mayling Birney presents evidence that China uses a distinctive form of governing, what she calls a “rule of mandates” in contrast to a rule of law. Under a rule of mandates, standards for accountability are relative rather than absolute, as lower officials are effectively directed to adjust the local implementation of the center's own laws and policies in order to meet the center's highest priorities. In China, this governing system has helped promote stability and growth, yet curtailed the potential impact of rule of law and democratic reforms. Birney demonstrates this impact by drawing on evidence from original surveys, interviews, and archival work. Yet she also explains why this governing system is likely to become more problematic for China in the future, potentially jeopardizing even the economic growth and stability it has thus far supported.

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Dr. Mayling Birney (London School of Economics) is a comparative political scientist with a special expertise in China. She is currently finishing a book about China’s distinctive form of authoritarian governing, in which she highlights its consequences for stability, justice, rule of law, and political reform. Prior to arriving at LSE, Dr. Birney was jointly appointed as a fellow in the Princeton University Society of Fellows and a lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School.  She has also served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution and as a Legislative Aide in the United States Senate. She holds a PhD in political science from Yale University, an MSc in economics from LSE, and a BA in government from Harvard University.

Early returns suggest that it may not be business as usual in state-society relations, with the Party-state being compelled to respond to an increasingly discontented and vocal society, and that a partial loosening of the tight censorship in media and culture may also be forthcoming. Indicators include changes in CCTV programming—e.g., a more interesting evening news report and the broadcast of the previously banned film V for Vendetta—media coverage of sensitive issues ranging from air pollution to the work of rights lawyers, and the relatively “enlightened” resolution of the Southern Weekend crisis, among other recent developments. What are we to make of these changes and, more importantly, how have these changes been received within China, for example on the ubiquitous and increasingly important Chinese microblogs?

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Stanley Rosen is a professor of political science at USC specializing in Chinese politics and society and was the director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from 2005–2011. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China over 40 times over the last 30 years. His courses range from Chinese politics and Chinese film to political change in Asia, East Asian societies, comparative politics theory, and politics and film in comparative perspective. The author or editor of eight books and many articles, he has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He is the co-editor of Chinese Education and Society and a frequent guest editor of other translation journals. His most recent books include Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market [Routledge, 2010 (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries)] and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema [Hong Kong University Press, 2010 (co-edited with Ying Zhu)]. Other ongoing projects include a study of the changing attitudes and behavior of Chinese youth, and a study of Hollywood films in China and the prospects for Chinese films on the international market, particularly in the United States.

In addition to his academic activities at USC, Professor Rosen has escorted eleven delegations to China for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (including American university presidents, professional associations, and Fulbright groups), and consulted for the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office and a number of private corporations, film companies, law firms and U.S. government agencies.