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To celebrate its May release, contributors Karen Eggleston, Barry Naughton, and Andrew Walder will join editors Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi for a panel discussion of their volume Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press).  China has enjoyed an extraordinary run of rapid growth and development over the last 40 years.  Yet, as Fingar and Oi point out, China’s future is hardly set in stone.  Sustained economic growth, social welfare and stability will depend upon tough policy decisions confronting Beijing’s leaders today in what is a watershed moment.  Casting doubt on Beijing’s aversion to major reforms and its return to certain Mao-era policy tools, Oi and Fingar argue that China’s challenges are not only complex, but high-stakes – challenges that have become even more daunting in the aftermath of COVID-19.  As China battles the difficulties caused by an aging population, the loss of comparative economic advantage, a politically entrenched elite, and a population with rising expectations, today’s policy decisions will weigh heavily on its future. Topics explored in the volume include China's healthcare challenges in a slowing economy, its global ambitions and track record, economic aims and realities, the country’s mounting governance pressures, and more. 

 

Fateful Decisions is available for purchase here.

 

Fore more information on Fateful Decisions, check out these articles:

Karen Eggleston Examines China’s Looming Demographic Crisis, in Fateful Decisions

Now It Gets Much Harder: Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi Discuss China’s Challenges in The Washington Quarterly

China’s Challenges: Now It Gets Much Harder

 

Karen Eggleston is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, director of the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program, and deputy director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. She is also a fellow with the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health and a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Eggleston earned her PhD in public policy from Harvard University, studied in China for two years, and was a Fulbright scholar in South Korea. Her research focuses on comparative health systems and health reform in Asia, especially China; government and market roles in the health sector; supply-side incentives; healthcare productivity; and economic aspects of demographic change.

 

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Previous positions include assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research (2000-2001, 2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific, and chief of the China Division. Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (AB in government and history) and Stanford University (MA and PhD, both in political science). His most recent books are Uneasy Partnerships: China’s Engagement with Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (editor) (Stanford University Press, 2017); The New Great Game: China’s Relations with South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform (editor) (Stanford University Press, 2016); and Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011).

 

Barry Naughton is the So Kwanlok Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California–San Diego. Naughton’s work on the Chinese economy focuses on market transition; industry and technology; foreign trade; and political economy. His first book, Growing Out of the Plan, won the Ohira Prize in 1996, and a new edition of his popular survey and textbook, The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth, appeared in 2018. Naughton did his dissertation research in China in 1982 and received his PhD in economics from Yale University.

 

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Oi has published extensively on China’s reforms. Recent books include Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, coedited with Steven Goldstein (Stanford University Press, 2018), and Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, coedited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017). Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

 

Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. A political sociologist, Walder has long specialized in the study of contemporary Chinese society and political economy. After receiving his PhD at the University of Michigan, he taught at Columbia, Harvard, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. At Stanford he has served as chair of the Department of Sociology, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and director of the Division of International, Comparative, and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences. His most recent books are Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009), China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (2015), and Agents of Disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution (2019).

This event is via Zoom Webinar. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

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A Discussion between Matthew Kohrman and Gan Quan, co-editors of Poisonous Pandas: Chinese Cigarette Manufacturing in Critical Historical Perspectives (Stanford University Press, 2018).

 

 

 

Gan Quan (PhD, Berkeley) is the director of Tobacco Control of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. His research tackles various topics pertaining to tobacco control in China.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew Kohrman (PhD, Harvard) is an associate professor in Stanford’s Department of Anthropology and senior fellow by courtesy at APARC/FSI. His research brings anthropological methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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China’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak has elicited a growing global backlash, including dueling Republican and Democratic campaign ads, alongside praise for China’s success in curbing the coronavirus and sending medical assistance overseas. How will the pandemic reshape China’s domestic and international standing, and what lies ahead for U.S.-China relations? Weiss will discuss the Chinese government’s pandemic response and what it reveals about the CCP’s domestic and international intentions.

Jessica Chen Weiss is an associate professor of Government at Cornell University, China/Asia political science editor at the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog and a nonresident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  She is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014).  Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Washington Quarterly.  She was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford, while an undergraduate at Stanford University.  Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2008, where her dissertation won the 2009 American Political Science Association Award for best dissertation in international relations, law and politics.  Weiss is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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This event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

In keeping with the State of California's shelter-in-place orders, this event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

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The time of this event has changed to 4:30pm-5:30pm PDT.

 

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the world, Japan is experiencing its second wave of coronavirus outbreak, following a first wave early on, just as it had become clear that the virus was spreading rapidly from Wuhan. In late February, travel restrictions were followed by Prime Minister Abe’s call for school closures. But as the pandemic raged through parts of Europe and then the United States, and as a growing number of countries issued shelter-in-place orders and lockdowns, Japan seemed relatively unscathed. Concerns then escalated and calls for voluntarily restricting peoples’ movement started in earnest following the decision to postpone the 2020 Olympics. On April 6, Prime Minister Abe declared a state of emergency for seven prefectures.

This panel brings together expertise on Japan’s political leadership with experience in Japan’s crisis management. Professor Harukata Takenaka has long studied how Japan’s political leadership has evolved, while Mr. Akihisa Shiozaki, an expert on crisis management, was a core member of Japan’s first private-sector investigative report after the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

This is the first in an APARC-wide series of virtual seminars that explore Asian countries’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Held throughout the spring quarter, each event is led by one of APARC’s programs.

PANELISTS

Akihisa Shiozaki, Partner, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu

Akihisa Shiozaki is widely recognized for his expertise in corporate crisis management, including regulatory investigations, white collar defense, product recall, labor/employment disputes, import/export control, cyber security, media interaction and various corporate governance issues, especially those with multi-jurisdictional or parallel civil and criminal components. In recent years, he has advised both domestic and foreign clients in resolving a number of the most high profile corporate crises cases relating to Japan, including the LIBOR/TIBOR manipulation investigation, FX manipulation investigation, global product recall by a Japan auto-parts manufacturer, international trade secret theft in the semiconductor industry, government investigations against a global pharmaceutical corporation operating in Japan, and his representation of the former CEO of Olympus Corporation who brought light to the company's recent accounting scandal. He is recognized by Legal 500 as a Leading Individual in the field of Risk Management and Investigations. In 2017, Akihisa was awarded the Compliance / Investigations Lawyer of the Year at the Asian Legal Awards hosted by The American Lawyer, in association with The Asian Lawyer, China Law & Practice and Legal Week.

Akihisa worked in the Prime Minister’s office as senior policy advisor from 2006 to 2007 and is knowledgeable in Japanese regulations /rules and governmental procedures, as well as having rich experience dealing with the media. He also serves as the vice-chairman of the Anti-Yakuza Committee at the Daiichi Tokyo Bar Association and has authored many related publications. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (LL.B.), holds an M.A. in international policy from Stanford University, and completed his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he served as class president.

Harukata Takenka, Professor of Political Science, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS)

Harukata Takenaka is a professor of political science at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.  He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a particular focus on Japanese political economy. His research interests include democracy in Japan, and Japan's political and economic stagnation since the 1990s.  He received a B.A. from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  He is the author of Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime, (Stanford University Press, 2014), and Sangiin to ha [What is House of Councillors], (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2010).

Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program (Moderator)

Kenji E. Kushida is a Japan Program Research Scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and an affiliated researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He has four streams of academic research and publication: political economy issues surrounding information technology such as Cloud Computing; institutional and governance structures of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; political strategies of foreign multinational corporations in Japan; and Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008). Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

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The prevalence of obesity for adults aged 19 and over in Korea has risen from 25.8% in 1998 to 35.5% 2016, while it is still low compared with other developed countries. Body mass index (BMI), focusing on weight for a given height, has traditionally been used to define obesity despite of its shortcomings of not distinguishing between muscle and fat, being inaccurate in predicting the percentage of body fat (PBF), and being not a good measure for the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death. Another measure of abdominal obesity, the z-score of the log-transformed A Body Shape Index (LBSIZ), has been recently introduced to focus on waist circumference for a given both weight and height. We examine their respective association with the risk of diabetes using a cohort data from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study.

Wankyo Chung is a Professor in the Department of Public Health Science, Graduate School of Public Health at Seoul National University, Seoul Korea. His research interests include economic evaluation of health care programs, equity in health, health policy, and prevention. He has been active as a board member of the Korea Expert Committee on Immunization Practices at Korea CDC, the Information Disclosing Council at Korea HIRA, and an editorial board member of the Korean Journal of Health Economics and Policy and the KDI Journal of Economic Policy. His work has been published regularly in leading international journals. He is currently studying risk prediction models for diabetes at the CEAS, Stanford.

Last few years, China have implemented several national initiatives, for example, the National Healthcare Improvement Initiative (NHII) launched in 2015, to improve patient experiences in healthcare, harmonize the relationship between patients and healthcare workers (i.e., doctors and nurses), and decrease medical disputes in public hospitals. However, reports of medical disputes and violence (verbal abuse or physical violence) against healthcare workers in tertiary public hospitals are still making headlines in China. To help understand and tackle these problems, based on a three-year longitudinal study (2017-2019) conducted in six leading tertiary public hospitals in Shaanxi, a west province of China, we try to depict these problems’ changes, identify the healthcare workers who are at a high risk of medical dispute and violence from patients or their families, and explore the potential causes. These findings could help governments and hospitals protect healthcare workers with more pertinence and build a better medical environment in China.

Jinlin Liu joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as visiting scholar during the 2019-2020 academic year from Xi'an Jiaotong University, where he serves as a researcher for the Research Center for the Belt and Road Health Policy and Health Technology Assessment. His research lies in the areas of health system and health policy in China, with emphasis on the public hospital governance and development of human resources for health. He obtains a Ph.D. in Public Administration from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2018.