The Obama administration’s “rebalance” to Asia is about much more than China’s rise and changing role in the region, but US-China relations are an integral part of the new policy and the way it is perceived and characterized by others in the Asia-Pacific region.  The keynote address and comments by American and Chinese scholars with years of government experience will examine the objectives and implications of the “rebalance” and what it means for the United States, China, and US-China relations.

Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at Brookings. From 2009-2012, Lieberthal served as the director of the John L. Thornton China Center. Lieberthal was a professor at the University of Michigan for 1983-2009. He has authored 24 books and monographs and over 70 articles, mostly dealing with China. He also served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council from August 1998 to October 2000. His government responsibilities encompassed U.S. policy toward Northeast, East and Southeast Asia. His latest book, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (co-authored with Martin Indyk and Michael O’Hanlon), was published by the Brookings Press in March 2012. Leiberthal earned his B.A. from Darthmouth College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University

Panelists:

Welcome remarks - Dr. Michael Armacost is the Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow. He has been at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) since 2002. In the interval between 1995 and 2002, Armacost served as president of Washington, D.C.'s Brookings Institution, the nation's oldest think tank and a leader in research on politics, government, international affairs, economics, and public policy. Previously, during his twenty-four year government career, Armacost served, among other positions, as undersecretary of state for political affairs and as ambassador to Japan and the Philippines. 

Panel Chair - Professor Jean Oi is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Oi is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She leads Stanford's China Initiative, and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Oi directed Stanford's Center for East Asian Studies from 1998 to 2005. 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.

Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, CDDRL, TEC, and Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow; and Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Retired U.S. Army Lt. General. Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty. Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.

Dr. CUI Liru is Senior Advisor to China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a think-tank in China known for its comprehensive studies on current international affairs and prominent role in providing consulting services to the Chinese government and former President of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR). He is a member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and also serves as a member of the Foreign Policy Consulting Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is Vice President of China National Association for International Studies (CNAIS) and serves as Senior Adviser to multiple institutions for the study of national security and foreign relations. As a senior researcher, his specialties cover U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, international security issues and Chinese foreign policy.

Professor Tom Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow. 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. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (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 (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

The Oksenberg Lecture, held annually, honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001). A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, and consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Conference/Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.

Please note: this event is off-the-record.

This event has moved to the Philippines Conference Room

Professor Paine will explore China’s outlook on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea within the larger settings of Chinese geography and history, including the lessons Chinese leaders continue to draw from Russia’s experience, and how these contexts shape China’s views of its East Asian neighbors. Earlier paradigms of foreign policy offered by Confucianism before 1911 and by Communism thereafter have undergone serious critiques. Which elements in these partly tarnished legacies will China’s leaders decide to affirm, alter, reject, or ignore as they fashion a foreign policy for the 21^st century? The outcome will signally affect not only China, but most particularly its neighbors in Southeast and Northeast Asia.

Sarah Paine is a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI. She is the author of two prize-winning books: The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (Cambridge, 2012) and Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (M. E. Sharpe,1996). Among her other publications are The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (2003); Modern China, 1644 to the Present (co-auth., 2010); Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development (ed., 2010); and four co-edited naval books respectively on blockades, coalitions, expeditionary warfare, and commerce-raiding. She has degrees in in history (Columbia, PhD), Russian (Middlebury, MA), and Latin American studies (Harvard, BA).

The period from the arrest of the “gang of four” in October 1976 to the final step in the removal of Hua Guofeng in mid-1981 saw CCP rural policy go through a number of phases. The initial emphasis on a moderate version of the Dazhai model gave way to “traditional policies” (luoshi zhengce) by mid-1978; these policies were supplemented in 1979 by “responsibility systems,” the most radical of which, household contracting (baochan daohu), became a sharply divisive issue in 1980, but still not the main aspect of agricultural policy. The tide was moving strongly toward household contracting by mid-1981, but had not yet achieved unambiguous endorsement as the Party policy.

A number of inadequate approaches have dominated the literature, notably 1) a power/policy struggle between Hua Guofeng's neo-Maoists and Deng Xiaoping's reform coalition; 2) the power of the peasants; and 3) the leading role of provincial reformers. The first has no validity, the second and third must be viewed through more complex lenses. The talk will explicate the key factors and present an alternative explanation of the success of rural reform.

Frederick C. Teiwes is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney. He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is the author of various books on Chinese elite politics including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 1993), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984), and Politics at Mao's Court (1990). Some of his most important work has been jointly authored with Warren Sun including The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization: Mao, Deng Zihui, and the "High Tide" of 1955 (1993), The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1971 (1996), China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Emergence of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959 (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (2007).

Please note date change to June 6

On December 16, 2012, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which was swept from power in 2009 by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after more than half a century of dominance, roared back with a landslide of its own. Entering the election with only 118 of 480 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet, the LDP emerged with a whopping 294 seats, more than a third of them captured by first-time candidates. Moreover, the LDP and its long-time coalition partner, the Komeito, jointly surpassed the two-thirds threshold needed to override vetoes from the upper house, the House of Councillors, where the coalition lacks a majority—at least until the upper house election this July. The incumbent DPJ, which had taken power with an even more impressive 308 seats in 2009, retained just 57 seats this time, barely managing second place after three difficult years in government.

How did the LDP do it? In this presentation, Smith will highlight the key findings of two chapters on the LDP’s candidate selection and election results from the forthcoming volume, Japan Decides 2012 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), edited by Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, and Ethan Scheiner.