Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Huma Shaikh joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in April 2003. She has a long history at Stanford, having previously worked at the Hoover Institution and in Facilities. Her educational background is in banking, business administration, and programming.
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Chiho Sawada holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University (specialty in East Asian history; secondary field in Western intellectual history) and a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego (major in economics; minor in visual arts). In addition, he has attended the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (concentration in International Politics and Development), conducted research at numerous other institutions in Asia and the United States, and served stints in U.S. Embassies in Beijing and Seoul.
Dr. Sawada is currently working on several collaborative and individual research projects: (1) Historical Injustice, Redress, and Reconciliation: Global Perspectives, (2) Public Diplomacy and Counter-publics: Asia and Beyond, 1945 to the present, and (3) Student and Urban Cultures in Colonial Contexts. He recently contributed a chapter entitled "Pop Culture, Public Memory, and Korean-Japanese Relations" to the first volume of project one, Rethinking Historical Injustice in East Asia (Routledge, forthcoming). For project two, he is lead organizer of a Stanford workshop and conference, and editing the conference book. Project three is a book project that expands his dissertation to consider colonial context not just in Northeast Asia, but also India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
U.S. takes issue with Chinese exchange rate WASHINGTON - As U.S. factories continue to lay off workers, lawmakers have found something to blame: a flood of cheap manufactured goods from China. And, they say, China gives those exports an unfair advantage by making the Chinese currency - the yuan - artificially cheap compared to the U.S. dollar. The result: Chinese-made goods enter world markets at rock-bottom prices. "This policy is unfair," Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., said at a congressional hearing on the Chinese currency earlier this month. "It is anti-competitive. It is anti-freedom. And it is costing us jobs." President Bush has weighed in, too, asking Chinese President Hu Jintao last weekend in Bangkok to let market forces determine the exchange rate. Hu agreed to study the problem jointly with the United States. Presidents don't often get involved in the abstruse details of how to manage the international financial system, and for good reason. Engineering changes in currency policy is a risky business that can have unintended and harmful consequences. Financial crises resulting from botched currency policies have been a regular feature of the world economy for the entire history of international capitalism. Indeed, that's what happened during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, when China was cast in the role of a hero for holding its currency steady and helping to halt the spread of the crisis. Despite this history, Bush and U.S. lawmakers want China to allow its currency to fluctuate against other currencies, much as the U.S. dollar, the Euro and the Japanese yen do today. Since 1994, China has locked its currency at 8.3 yuan to the dollar. Chinese officials say they want to do just what Bush is asking for, but not right away. They worry that China's banks are too weak to withstand the shock of a sudden liberalization of the currency policy. The banks have huge bad loans on their books, and only a steady inflow of yuan deposits keeps them alive. If the yuan were allowed to fluctuate, and money could flow freely in and out of the country, depositors might shift some of their money out of China. A big enough shift would cause the banks to run short of cash, causing a financial crisis that could sink the economy and send waves of instability around Asia. So Chinese officials want to get the banking system in shape before moving forward, and the truth is that a Chinese banking crisis would hardly help American workers. On the U.S. side, a stronger yuan may do less than advertised for American factory workers. Chinese imports aren't the only reason why manufacturing jobs are in decline. Factories are installing more and more automated equipment that allow production of the same amount of goods with fewer workers. And lower wages - not an undervalued currency - is probably the main reason why Chinese-made goods are cheaper than their American counterparts. Still, Fred Bergsten, who heads the Institute for International Economics in Washington, believes that a 20 percent to 25 percent increase in the value of the Chinese currency - a move to the 6.2 to 6.6 yuan to the dollar range - could translate into 500,000 U.S. jobs, mainly in manufacturing. That's only a part of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost in the last three years, but it's not insignificant. A stronger yuan, at least in theory, helps U.S. factories in two ways. First, it makes U.S. exports cheaper for Chinese buyers. At 6.6 yuan to the dollar, a $10 item would cost 66 yuan instead of 83 yuan. It also makes Chinese imports more expensive for American consumers, who then might opt for American-made goods instead. But the actual impact of a stronger yuan in prices may be less than expected. For one, 80 percent of the parts in Chinese exports - which range from Motorola cell phones to Dell computers - are made in other Asian countries and elsewhere. Changing the value of the yuan won't affect the cost of those parts, at least not directly. As a result, Stanford University economist Lawrence Lau estimates that a 20 percent increase in the value of the yuan would push up the cost of Chinese goods only about 4 percent. Even those costs might not get passed on to consumers in today's highly competitive economy. Companies that export from China - many of them American - may absorb the exchange rate shift, taking a cut in profits instead. "Forcing China to revalue does not really help us solve our job problem fundamentally," Lau told a congressional hearing on China trade last month. Nonetheless, Chinese officials have indicated repeatedly that they eventually want the yuan to fluctuate against other currencies. That would allow the central bank to use interest rates to fight inflation or unemployment, as in the United States, rather than just to maintain the exchange rate. But Bergsten of the Institute for International Economics worries that China won't move fast enough to satisfy America's politicians. Chinese officials have suggested to him that China might change its exchange rate policy around the time of the Beijing Olympics, set for 2008. By then, he fears, U.S. trade policy will have turned protectionist.
This seminar is part of the Shorenstein Forum Cross-Strait Seminar Series. Dr. Wu Xinbo is currently a professor at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, and the Vice-President, Shanghai Institute of American Studies. He teaches China-U.S. relations and writes widely about China?s foreign policy, Sino-American relations and Asia-Pacific issues. Professor Wu is the author of Dollar Diplomacy and Major Powers in China, 1909?1913 (Fudan University Press, 1997) and has published numerous articles and book chapters in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and India. He is also a frequent contributor to Chinese and international newspapers. Born in 1966 in Anhui Province, East China, Wu Xinbo entered Fudan University in 1982 as an undergraduate student and received his B.A. in history in 1986. In 1992, he got his Ph.D. in international relations from Fudan University. In the same year, he joined the Center for American Studies, Fudan University. In 1994, he spent one year at the George Washington University as a visiting scholar. In fall 1997, he was a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University and the Henry Stimson Center in Washington DC. From January to August 2000, he was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Second Floor, Encina Hall East
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room,
Second Floor Encina Hall East
Encina Hall, East Wing, Ground Floor, E008
Dept of German Studies
Building 260, Room 204
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2030
Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies. He is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and as of 2019 Director of Comparative Literature and its graduate program. His Stanford affiliations include The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of Stanford’s research group on The Contemporary and of the Poetic Media Lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). His research focuses on contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics.
Amir Eshel is the author of Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019); German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020). Previous books include Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (The University of Chicago Press in 2013). The German version of the book, Zukünftigkeit: Die zeitgenössische Literatur und die Vergangenheit, appeared in 2012 with Suhrkamp Verlag. Together with Rachel Seelig, he co-edited The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (2018). In 2014, he co-edited with Ulrich Baer a book of essays on Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: zwischen den Disziplinen; and also co-edited a book of essays on Barbara Honigmann with Yfaat Weiss, Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge (2013).
Earlier scholarship includes the books Zeit der Zäsur: Jüdische Lyriker im Angesicht der Shoah (1999), and Das Ungesagte Schreiben: Israelische Prosa und das Problem der Palästinensischen Flucht und Vertreibung (2006). Amir Eshel has also published essays on Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Dani Karavan, Gerhard Richter, W.G. Sebald, Günter Grass, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Honigmann, Durs Grünbein, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, and Yoram Kaniyuk.
Amir Eshel’s poetry includes a 2018 book with the artist Gerhard Richter, Zeichnungen/רישומים, a work which brings together 25 drawings by Richter from the clycle 40 Tage and Eshel’s bi-lingual poetry in Hebrew and German. In 2020, Mossad Bialik brings his Hebrew poetry collection בין מדבר למדבר, Between Deserts.
Amir Eshel is a recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt and the Friedrich Ebert foundations and received the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Humanities and Sciences.
This seminar is part of SPRIE's Fall 2003 series on "High-Tech Regions and the Globalization of Value Chains."
Over the past two decades, the physical products that we consume have increasingly been manufactured offshore. More recently, some business and consumer services have started moving overseas. India is an important destination for such work, as it has low labor costs, good remote process management skills, and adequate infrastructure. The talk will report on a recent visit to India in which about fifty business process outsourcing firms were interviewed. The work is part of a research project funded by the Sloan Foundation on understanding the impact of the globalization of business processes on the U.S. economy.
Martin Kenney is a professor in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis and a senior project director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. His research includes the role and history of the venture capital industry and the development of Silicon Valley. Kenney's recent books include Understanding Silicon Valley: Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region (2000) and Locating Global Advantage (forthcoming). He has consulted for various governments, companies, the United Nations, and the World Bank. He has been a visiting professor at Cambridge University, Copenhagen Business School, Hitotsubashi University, Kobe University, Osaka City University, and the University of Tokyo. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Philippines Conference Room
No longer in residence.
Rafiq Dossani was a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and erstwhile director of the Stanford Center for South Asia. His research interests include South Asian security, government, higher education, technology, and business.
Dossani’s most recent book is Knowledge Perspectives of New Product Development, co-edited with D. Assimakopoulos and E. Carayannis, published in 2011 by Springer. His earlier books include Does South Asia Exist?, published in 2010 by Shorenstein APARC; India Arriving, published in 2007 by AMACOM Books/American Management Association (reprinted in India in 2008 by McGraw-Hill, and in China in 2009 by Oriental Publishing House); Prospects for Peace in South Asia, co-edited with Henry Rowen, published in 2005 by Stanford University Press; and Telecommunications Reform in India, published in 2002 by Greenwood Press. One book is under preparation: Higher Education in the BRIC Countries, co-authored with Martin Carnoy and others, to be published in 2012.
Dossani currently chairs FOCUS USA, a non-profit organization that supports emergency relief in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2010, he was a trustee of Hidden Villa, a non-profit educational organization in the Bay Area. He also serves on the board of the Industry Studies Association, and is chair of the Industry Studies Association Annual Conference for 2010–12.
Earlier, Dossani worked for the Robert Fleming Investment Banking group, first as CEO of its India operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He also previously served as the chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI stock exchange in India, as the deputy editor of Business India Weekly, and as a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University.
Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.