On July 31, 2009, the Education Economic Seminar Series held its first meeting at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP). Professor Linxiu Zhang moderated the meeting, while Doctor Yingquan Song jumpstarted the series by presenting his research on the "Information and Educational Choices of Junior High Students in Rural China."
The meeting was attended by various professors and graduate students from universities and research institutions in both China and America, including CCAP, Stanford University, The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Peking University, Beijing Normal University, and Renmin University. Doctor Song's presentation was followed by a heated and in-depth discussion. Attendees debated and brainstormed ideas for the next step in Song's research.
During the meeting, Professor Linxiu Zhang, the co-director of REAP and the deputy director of CCAP, introduced the idea behind the Seminar Series. Jointly founded by REAP, CCAP, Peking University's China Institute for Educational Finance Research, and Beijing Normal University's School of Economics and Business Administration, the goal of the Seminar Series is to foster creative dialogue among researchers on the development of Education Economics and its role in society. They plan to meet each quarter to discuss fresh ideas and exchange research results. Professor Scott Rozelle from Stanford University, also the co-director of REAP, stresses that once the Seminar Series has started, it needs to continue in order to provide a platform for continuous dialogue among those in the field.
In the four years since a State Council think tank, the Development Research Center, bluntly declared the failure of three decades of healthcare reform, China has placed a high political priority on designing, building and financing a modern, equitable health delivery system that serves every last one of its 1.3 billion people. As publisher of practice-building trade magazines for medical specialists in China and India, Jeffrey Parker has developed unique and valuable perspectives on what's wrong with China's healthcare system -- and how Indian practitioners are able to deliver results despite a per-capita GDP that is roughly half of China's. Through an unprecedented China-India training exchange, Mr. Parker has begun testing whether Indian models of self-financed grassroots medical startup practices can help doctors shake free of China’s Stalinist paralysis without having to wait for sweeping programmatic reforms that are always on the horizon, but seem never to come. What's more, would such grassroots empowerment models not create unprecedented opportunities for participation by international investors who up to now have been largely marginalized in China's healthcare development?
In this lunchtime colloquium, Mr. Parker reviews his experiences in China and India over the past six years and looks at several exciting recent developments in China. These include:
An ambitious rural reimbursement scheme that already has begun to complete a nationwide healthcare safety net. The program is creating a vast pool of funds to finance rural medical services, but how will Beijing populate the countryside with sustainable grassroots practices?
The first domestic healthcare IPO, by which Aier Ophthalmology raised some $50 million as one of 28 debut listings in the Shenzhen's new "ChiNext" Growth Enterprise Market. New wind in the sails of healthcare privatization?
Licensing reforms that have begun delinking doctors' certification from their "work unit" hospitals under trials in Beijing and Yunnan, removing a vexing obstacle to hands-on surgical training of young practitioners. Will the breaking of senior doctors' "skills monopoly" create opportunities for private-sector training programs that will shake up China's Soviet-style residency programs?
Jeffrey Parker has lived in Greater China since 1990, first as a journalist and since 2003 as a publisher. His transition from chronicler of China's historic rise to active proponent of its economic development gives him a unique perspective on the opportunities still opening up in China -- and the challenges facing anyone keen to participate. With a twin B.A. in Asian Studies and Geography from U.C. Santa Barbara and Masters training in Journalism from Columbia University, Parker trimmed his sails for a China career from an early age. After early editorial jobs in New York and Washington, D.C., he was dispatched to Beijing by United Press International as senior correspondent in 1990. During the next 10 years with UPI and then Reuters, he covered a wide range of political, economic and social stories from postings in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Peoples Republic. In his final two years at Reuters, Parker got his first taste of media development, launching local-language multimedia news and video feeds in China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. Since 2003, Parker has built up a family of world-class doctors' magazines serving more than 50,000 specialists in China and India from the Shanghai base of ILX Media Group, where he is editorial director, chief operating officer, a corporate director and investor. Among his objectives is to help foster a badly needed transformation of medical practice across China by inspiring grassroots doctors to deliver high-quality, cost-effective services in rural and less-developed communities left behind by government health care.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Jeffrey Parker
Speaker
ILX Media Group, Shanghai, PRC
The health sector's successes in Vietnam have been described as "legendary" by international donors, but there is always the other side of the story. One can question the objectivity of reports from the government of Vietnam, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. One can wonder in what areas the health sector has failed, who has paid for a "success story" and at what cost, and how much information is well documented and has been made public. Are there "stylized facts" regarding those aspects of health that have been successfully reformed compared with those where reform has lagged? Given these concerns, how can the research community contribute to improving health policy in Vietnam?
Dr. Truong will share his thought on recent socioeconomic development in Vietnam, discuss key health policy issues, and reflect upon his experiences including a research project in which the University of Queensland collaborated with Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Additional evidence will be drawn from a study of the cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce tobacco use in Vietnam.
Khoa Truong was a visiting faculty member at the Hanoi School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Health Strategy and Policy Institute in 2008-2009. Prior to that he spent six years as a doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug control policies; the impacts of built environments on health; international health issues; and economic development.
He received his doctorate and master of philosophy in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and earned a master's degree in development economics from Williams College. A native of Vietnam, he began his career working with NGOs in bilateral and multilateral development projects in Southeast Asia. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and wrote “most outstanding paper” submitted at an AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting (acknowledged as the premier forum for sharing the results of scholarship on health services).
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Dr. Khoa Truong
Assistant Professor of Department of Public Health Sciences
Speaker
Clemson University
Berkeley and Stanford - Climate change could increase the likelihood of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa by over 50 percent within the next two decades, according to a new study led by a team of researchers at University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, New York University and Harvard University, and published in today's (Monday, Nov. 23) online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The study provides the first quantitative evidence linking climate change and the risk of civil conflict. It concludes by urging accelerated support by African governments and foreign aid donors for new and/or expanded policies to assist with African adaptation to climate change.
"Despite recent high-level statements suggesting that climate change could worsen the risk of civil conflict, until now we had little quantitative evidence linking the two," said Marshall Burke, the study's lead author, a graduate student at UC Berkeley's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and research associate at the Program on Food Security and the Environment. "Unfortunately, our study finds that climate change could increase the risk of African civil war by over 50 percent in 2030 relative to 1990, with huge potential costs to human livelihoods."
"We were definitely surprised that the linkages between temperature and recent conflict were so strong," said Edward Miguel, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and faculty director of UC Berkeley's Center for Evaluation for Global Action. "But the result makes sense. The large majority of the poor in most African countries depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and their crops are quite sensitive to small changes in temperature. So when temperatures rise, the livelihoods of many in Africa suffer greatly, and the disadvantaged become more likely to take up arms."
Understanding the causes and consequences of civil strife in much of the African continent has been a major focus of the social sciences for decades, said Miguel, given the monumental suffering has resulted from it.
In the study, the researchers first combined historical data on civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa with rainfall and temperature records across the continent. They found that between 1980 and 2002, civil wars were significantly more likely in warmer-than-average years, with a 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature in a given year raising the incidence of conflict across the continent by nearly 50 percent.
Building on this historical relationship between temperature and conflict, the researchers then used projections of future temperature and precipitation change to quantify future changes in the likelihood of African civil war. Based on climate projections from 20 global climate models, the researchers found that the incidence of African civil war could increase 55 percent by 2030, resulting in an additional 390,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars.
All climate models project rising temperatures in coming decades, said David Lobell, study co-author and an assistant professor of environmental earth system science at Stanford and center fellow at Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment, a joint program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment.
"On average, the models suggest that temperatures over the African continent will increase by a little over 1 degree Celsius by 2030," he added. "Given the strong historical relationship between temperature rise and conflict, this expected future rise in temperature is enough to cause big increases in the likelihood of conflict."
To confirm that this projection was not the result of large effects in just a few countries or due to overreliance on a particular climate model, the researchers recalculated future conflict projections using alternate data. "No matter what we tried - different historical climate data, different climate model projections, different subsets of the conflict data - we still found the same basic result," said Lobell.
It's easy to think of climate change as a long way off, said the researchers, but their study shows how sensitive many human systems are to small increases in temperature, and how fast the negative impacts of climate change could be felt.
"Our findings provide strong impetus to ramp up investments in African adaptation to climate change, for instance by developing crop varieties less sensitive to extreme heat and promoting insurance plans to help protect farmers from adverse effects of the hotter climate," said Burke.
Applying findings from this study could prove useful to policy makers at the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations in December in determining both the speed and magnitude of response to climate change, the authors said.
"If the sub-Saharan climate continues to warm and little is done to help its countries better adapt to high temperatures, the human costs are likely to be staggering," said Burke.
9:00 - 10:30 am: Border Crossings Moderator: Parna Sengupta, Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University
Amin Tarzi, Middle East Studies, Marine Corps University “Yaghistan Revisited: The Struggle for Domination of Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands”
James Caron, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania “Divisive Hegemonies and Interlinked Publics: Case Studies of Religious Scholarship and Social Awareness in Afghanistan and the North West Frontier Province, 1930-2008”
Jamal Elias, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania “Identity, Modernity and Meaning in Pukhtun Truck Decoration”
10:30 -11 am: Coffee Break
11 am- 12:30 pm: Molding Minds and Bodies Moderator: Steve Stedman, Center for Security and International Cooperation, Stanford University
Tahir Andrabi, Economics, Pomona College “Religious Schooling in Pakistan and its Relation to Other Schooling Options: A Disaggregated Analysis”
Farzana Shaikh, Asia Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs “Will the ‘right’ kind of Islam save Pakistan?: The Sufi Antidote”
Fariba Nawa, Journalist, Fremont “Opium Nation”
2:00- 4:00 pm: Nations, Tribes, and Others Moderator: Aishwary Kumar, Department of History, Stanford University
Gilles Dorronsoro, The Carnegie Endowment “Religious, Political and Tribal Networks in the Afghan War”
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Department of History, James Madison University “Epistemological Quandaries of the Afghan Nation: Mobility, Territoriality and The Other”
Thomas Ruttig, Afghanistan Analysts Network “How Tribal Are the Taleban?”
Lutz Rzehak, Humboldt University “How to Become a Baloch? The Dynamics of Ethnic Identities in Afghanistan”
4:00- 4:30 pm: Coffee Break
4:30-6:00 pm: Public Session: The Global Politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan Moderators:
Shahzad Bashir, Religious Studies, Stanford University
Robert Crews, Department of History, Stanford University
[Co-sponsored with CISAC, Center for South Asia, Department of History, CREEES]
Despite a short history of economic development, Korea has produced a number of leading products; the Korean economy's success is based on the technological and innovative capabilities it has accumulated over several decades.
However, a major structural weakness is the concentration of its economic power in the capital city of Seoul and its outskirts, where most industrial firms are located. In addition, eastern Korea is more industrialized than the west. This technological and innovative imbalance will lead to a gloomy outlook for the Korean economy.
Having recognized this problem, over the past decade the central and regional governments have been making great efforts to enhance regional economic and innovative potential development. Daeduck Science Town, in the center of the Korean peninsula, along with a number of technoparks are evidence of these development strategies.
Dr. Chung will present and discuss the history and characteristics of Korean regional innovation strategies for this seminar.
About the speaker:
Dr. Chung received the Ph.D from the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He worked at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI) in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been a senior researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), under Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).
In 2004, on the basis of his research work, Dr. Chung was selected as the youngest lifetime fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) (Korea's equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences). Since March 1, 2008, he has worked as Director of KAST's Policy Research Center.
In 2008 he established the William F. Miller School of MOT (Management of Technology) at Seoul's Konkuk University. Dr. Chung currently serves as Dean of the Miller MOT School.
This two-day forum looks at the rise of China as a digital superpower.
May 2010 marks 15 years of China's first connection to the public Internet and 15 years of digital mobile communications. Home to 400 million online and 750 million mobile consumers, China is giving birth to innovative start-ups and established multi-billion dollar enterprises in social networking, games, video, music and e-commerce.
Companies thriving in China will increasingly shape the global digital economy, either by their sheer scale at home or through investments and mergers and acquisitions in the United States and other developed economies.
Join this invitation-only forum to meet with industry leaders from China and overseas to assess the likely future shape and implications of China's rise for consumers, industry players, investors, researchers and policy makers.
Richard Hsu, Managing Director, Intel Capital China presentation
David Lam, Managing Director, WI Harper Group presentation
Moderator: Martin Haemmig, Senior Advisor on Venture Capital, Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
12.15 - 1.15
Lunch
1.15-2:45
Session 9--How Can Global Firms Thrive In & With China
Alan Tien, General Manager, PayPal Bei Bao China
Graham Kill, CEO, Irdeto
Carter Agar, Former VP, GM, Walt Disney Internet Group (China), VP, Altius Education
Jason Wang, Partner, Cypress River Advisors, LLC
Moderator: Gady Epstein, Beijing Bureau Chief, Forbes
3:00 - 4:30
Session 10--China 2.0 Firms: The Talent Dimension
Mark Baldwin, CEO, Oxus and Founder, Zhaopin.com
Kelly Sang, former General Manager, Alibaba.com Americas
David Strehlow, Director of Marketing, Media Solutions, Huawei
Moderator: Kyung H. Yoon, CEO, Talent Age Associates LLC
4:30 - 4:45
Wrap-up
Audience
Media & tech executives, entrepreneurs, academics and researchers, venture capitalists/private equity investors, policymakers.
Format
Presentations by the on-the-ground pioneers of China 2.0
Roundtable discussions on key issues and emerging trends
Premiere of "vox pop" video interviews of Chinese Internet users filmed in Beijing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan, Xiamen and Xi'an
Conference highlights to be available online (subject to speaker approval)
Interactive event, including a mobile application custom-made for participants
Participation and Pricing
Participation is by invitation-only. For more information, please contact SPRIE by email at sprie-stanford@stanford.edu.
The USD $50 fee covers conference sessions and materials, continental breakfast, lunch, and refreshments. A limited number of free spaces are available for current Stanford faculty, students and staff.
Agenda (subject to change)
Map and parking:
The conference is being held in the Bechtel Conference Center, located at 616 Serra Street on the first floor of Encina Hall. Free event parking is available at the Galvez Field Event Parking Lot, located at Galvez and Campus Drive East. It is less than .5 mile from the parking lot to the event. If you park at a meter, be aware that parking is $1.50/hour and is monitored from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Violent conflicts claim 3,000 lives per day through wars, bombings and attacks that dominate the news media. Meanwhile, behind the headlines, 20,000 people die each day from causes related to hunger and poverty. Physical security and food security are deeply connected. Over a billion people suffer from chronic food insecurity, a situation that feeds violent conflict and weakens national and international security. Food insecurity is especially problematic in agricultural regions where income growth is constrained by resource scarcity, disease, and environmental stress.
Gerald Nelson, Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI will be giving a talk on Climate and Agriculture in the Context of Copenhagen. Nelson received his PhD from Stanford University in 1982. Since that time he has served as the Agricultural Development Council representative at the University of the Philippines, Los Banos from 1982-85, and as assistant, associate and full professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1985 to 2008. He is now an agricultural economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC specializing in climate change.
Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2)
Room 300
Gerald Nelson
Senior Research Fellow
Speaker
International Food Policy and Research Institute
Seminars
Climate and Agriculture: Models, Impacts, and Adaptation Strategies
In 2005 the Indonesian government announced a program of unconditional cash transfers to its poor and near-poor citizens to help them overcome the adverse effects of fuel price hikes caused by a massive reduction in subsidies. The program—the largest of its kind in the world, covering some 19 million households—was reintroduced in 2008 following another round of fuel subsidy cuts.
How successful was this effort to help poor Indonesians weather these economic shocks? Did the transfers alleviate suffering to the desired extent? Did their unconditional character ensure quick action and wide coverage? Or did it foster dependence on public welfare and depress incentives to work? Were deserving recipients chosen? Or did corruption and conflict distort the process? Are there lessons in Indonesia’s experience applicable to other developing countries? Dr. Sudarno will mobilize quantitative and qualitative evidence to address these questions.
Sudarno Sumarto co-founded The SMERU Research Institute and served as its director for nearly ten years. Under his leadership, SMERU played a vanguard role in helping to reduce poverty in Indonesia through careful empirical research on behalf of improved public policy. His more than fifty publications include studies of economic growth, poverty and unemployment reduction, and the performance of primary-school pupils, among other topics, in the Journal of Development Economics (2009), Beyond Food Production (2007), and SMERU’s own working paper series, among other venues. He has also been active as an advisor to the Indonesian government on poverty issues and as a lecturer at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture.
"We were definitely surprised that the linkages between temperature and recent conflict were so strong," said Edward Miguel, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and faculty director of UC Berkeley's Center for Evaluation for Global Action. "But the result makes sense. The large majority of the poor in most African countries depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and their crops are quite sensitive to small changes in temperature. So when temperatures rise, the livelihoods of many in Africa suffer greatly, and the disadvantaged become more likely to take up arms."
