Wall Street Journal: In Rural China, One-Child Policy Enforcers Push a New Message
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For 30 years, Yu Huajian visited villages in rural China to remind couples to have just one child, to abide by the law and help the economy. He also pursued violators of the much-hated policy and oversaw abortions.
Since the one-child policy was abandoned in October, Mr. Yu and some of the half a million other family-planning workers have knocked on rural doors with a different message: How to play with children, read to them and raise them with better skills.
The shift was abrupt, but Mr. Yu said he has always done what he and leaders thought was best for the country.
"I think we should focus now on education," he said. "It's more meaningful."
China's leaders say that the one-child policy, which was ended amid a growing demographic imbalance, improved livelihoods. But for rural Chinese, the gap between them and urban dwellers widened sharply during the country's decades of explosive growth.
Today, their annual per capita disposable income is around $1,750, compared with $4,770 for their urban counterparts. High-school graduation rates for rural students are about 3%, compared with 63% for those in cities, according to China's Ministry of Education and the Asian Development Bank.
That gap has come into focus as China's government tries to shift the economy toward services and away from low-skilled manufacturing.
"This is China's ticking time bomb," said Shi Yaojiang, an economics professor at Shaanxi Normal University who is working with the government on the early-childhood project.
"The roads have all been paved, the buildings all constructed," said Mr. Shi. "We now need a labor supply that's up to standard."
The new early-childhood initiative has been rolled out in 15 provinces, districts and cities, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Cai Jianhua, the director of program training at the commission, is urging China's senior leaders to reorient the commission toward early-childhood development and expand funding to build early educational centers.
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A young Chinese boy plays in an early childhood development center opened by REAP and the Family Planning Commission.
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Annual Year End Celebration
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Black Community Services Center
418 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford University
The Hoover Institution: Its History, Mission, and Archival Treasures
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The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace was founded nearly 100 years ago as the Hoover War Library with a donation by Herbert Hoover, who later said, “This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library, but…must dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.” Since its founding, the Hoover Institution has grown into one of the most prominent global research centers (“think tanks”) and the only one with a world class Library & Archives as its foundation. Today Hoover supports hundreds of fellows in disciplines including economics, history, political science, and the humanities, while maintaining a Library & Archive that is among the largest in the United States with almost 7,000 archival collections in more than 150 languages. The Library & Archives draws over 10,000 visitors annually to its reading rooms, events, exhibits, scholarly conferences and workshops. Eric Wakin, Deputy Director of Hoover and the Robert H. Malott director of its Library & Archives, will discuss the rich history of this unique Institution and where it will be headed in its next hundred years.
胡佛研究所（全称“胡佛战争、革命与和平研究所”）成立于近一百年前，最早称作“胡佛战争图书馆”，由赫伯特·胡佛（后来任美国第31届总统）创建。他曾说，“这个研究所绝对不能仅仅是一个图书馆，还应指引美国的和平、自由之路，同时捍卫美国的制度”。自创立以来，胡佛研究所已经成长为全球著名的研究机构（智库）之一，也是唯一自建立之初拥有世界级图书与档案馆的研究所。如今，胡佛研究所支持几百位来自不同领域的研究者进行研究，包含：经济学、历史学、政治学以及其他人文学科，同时维持图书与档案馆的运营。作为美国最大的图书与档案馆之一，胡佛档案馆内拥有150多种语言的7000多类档案文件，每年能够吸引上万名读者来到阅读室、展览区参加学术会议和工作坊。Wakin教授作为胡佛研究所副所长、胡佛研究所图书与档案馆馆长，将会探讨胡佛研究所的丰富历史，并展望研究所未来百年的发展方向。
Eric Wakin is the deputy director of the Hoover Institution and the Robert H. Malott Director of the Institution’s library and archives, overseeing their strategic direction and operations. Wakin is the author of Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand. His current research interest is guns and gun control in the nineteenth-century United States and he is revising a manuscript titled "From Flintlock to ‘Tramps’ Terror’: Guns and Gun Control in Nineteenth-Century New York City.” He has also coauthored a number of walking-tour books and travel guides. Before coming to Hoover, Wakin was the Herbert H. Lehman Curator for American History and the Curator of Manuscripts at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, where he also taught courses in the History Department on public history, memory and narrative, archives and knowledge, and theory.
Wakin教授为美国斯坦福大学胡佛研究所副所长、胡佛研究所图书与档案馆馆长，负责胡佛研究所战略规划和设计。Wakin教授著有《人类学走向战争：泰国的职业伦理与叛乱镇压》（Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand.）。他最近的研究方向为19世纪美国的枪支及其管控，正在修订一篇题为《从老式火枪到“流浪汉”的恐惧：19世纪纽约城的枪支及其管控》（From Flintlock to ‘Tramps’ Terror: Guns and Gun Control in Nineteenth-Century New York City）的书稿。任职胡佛研究所之前，Wakin 教授是哥伦比亚大学莱曼美国历史中心主任、哥伦比亚大学珍本与手稿图书馆馆长。同时，他也在哥伦比亚大学历史系教授有关公共历史、记忆与叙事、档案的课程。Wakin教授先后于密西根大学和哥伦比亚大学获得硕士、博士学位，并先后为数十家企业提供企业战略发展、运筹规划的咨询。
Stanford Center at Peking University
5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing, China
Eric Wakin
Deputy Director of the Hoover Institution and the Robert H. Malott Director of the Institution’s library and archives
Lectures
2016 Annual Forum on Community Health Services and Primary Health Care Reform in China
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This forum will focus on the importance of community health services and primary health care reform in China and discuss the deepening efforts to establish a two-way referral system to help boost access and equality of high-quality medical resources and basic public health services. At this year’s annual forum, distinguished experts will present research examining China’s emerging hierarchical medical system (including insurance payments, referral arrangements, and chronic and acute disease treatment initiatives). Policymakers, providers, and researchers will introduce China's overall policies towards this new system as well as describe the practice and challenges of primary care delivery and innovative approaches of internet-based and integrated medical care systems.
Agenda
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Presentation English
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Xiaofang Han
Former Director of Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission
Xinbo Liao
Inspector of The Health and Family Planning Commission of Guangdong Province
Jifu Zhan
Deputy Mayor of Sanming, Fujian province
Su Xu
Deputy Director General of Shanghai Health and Family Planning Commission, Director of Shanghai health care reform office
"and other speakers; please see agenda"
Workshops
Experimental Studies and Japanese Politics
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Japanese political science community has generally been slow in adopting an experimental approach in the study of Japanese politics. In the areas of public opinion research, however, there have been some new attempts that take advantages of the methodological merits of experiments in investigating the Japanese political attitudes and behaviors. In this presentation, Professor Kohno will introduce three studies that he and his colleagues have embarked on, which relate to three major issues that Japan faces: constitutional revision, national security policy, and people's attitudes under natural disasters.
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Masaru Kohno
Professor, School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University
Seminars
Asian Liver Center holds inaugural health summit at SCPKU
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Stanford University's Asian Liver Center (ALC) and the Global Business Group on Health jointly hosted the inaugural JoinJade for China Summit and Awards Ceremony at SCPKU on April 22, 2016. 29 major employers committed to a hepatitis B discrimination-free work environment were recognized at the event. Lenovo, General Electric and IBM also participated in an employer panel to discuss key strategies for a discrimination-free work environment and next steps.
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JoinJade for China is a joint initiative involving global organizations including the ALC in the U.S. and China, Global Business Group on Health, IBM, General Electric, Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and HP Inc. The initiative focuses on building fully inclusive workplaces free from hepatitis B discrimination.
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The ALC at Stanford University is the first non-profit organization in the U.S. that addresses the disproportionately high rates of chronic hepatitis B infection and liver cancer in Asians and Asian Americans. Founded in 1996, the center addresses the gap in the fight against hepatitis B through a four-pronged approach of collaboration, advocacy, research, and education and outreach (CARE). The ultimate goal of the ALC is to eliminate the transmission and stigma of hepatitis B and reduce deaths from liver cancer and liver disease caused by chronic hepatitis B.
Photos courtesy of Stanford University's Asian Liver Center
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BBC News: Reinventing China's Abortion Police
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Two-year-old Liu Siqi is curled up on her grandmother's lap, complaining of a tummy ache. A man tries to divert her with a squeaky plastic duck.
Gradually the toddler's mood brightens. She giggles and is persuaded to join him singing a nursery rhyme.
The man she calls Uncle Li belongs to China's army of family planning officers. Stationed in every city, town and village in China, for the past 35 years their job has been to hunt down families suspected of violating the country's draconian rules on how many children couples can have.
But with the end of the one-child policy at the beginning of this year, some, like Li Bo, are being retrained for a different role. Now he could even be mistaken for a Chinese Father Christmas visiting remote villages in the mountains of Shaanxi province with a bag full of toys and picture books.
Along with 68 of his colleagues, Li is part of a pilot programme involving academics from Shaanxi Normal University and Stanford University's Rural Education Action Programme. His new job is to teach parents and grandparents how to develop toddlers' minds by talking, singing and reading to them.
He works in Danfeng County, 700 miles (1,125km) south-west of Beijing, an impoverished area where more than half the adults of working age have left for jobs in the cities.
We meet at a new parenting centre in two-year-old Liu Siqi's village. It's part of the pilot project here in Shaanxi province designed to stimulate deprived rural children and give them the best start in life.
He watches toddlers throwing balls into boxes and playing with wooden shapes.
"This is a golden time for them to develop skills," he says. "I like this new job and I think my work is important, because what I am doing right now will probably influence what sort of people these children will become one day."
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Li, who used to enforce China's one child policy, works with REAP to become an early childhood development expert. Here, he reads a book to a child in an impoverished area of Danfeng County.
BBC News / Lucy Ash
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Big Data: Lessons from the Field
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Gaurav Kataria is a Big Data leader at Google who is responsible for driving Production Adoption initiatives across various Google for Work product lines - Gmail, Drive, G+, Hangouts, Google Docs, Drive, Android and Chrome. His group employs sophisticated machine learning and data mining techniques to understand the usage patterns across different products, and based on that creates programs to improve user engagement.
Gaurav holds a guest lecturer appointment at Stanford Business School where he co-teaches a course on 'Data-Driven Decision Making.' He actively supports the startup community in the Bay Area and is an advisor to multiple startups in mobile space. Prior to Google, he was a senior manager at Booz Allen and a researcher at Cylab - Carnegie Mellon. He has a Masters and PhD in Information Security Risk Management from Carnegie Mellon University and Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California and enjoys hiking the Bay Area mountain ranges in his spare time.
Gaurav will share his perspective on how to create a data-driven organization and the specific capabilities businesses need to develop to harness the power of machine intelligence.
AGENDA:
4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking
RSVP REQUIRED
Register to attend at http://www.stanford-svnj.org/svnj-public-forum-may-18-2016
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/
Gaurav Kataria, Head of Product Adoption Google for Work
Seminars
How Asia Works: Two Kinds of Economics and the Rise of a Divided Continent
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Can Northeast Asia’s developmental sequence help explain – and even prescribe – economic development worldwide? Joe Studwell, former journalist for The Economist, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Financial Times, argues that the East Asian story holds the key to development for other countries. The sequential implementation of household farming to maximize agricultural yields; an acute focus on export-manufacturing; and financial repression and controlled capital accounts is key to promoting accelerated economic development. Emphasizing the role of politics to shape markets, Mr. Studwell notes that there are at least two kinds of economics: the “economics of development” and the “economics of efficiency,” which countries, after achieving a certain level of development, must pursue.
Joe Studwell has worked as a freelance writer and journalist in East Asia for over twenty years. He has written for the Economist Intelligence Unit, The Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Observer Magazine and Asia Inc. From 1997 to 2007, Mr. Studwell was the founding editor of the China Economic Quarterly and also founder and director of the Asian research and advisory firm Dragonomics, now GaveKal Dragonomics. Joe Studwell’s previous books include Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia (2007) named one of the year’s ten best books on Asia by the Wall Street Journal. His latest book is How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region, which was placed by both the Financial Times and The Economist on their “books of the year” lists. Mr. Studwell is currently completing his mid-career Ph.D. at Cambridge University, U.K.
Joe Studwell
former journalist for The Economist, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Financial Times
Seminars