Stanford University

CHINA-JAPAN RELATIONS: THE LONG HISTORY

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What have China and Japan learned from each other? How has this long interaction shaped the images the two countries have of each other since imperial times to the present? Tracing the different phases of learning between China and Japan from the Tang, Meiji, and post 1972, Ezra Vogel will make suggestions about how the two countries might deal with history issues.

Ezra Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class families. From 1961-1964, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He was director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center and the Asia Center. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. Professor Vogel retired from teaching on June 30, 2000.

Drawing on his original fieldwork in Japan, he wrote Japan's New Middle Class (1963). A book based on several years of interviewing and reading materials from China, Canton Under Communism (1969), won the Harvard University Press faculty book of the year award. The Japanese edition of his book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) is the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. His study of Guangdong is published as One Step Ahead: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, both in Chinese and Japanese. He has visited East Asia every summer since 1958 and has spent a total of over six years in Asia.

 

This event is fully booked. 

Stanford Center at Peking University, Langrun Yuan, Peking University

Ezra Vogel Henry Ford II Research Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus Harvard University
Lectures

Students share marketing insights with Japanese airline

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Stanford students worked together to pitch marketing ideas to a major Japanese airline at an event last Tuesday. The event, called an “ideathon,” is part of a series of events seeking to strengthen the U.S.-Japan relationship through exchange of ideas.

The ideathon was the first of its kind at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, led by the Japan Program under the rubric of the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project (SV-NJ). The project is supported in part by All Nippon Airways (ANA), the Japanese airline featured at the event.

Nineteen students participated, from both undergraduate and graduate levels and across disciplines – including students from the Graduate School of Business, and other majors including economics, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and East Asian studies.

Placed on a team with others they had just met, students were encouraged to assemble quickly and generate solutions to the challenge: how can ANA strengthen its brand awareness in the United States?

ANA is seeking to double in size in the next three years, yet it faces a few obstacles in this endeavor, including a customer base that is mostly in Japan and low brand visibility internationally, according to a senior employee that presented at the event.

“Who had heard of ANA before this event?” asked Hiroyuki Miyagawa, a marketing executive at ANA. Few hands raised in the audience.

Organized into four teams, each student team was joined by an ANA employee who listened in and offered guidance and a chance to learn from a longtime practitioner.

One and a half hours later, with Post-it notes and scribbled diagrams sprinkled across tables, each team emerged ready to present their 3-minute pitch to a panel of judges. The panel included executives from ANA, the World Innovation Lab (WiL), a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, and bTrax, a San Francisco based design firm.

Below are a few pictures from the event.

ideathon team three

Team Three acts out a skit.  |  They proposed that ANA establish lounges for the general public to gather in and purchase goods from Uniqlo and Muji, two Japanese lifestyle retailers. The lounges would offer a place to reinforce ANA's brand outside of the airport, they said.

ideathon team four

Team Four puts their heads together to generate ideas.  |  In their pitch, the team noted that baseball is a popular sport among Americans and Japanese. They recommended baseball be a focus of the marketing campaign, and said television and social media would best reach the target audience.

ideathon team five

Team Five explains their marketing approach.  |  Flying can lead to some unpleasant experiences, and a way ANA can set itself apart is to make those experiences manageable, and even enjoyable, they said. Their proposal was to bring new amenities to the in-flight experience such as a care package for people who sit in the middle seat.

ideathon team one

Team One poses for a picture after their presentation.  |  In their pitch, they recommended using ANA’s association with Japan to differentiate from other global airlines. Their approach included creating a film that features an American celebrity traveling on ANA.

The winning team was Team One whose concept was to use a celebrity figure – Ellen DeGeneres – in their advertising. They said that the target audience could relate to DeGeneres, and her already-established following would be an advantage.

The judges commended Team One for the creativity of their idea and its level of feasibility. Team One consisted of students Yaqian Fan, Michael Hong, Sam Ide, Lu Li and Adelbert Tan.

Kenji Kushida, a Stanford alumnus and project leader of SV-NJ, said:

“When I was a student, I craved for an opportunity to brainstorm solutions to real-world challenges and to do it in an environment that provided instant feedback,” he said, “We were able to make that happen here with the support of ANA and WiL, and are thrilled with the outcome."

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Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy

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Date: October 20, 2015  (Tuesday)

Time: 16:30 – 18:00  

Language: Lecture in English

Venue: Stanford Center at Peking University

China’s controversial one-child policy, launched in 1980, continues to generate controversy and misinformation.  Several generalizations about the policy are widely believed:  that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China’s population growth; that as a result China’s population continued to grow rapidly until after his death, necessitating the switch to mandatory and coercive birth limits; that the launching of the one-child policy led to a dramatic decline in China’s fertility rate; and that due to the one-child policy, China and the world benefited from 400 million births that were thereby prevented. These are just a few of the common claims about China’s one-child policy that are myths, contradicted by the facts.  This talk by Prof Whyte, which is based on a paper co-authored with demographers Wang Feng and Yong Cai, is designed to systematically correct the record. 

Martin K. Whyte is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus. He was Professor of Sociology at Harvard from 2000 to 2015. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. His research and teaching specialties are comparative sociology, sociology of the family, sociology of development, the sociological study of contemporary China, and the study of post-communist transitions. Within sociology, Whyte’s primary interest has been in historical and comparative questions—why particular societies are organized the way they are and how differences across societies affect the nature of people’s lives. Whyte is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Sociological Research Association, the Population Association of America, and the National Committee for U.S. China Relations.

 

Stanford Center at Peking University, The Lee Jung Sen Building

Langrun Yuan, Peking University

Martin King Whyte John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus Harvard University
Lectures

Call for papers: Koret Workshop on Globalization, Innovation and Culture in Korea

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The Korea Program at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is soliciting papers for the Koret Workshop on Globalization, Innovation and Culture in Korea at Stanford University.

South Korea has become an economic powerhouse, but faces multiple challenges. To maintain its dynamism and growth in the increasingly innovation-driven global knowledge economy, Korea needs to turn its attention to the more social, cultural and educational aspects of development.

Of paramount importance is the ability to welcome and embrace difference and creativity, upgrade pertinent social values of cultural diversity and social tolerance, promote innovation and effectively reflect and transmit such values through institutions. The conference will be interdisciplinary, problem-oriented and policy-relevant. A broad range of questions and approaches are welcomed, particularly those that address main challenges Korea will face going forward.

Possible research topics include:

• Higher education, cultural diversity and development.

• Social cohesion beyond nationalism and multiculturalism.

• Entrepreneurial culture and innovation.

• Causes and consequences of rising inequality.

• Demographic changes, skilled foreign labor and education/work culture.

The conference will be held on April 22, 2016 at Stanford University. Beyond research presentations, the conference also aims to foster connections among scholars with common interests. Travel (domestic or international economy class) and hotel costs as well as a modest honorarium will be covered for the presenters.

Papers may be submitted for consideration in a PDF file (6,000-8,000 words) to Yong Suk Lee by email at yongslee@stanford.edu. The submission deadline is Jan. 31, 2016.

The Koret Workshop is organized by the Korea Program to bring together an international panel of experts in Korean affairs. The Korea Program established the Koret Fellowship in 2008 with generous funding from the Koret Foundation. 

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Seoul city at night. | Flickr/wwian
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Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind in Southeast Asia: The Abramovitz Hypothesis Revisited

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Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Development

In 1986 then-Stanford professor Moses Abramovitz argued in a seminal article that all countries that are relatively backward in their levels of productivity had the potential for rapid advance, and indeed could quickly catch up with the leading economies if they could realize that potential. Their ability to catch up was to a large extent determined by their “social capability.” Although a number of European economies and Japan had narrowed the productivity gap with the USA in the post-1950 era, few low or middle income economies had managed to do this. Prof. Booth will examine the record inside Southeast Asia, where the gap in per capita GDP between Singapore and Malaysia compared with the region’s other economies has not narrowed much since 1960, and compared with some of them has actually widened. A particular puzzle concerns the Philippines, which was well ahead on most economic and social indicators in 1960 compared with Thailand and Indonesia, but fell behind over the ensuing 50+ years. Prof. Booth will explore the reasons for this.

anne booth
Anne Booth has been an Asia-focused professor of economics in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, since 1991. She studies the modern economic history of Southeast Asia with emphasis on the 20th century. Her many writings in this field include Colonial Legacies: Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia. Her latest book, Economic Change in Modern Indonesia, is due from Cambridge University Press in April. Before coming to SOAS, she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. Her degrees are from Victoria University of Wellington (BA) and the Australian National University (PhD). Before 1991 she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. She grew up in New Zealand.

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Anne Booth 2015-16 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia, Stanford University
Seminars

What Explains ASEAN’s Centrality, and Will Disunity Derail ASEAN’s Success?

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For more than two decades the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been at the center of multilateral arrangements for security in the Asia-Pacific. That keystone role has gained global support. In 2010 Secretary of State Clinton called ASEAN “the fulcrum of regional architecture”; in 2014 her successor said, “We must continue to support ASEAN’s centrality.” The governments of China, Japan, India, and Australia, among many others, have joined the chorus of support for ASEAN’s linchpin role. What explains ASEAN’s success?

Prof. Vuving’s answer is threefold: In the first place, ASEAN’s hard power weakness is a diplomatic strength, captured in the legitimacy of cooperative norms such as “open regionalism” and the “ASEAN Way.” Second, ASEAN’s location and character as an autonomous but inoffensive actor between Northeast and South Asia, between China and the United States, and between the Pacific and Indian Oceans allows it to play a “bridging” role between different geopolitical zones and potentially rival players.  Third, this bridging position has proven useful in managing changes in the relative power and status of major Asian-Pacific states. Prof. Vuving will also suggest that the unity of ASEAN’s own member states is less critical to ASEAN centrality than commonly thought.

alex vuving
Alexander L. Vuving’s teaching, research, and consulting encompass topics such as Asian security, the rise of China, Chinese strategy, Vietnamese politics and foreign policy, Southeast Asia’s international relations, the South China Sea dispute, and the concept of soft power. He has published widely on these subjects and is a frequent media interviewee. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Asian Politics and Policy and Global Discourse. He received his PhD in political science from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and has been a post-doctorate fellow and research associate at Harvard University.

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Alexander L. Vuving Professor, Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu
Seminars

Susan Rice on Climate Change and National Security

U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice '86 will give a special public lecture at the Freeman Spogli Institute on Climate Change and National Security.

Doors open at 4:00pm. Space is limited.

 

Susan Rice U.S. National Security Advisor U.S. National Security Advisor
Lectures

On Cruelty: Global Reflections from the Age of Revolutions to the War on Citizenship

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This is the second meeting of the workshop series on Civility, Cruelty, Truth. A one-day event hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center, the workshop will explore the genealogies, promises, and limits of civic virtue—at the heart of which is the city, the classical polis, itself— as a universal ideal. European in its moral contours, constituted by a deep fascination with the rule of law, borders, and security, at once coercive and oblique in whom it excludes and includes, how it punishes and protects, the city held out the promise of a humane center for ethical and sovereign life, one upon which anticolonial struggles against European empires too were first conceived and mounted. This workshop will examine the ambiguous foundations and resolutions of that vision in Asia, Europe, and the fatal waters in between; a vision that has come to be marked today by extreme violence and tragic displacements, and which now presses new questions against the very limit of modern political imagination.
 
Faculty Organizer: Aishwary Kumar (Department of History)
Student Assistant: Ahoo Najafian (Department of Religious Studies)
 
Schedule (coming soon)
 

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, The Europe Center, The France- Stanford Center for interdisciplinary Studies, Program in Global Justice, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Global Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Humanities Center, Center for South Asia

 

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.
 

Conferences

Stanford researcher analyzes anti-Americanism in South Korea

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In a new book, David Straub explains why massive anti-American protests erupted across South Korea in 2002 and considers whether it could happen again.

South Korea is often seen as a pro-American ally, a model country that went from a poor, postwar nation into a maturing democracy in just four short decades.

But despite a historic alliance between South Korea and the United States, anti-Americanism flared throughout the Asian nation between 1999-2002 when a series of events and longstanding tensions aligned, according to Stanford researcher David Straub.

“It was a sort of venting of steam,” said Straub, an associate director at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

“Many Koreans at the time were grossly overinterpreting issues and incidents involving the United States. And this was because they were viewing the U.S.-Korea relationship through a lens of historic victimization by other nations, including the United States,” he added.

Straub, who held a thirty-year diplomatic career in the State Department, headed the political section of the American embassy in Seoul during those years and was deeply involved in managing problems in the bilateral relationship.

Boiling point

Since the end of the Korean War, the United States Forces Korea (USFK) has been stationed in Seoul – now about 28,500 uniformed personnel.

In June 2002, a USFK vehicle struck two Korean students in a tragic accident. In December of that same year, after a U.S. court martial found the drivers of the vehicle not guilty of wrongdoing, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Seoul and other major Korean cities. Not only did activists partake but ordinary citizens too, he said.

Straub said the South Korean public had been “unintentionally primed” for such a reaction to the USFK traffic accident; it was the “spark that lit the firestorm” after years of escalation. A series of events led-up to the mass protests, they included:

  • A few months before the USFK traffic accident, a Korean athlete was disqualified at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City during a speed skating competition. American athlete Apolo Anton Ohno instead won gold after a disputed call.
  • A non-governmental organization in May 2000 revealed that USFK personnel dumped formaldehyde into a drain that ran into the Han River in Seoul.
  • In Sept. 1999, the Associated Press published its first investigative story examining the Nogun-ri incident of 1950, when hundreds of Korean refugees were killed in an alleged massacre by U.S. service members.

Asymmetry of attention

Straub said the shaping of Koreans’ views of Americans and fanning of tensions could be attributed in part to an “asymmetry of attention” on the part of the Korean and American publics to the U.S.-Korean relationship.

While the Korean public put tremendous focus on U.S.-Korean relations and the presence of U.S. military personnel in Korea, the American public was unaware of Korean attitudes and feelings, he said.

Similarly during the 1999-2002 period, Korean media reported hypercritical views of the United States and USFK, while the American media paid far less attention.

In negotiating with U.S. officials, South Korean officials would often allude to strong Korean public opinion and demand U.S. concessions. With no American public opinion on Korea issues to point to, U.S. officials were at a major disadvantage, Straub said.

U.S. officials would sometimes note opinions shared by members of Congress, he said, “however, for Korean officials, those claims weren’t as powerful as having a social movement literally on the front doorstep.”

In plain terms, the United States is much larger than South Korea. This very imbalance – which translates to military and economic power – added to Koreans’ assumption that they were “getting the worse end of the bargain,” he added.

“Most Koreans saw Korea as a victim of great powers,” Straub said. “It’s not just the media. It’s more than that, it was – and still is – a shared national narrative.”

Koreans’ sense of national vulnerability is magnified by their historic victimization to neighbors. South Koreans do not want to become a de facto tributary state of China or a colony of Japan again, he said.

Will anti-Americanism return?

USFK incidents were a main focus of Korean attention during the 1999-2002 period, and while there is always a possibility of problems arising, the intensity is gone now, Straub said.

“Some steam is under the lid again,” Straub said. “But I don’t think it’s nearly at the level like it was back then. I’m doubtful that we’d see an exact repeat.”

The media landscape in South Korea has improved and shifted away from its earlier position of “criticize the United States first and ask questions later,” Straub said.

Today, South Korea and the United States are in good standing at the government-level and among the people. President Obama and Korean President Park Geun-hye have an established rapport.   

What troubles Koreans now is North Korea, a Japan focused on collective defense, and the strategic rivalry between the United States and China and its possible implications for Korea, he said.

“South Korea being sandwiched between the United States and China – based on a perception that China is going to be the world’s dominant power – is a real worry for many Koreans,” Straub said, and a large number of Koreans – albeit still a minority – feel that their country must find a more equidistant ground between the two.

Most Koreans, however, still believe in the need for the continued presence of USFK personnel, at least for the time being, said Straub, and must be reassured of their strategic alliance with the United States.

Obama and Park are expected to meet in Washington in mid-October, and Straub said it will be used as an opportunity for both sides to reinforce the importance they attach to the alliance and to pressing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

Links to related articles

NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism dwindles, but roots remain: diplomat

NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism: a thing of the past?

Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, July 2015

Asia Times: American faces Seoul court over infamous unsolved murder

The Christian Science Monitor: South Korea: 20 years later, Californian son faces trial for Seoul murder

JoongAng Ilbo: Is anti-Americanism dead?

JoongAng Ilbo (Korean): 한미동맹은 빈틈없이 튼실한가 전 미국 국무부 한국과장의 진단

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A South Korean protestor holds an American flag on which protesters left their footprints at a Seoul rally in June 2003. | Reuters/Lee Jae-Won
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The US is meeting a "rising India," ambassador says

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The U.S.-India relationship has found new momentum in the midst of deepening strategic and economic cooperation, U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma told a Stanford audience on Friday.

“It’s not a hyberbole to say the relationship has soared over the past year,” Verma said to a crowded room in Encina Hall. The title of Verma’s talk was “Why India Matters.”

His visit to campus, organized by Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, was part of a multi-day trip to the United States.

Arriving from Washington, D.C., he attended the first-ever U.S.-India Strategic and Economic Dialogue earlier that week. The meeting of Indian and American delegations was “hugely successful,” said Verma, who assumed his diplomatic post in January, following Kathleen Stephens, who is now is at Stanford as a distinguished fellow.

Verma was also in the Bay Area to accompany Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi during his visit to Silicon Valley, the first Indian head of state to visit the area since 1978. Prime Minister Modi used his visit to promote a vision of “Digital India,” tying Indian growth to the spread of information technology to all levels of Indian society, driven in part by investment from the technology industry in the United States. Leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi unseated one of the longest-serving governments in a landmark May 2014 election. He has won high public approval ratings and is one of the most followed public figures on Twitter.

Modi and President Obama have been a driving force behind the two countries’ growing alignment toward combatting global challenges, Verma told the audience. The two leaders share a “certain level of chemistry,” he said.

Obama and Modi held two summits within a four-month time period. And that, Verma said, “drives the governments to come together in a way that they might not ordinarily do.”

Verma noted the strategic overlap between the U.S. “rebalance to Asia” policy and India’s “Act East” policy, both of which commit the two countries to focus defense and economic commitments on the Asia-Pacific region. He praised rapid progress in security cooperation between the two powers, including growing sales of American defense technology to India.

On the strategic side, summit outcomes have included the creation of a joint-vision of cooperation and set up phone hotlines between the heads of state and their national security advisors.

The United States now looks upon India as a “net security provider in South Asia” and supports an increased role for India in international institutions, Verma said.

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Asked about how Russia fits in, Verma acknowledged that historically there “has been a close relationship between New Delhi and Moscow. Not one or two or three years, but for decades.” But the U.S. envoy added “we don’t see that as somehow being inconsistent with a close relationship with the United States.”

On the economic side, the two leaders have committed two of the world’s largest economies to increase bilateral trade– from $100 to $500 billion – and meet for an annual economic dialogue.

Modi campaigned on a commitment to reform the economy and eradicate corruption.

However, the pace of economic reform in India has not gone as quickly as the United States would have hoped, and corruption remains an issue across India and South Asia, Verma said.

Answering a question from the audience, Verma pointed to anecdotal evidence of progress from American business in the removal of obstacles to growth from corruption. “There’s obviously a long way to go but my sense is it’s a big priority not only for the prime minister but for the people.”

Although India is modernizing, it still has a number of big-ticket development issues to tackle. Today, 300 million people don’t have access to electricity. And with over 1.2 billion people, India’s size makes it near impossible to implement sweeping change in a short period of time.

The scale of India, alone, motivates the United States to work with India, a nation that will play a “consequential role for decades to come,” Verma said. “When these two countries come together they can have a big impact on peace and prosperity across the world.”

Assessing the relationship potential for the longer-term, Verma said India and the United States’ are rooted in similar values and share diaspora communities. Support for a close U.S.-India relationship is widely expressed in the Congress, from both parties and the Ambassador anticipates the coming U.S. election will not bring any change in that commitment.

A growing number of Americans are choosing to study in India and a similar pattern is being seen in Indians coming to study in the United States. Last year, about 130,000 Indian students studied in the United States. In 2005, that number was only 30,000.

“Fundamentally, I’m optimistic because the people-to-people relationship is so strong,” Verma said.

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Richard Verma, the 25th U.S. ambassador to India, visited Stanford and delivered a talk titled "Why India Matters," on Sept. 25, 2015. | Amanda Stoeckicht
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