Mike McFaul's public talk at SCPKU July 6, 2015

FSI Director and SCPKU Mingde Distinguished Faculty Fellow Mike McFaul shares with SCPKU intern Nathalie Chun key insights during his month-long academic residence at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) this summer.

What is the purpose of your current visit? Could you tell us about your experiences and findings?

Michael McFaul: My main intellectual interest was to understand more about Chinese foreign policy and in particular the bilateral relationship between China and the US but also the bilateral relationship between China and Russia. I’m thinking of writing something, a new project, about this trilateral relationship. And so I spent the most of my time over the last several weeks speaking to two sets of people that are very different: those that focus on United States and those that focus on Russia. In addition, I have an interest in the politics of economic reform and the politics of political reform so I’ve also been speaking to academics, business people, and a few journalists to talk about the change that is going on here in China both on the political and economic dimensions

Is there in particular that you’ve learned about here in China that has surprised you? You’ve mentioned that you’ve talked to many different people so I was wondering if there was anything in particular that made you go ‘Oh that’s really interesting!’

MM: That’s good question. In terms of my subject matter, the thing that was most interesting to me as a concept of dual rising powers. So, the conventional wisdom is that China is rising and the rest are fading. But one academic, and it actually came up more than once, reformulated that idea. It’s not that China is rising and everybody else is fading, it’s actually that the United States is rising with China, just at a slower pace. And so maybe eventually they catch up, but it’d be incorrect to say that one is declining and that one is rising, and vis-á-vis the rest of the countries in the world. I also think that’s a better formulation because actually the United States continues to grow at a higher rate. It still has the largest military in the world; in terms of soft power [it still] has great reach and that has not been declining, that’s still rising. It’s just that when we look at this rate of change relative to the rate of change in China, the United States feels like it’s falling behind. Or China is catching up is a better way to put it. I thought that was interesting.

Second interesting point is, you know I just spent two years as Ambassador to Russia from the United States, and there I would say there is a feeling of… envy towards the United States. Like we have wronged them or that we are guilty for some of the difficult periods that they have had, kind of like a chip on their shoulder. Here I don’t feel that. Here I see a kind of self-confidence that people have, wanting to work with United States. Most certainly when I met with officials there was a very strong sense of wanting to have cooperative relations with the United States and in particular it jumped out at me when I was at the Ministry of Foreign affairs yesterday, they kept using the phrase ‘win-win outcomes’ for China and the United States. Well that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with Russia when I was in the government; during the early period of the Obama administration we used that phrase too. And I find it interesting that here the bilateral relationship with China, the Chinese still talk about that, and most certainly do the Americans too. I met with Ambassador Baucus and his team, and they most certainly talk that way. I find it kind of tragic that in the bilateral relationship with Russia, we no longer talk that way.

You’ve just mentioned the whole idea of zero-sum perspective of looking at the world and I guess in IR theory that would be a more realist perspective, as opposed to a liberalist perspective. So do you think that this sort of liberalist perspective should the future of looking at and that this ‘win-win’ perspective is one that future diplomats should hold?

MM: I worked on the Obama campaign in 2008 and one time on a flight with him when I was briefing him, I started to talk about these two camps, realist and liberal camps, as a way to understand foreign policy and you know how he responded to me? He said “Come on, the real world, requires you to use both of those theories depending on the issue and the country and the bilateral relationship” and when I was in the government, I most certainly felt that way. These are useful paradigms to kind of clarify arguments but I wouldn’t want to be labeled in one camp or the other and I think it’s analytically distorting, not revealing, to say the world is either realist or liberal. That said, I lean towards liberalism personally. I do believe in the 21^st Century, maybe not early centuries it was possible, but in the 21^st Century it is possible to construct outcomes that are good for both countries especially through the use of treaties and institutions. And I come away from my month here in China feeling that there are real challenges in the bilateral relationship, complicated issues, but they’re not irreconcilable issues. Even South China sea right, even Taiwan, I see the possibility, with smart diplomacy, that we can find ways to manage these issues so that it doesn’t lead to conflict between the United States and China

While you were here at SCPKU you have given talks on both the upcoming US elections and current US-Russia relations. Putting those two themes together, what do you think are the implications of the current US-Russia relations on the upcoming elections in 2016 and the way the next president will tackle these issues?

MM: I would say, I predict continuity, more or less. That is to say, that the policy that you see now was a reaction to Russia annexation of Ukraine, of Crimea, and intervention in Eastern Ukraine, is one of deterrence and punishment. There are three dimensions to it: sanctions to punish Putin’s bad behavior, strengthening of NATO to deter him from going further and third, shoring up Ukraine to try and make the economy there recover from this very difficult period. And I basically think those three main policy trajectories will continue, I don’t see a change. But in each one of them, you might see more or less the same paths. I predict that if a Republican candidate is elected, the ones who’s policies I know, or even Secretary Clinton, you would see for instance maybe military assistance to Ukraine, which is something the Obama administration has so far been reluctant to do, but I don’t foresee major change. And that disappoints people here in China. When I say that they are disappointed, it is because they are hopeful after an election there might be a new president that may try to reset relations with Russia again. I’m not optimistic.

What roles, in your opinion, is SCPKU playing in China, and what do you hope the Center will achieve in the future?

MM: Well what I hope the Center will achieve for the future is to create greater connectivity between hundreds of Stanford scholars working in all fields. This is an incredible place, I’ve never seen it before until this trip, absolutely beautiful, 21^st century technology, and the second thing is, Peking University is an incredible university, beautiful campus, really all of my interactions with scholars here have been very positive, they’ve been very warm in greeting me as a fellow scholar and I’ve been impressed by the students as well. So that is my hope, over the coming years and decades, that this serves as a bridge between PKU, but also all of China, and Stanford University because there are many difference issues in all different fields of study where there’s room to cooperate. In my field, I also see a very concrete role to help develop what we call Track II dialogues, with China scholars, in terms of helping to manage US-China bilateral relationships. It’s very clear to me there’s a close relationship between senior scholars here at PKU and the government and the Party and the business community and the People’s Congress. I’ve met many people and they know all the people here and we have those connections in terms of Washington as well at Stanford. So my hope is that in a concrete way, and for me personally, that I might be involved in that, and we have an incredible platform here to be able to do so.

Masahiko Aoki, a Stanford economist who forged new ways of thinking about organizations, institutions and East Asian economies, died in Palo Alto on July 15. He was 77, and recently had been hospitalized for lung disease.

Aoki was a founder of comparative institutional analysis, which explores issues, perspectives and models of institutions within the economy. He studied economic systems, corporate governance and East Asian economies, and developed the "theory of the firm" to compare organizational structures in the corporate world.

Aoki was the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Economics, emeritus, and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He came to Stanford in 1967 as an assistant professor, and also had appointments at Harvard University and at Kyoto University in Japan. Aoki retired to emeritus status at Stanford in 2005.

Scholar, institution builder

Aoki's colleague, Stanford economist Takeo Hoshi, described him as a prolific and dedicated scholar. "Even at the hospital, he worked on revising his most recent paper that examines institutional development in China and Japan from the late 19th century to the early 20th century," said Hoshi, the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Hoshi noted, "Masa was the first scholar to apply rigorous theoretical tools in modern economics to study of the Japanese economy." This led Aoki to develop, along with his Stanford colleagues, the framework behind comparative institutional analysis, which can be applied to any economic system, he added.

For Hoshi, Aoki was the "biggest reason why I decided to focus on the study of the Japanese economy in my career almost 30 years ago, and why I moved to Stanford a couple of years ago to be the director of the Japan Program at Asia-Pacific Research Center."

Aoki was the inaugural director of the Japanese Studies Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) when it was re-established in 2011.

John Shoven, the director of the Stanford Institute for Economic and Policy Research, said Aoki was both an accomplished scholar and institution builder.

"He is widely respected all over the world, and was able to span the worlds of economic theory and applied economic policy. We have lost both a friend and one of the world's leading economists," Shoven said.

Aoki's passing represents "a loss to economics, to Stanford and to me personally," said Stanford economist Kenneth J. Arrow, 1972 winner of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences.

"His most important contributions were to the analysis and understanding of organizational forms in economic life. Aoki particularly studied the contrasting forms of economic organization in the United States and Japanese economies. His work was informed by a deep understanding of economic theory," said Arrow, the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, emeritus.

Leadership roles

In his 2001 work, Toward a Comparative Institutional Analysis, Aoki developed a new approach to analyze how institutions evolve, why institutional structures are diverse across economies, and what factors lead to institutional change or inflexibility.

Aoki's most recent book Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance, and Institutions, was published in 2010.

Aoki was born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, in 1938. He graduated from the University of Tokyo with bachelor's and master's degrees in economics, in 1962 and 1964, respectively, and a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1967. In addition to his Stanford career, he held visiting positions at academic institutions in China, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Aoki was president of the International Economic Association from 2008 to 2011, and served as president of the Japanese Economic Association. He was awarded the Japan Academy Prize in 1990 and the sixth International Schumpeter Prize in 1998.

He was the founding editor of the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, and also founded the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Virtual Center for Advanced Studies in Institution at the Tokyo Foundation. He was involved in the establishment of the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance at Tsinghua University.

Aoki is survived by his wife, Reiko, of Stanford, and two daughters, Maki, of Boston, and Kyoko, and granddaughter Yuma, of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

Thomas Sheehan, Stanford Professor of Religious Studies, shares with SCPKU intern Nathalie Chun his experience as a faculty fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) this summer.  His three-week academic residence at SCPKU focused on the study of phenomenology and Heidegger in China. 

My first question is: why did you choose to come to China?

Thomas Sheehan: This is my third time here in China; the previous times I’ve come to visit my son or to teach. But this time I’ve really come here to learn and interact with Chinese scholars. I’ve talked to professors and students from universities all over China and this has meant that I have established contacts with superb scholars here.

So far, what has been your general impression of the study of phenomenology and Heidegger in China?

TS: There’s been a long tradition, at least in the 20^th Century, of the study of phenomenology and Heidegger. Many Chinese professors went to Germany in the 1930s to study with Heidegger and they brought back his works and translated his major works into Chinese quite early on. So there’s been a tradition that has led to a level of scholarship that is really quite good. These scholars read German, French, English and obviously Chinese and are conversant with all of the contemporary literature. The only problem is people across the Pacific don’t know about their work and that’s what I’d like to promote.

You mentioned that you have come to learn from the professors and students. What do you think has been the most interesting thing that you’ve learnt from interacting with them?

TS: The new and exciting thing for me has been to see how Chinese philosophy professors are trying to conjugate elements of Heidegger’s philosophy with Chinese tradition of Daoism for example. Heidegger himself was interested in that, and I knew about that in a vague sort of way, but its really quite alive here.

You’ve mentioned how eager you are to continue this sort of interactions; can you expand more on your plans for the future?

TS: We have some concrete plans that I hope will be realized already next year. My first is the following: a two-day video conference conducted at SCPKU between Chinese and American scholars (who will gather at Stanford). The Centre has extraordinary video facilities for conferencing, while I’ve never done this before; I think we will try to make something happen in spring of next year. Secondly there’s a conference on Phenomenology here at PKU in May that I hope to attend. And thirdly, personally, I would like to have the opportunity to teach. I’ve very happy that Tsinghua University has invited me to teach a short course next spring.

Do you think this sort of cross-cultural dialogue can be creating a new way to look at philosophy for the future? Do you think this could be the future for philosophy and academia?

TS: Speaking of philosophy, we can only profit by being in touch with Chinese scholars. How many thousands of years of tradition does China have and I myself am generally ignorant of that. My interests in Western philosophy have reached their peak and I would really like to devote my later years to this kind of cross-cultural dialogue in philosophy. I personally could only learn, and my colleagues as well.

On the broader question of inter-cultural exchange, I’m convinced that we need more soft power exchange because I’ve seen how excited Chinese youth and professors are about the opening up of China while also preserving their Chinese characteristics and traditions. I like that very much. Anything that my colleagues and I can do to learn about and contribute to a soft power exchange will only be for the better.

The increasing resistance to antimicrobial drugs is a growing public health concern, particularly in low- and middle-income countries that require high out-of-pocket payments for prescription drugs.

“Understanding the drivers of antibiotic resistance in low- to middle-income countries is important for wealthier nations because antibiotic-resistant pathogens, similar to other communicable diseases, do not respect national boundaries,” said Marcella Alsan, MD, PhD, MPH, the lead author of the study, which was published July 9 in The Lancet Infectious Disease.

Alsan is an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford, an investigator at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and a core faculty member at the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

“Out-of-pocket health expenditures are a major source of health-care financing in the developing world,” said Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a professor of medicine, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and another core faculty member at CHP/PCOR.

Read the full article here.

The Washington Post's Anna Fifield reviewed Crossing Heaven's Border (Shorenstein APARC, 2015), a book by author and journalist Hark Joon Lee. The book details the challenges facing North Korean defectors -- their perilous escapes, the repressive regime that they seek to flee from, and for some, what life looks like on the other side.

"Lee’s book is compelling because it offers a fresh perspective on the puzzle that is North Korea. He writes about the challenges he faced in reporting on this story and the ethical questions he encountered, and the toll it took on him as a person," Fifield writes.

Sensationalist stories about North Korea often swirl in news headlines, but Lee chronicles their hardships as a firsthand witness who embedded with defectors from 2007 to 2011. 

Lee, reporting for the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, initially published the stories as articles, and later as a documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service in 2009. Lee's account focuses on the lives of ordinary North Koreans.

"He writes about the tenderness he sees between a middle-aged couple from different social backgrounds who fled so they could be together; Soo-ryun, who had a difficult escape but found love and had a baby, only to be struck down by stomach cancer; pretty Young-mi, who dreamed of going to the United States but then found she couldn’t even understand the English that South Koreans use," Fifield writes.

The review and a Q&A with Lee is available on the Washington Post website.

Joon Nak Choi will be the 2015-16 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), effective Jan. 1, 2016.

A sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context.

Choi, a Stanford graduate, has worked jointly with Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin to analyze the transnational bridges linking Asia and the United States. The research project explores how economic development links to foreign skilled workers and diaspora communities.

Most recently, Choi coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea with Shin, who is also the director of the Korea Program. From 2010-11, Choi developed the manuscript while he was a postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

Mark Granovetter, a professor and chair of Stanford’s sociology department, praised Choi for his work in academia.

“Joon Nak’s dissertation on social influences on hedge fund managers’ success broke important ground in our understanding of financial markets. His recent book Global Talent sheds critical new light on the challenges of Korea and other economies facing high-level labor shortages, and the potential of foreign workers to meet them. As the 2015-16 Koret Fellow, he will bring his considerable talents to bear on the study of Korean society,” Granovetter said.

During his fellowship, Choi will study the challenges of diversity in South Korea and teach a class for Stanford students. Choi’s research will buttress efforts to understand the shifting social and economic patterns in Korea, a now democratic nation seeking to join the ranks of the world’s most advanced countries.

Supported by the Koret Foundation, the fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea. The fellowship has expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in Korea, and aims to identify young promising scholars working on these areas.

“It will be my pleasure and honor to spend the next year at Shorenstein APARC, and have the opportunity to engage in the vibrant research community there," Choi said.

Choi holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, international relations and urban studies from Brown University, and a master’s degree and doctorate in sociology from Stanford University.