The Program on Human Rights at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), together with the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, are pleased to introduce the 2013 Summer Human Rights Fellows. These four remarkable Stanford undergraduates were selected from a competitive pool of applicants to spend the summer serving in organizations advancing human rights work around the world.

The Summer Human Rights Fellowship enables undergraduate students to gain practical experience at international organizations that promote, monitor, evaluate, or advance human rights work. In order to apply, potential fellows must identify their ideal placement and work with the partner to ensure there is a viable project that allows the student to contribute meaningfully to the organization’s work. This year, the fellows will be working on the ground in India, Jordan, and Guatemala with informal workers, at-risk children, trafficking victims, and using technology to advance social justice worldwide. Upon their return to Stanford next year, each of the Human Rights Fellows will participate in campus events to describe their work.

Below are the profiles of our four fellows highlighting their summer projects, interest in human rights and some fun facts. Click here to learn more about the fellowship program.

 

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Name: Firas Abuzaid (’14)

Major: Computer Science

Hometown: Plano, Texas

Tell us about your project. I'll be working with Visualizing Justice in Amman, Jordan. The mission of Visualizing Justice is to empower people worldwide to create visual stories for social justice and human rights. My mission for the summer is to exploit new software innovations in web development to augment Visualizing Justice’s data visualization capabilities, thus making their stories more expressive and accessible worldwide.

What first sparked your interest in human rights? I think there is a disconnect between the technologies we develop and the societies we live in, and that gap is most noticeable in the area of human rights. In particular, our innovations in technology have created an information overload problem. We are now inundated with information about various human rights issues, but struggle for a more nuanced or contextualized understanding of those issues. Also, the quality of the information has not kept up with the growth in quantity. If we can invest the time to build better tools and re-couple the quality of information with its quantity, then we, as a society, can make a lot more progress in the field of human rights.

What are your post-Stanford aspirations? I want to develop new tools that make it easier for individuals to create compelling data visualizations, especially those that lie outside the traditional domains of technology.

Fun fact about yourself: I can solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute.

 

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Name: Lara Mitra (’15)

Major: Human Biology

Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Tell us about your project. I’m traveling to Ahmedabad, India to work with Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), a union of 1.4 million informal economy workers, which provide community-driven socioeconomic services, including healthcare, local banking, social security, and housing to marginalized groups. Given my interest in public health, I will focus on SEWA’s initiatives responding to people's inherent right to a healthy life, working with the health team to analyze and document the changing role of front-line health workers who deliver care to expecting mothers. I aim to assess the effectiveness of services provided by three unique classes of health workers, and identify how their knowledge and skills can be harnessed to deliver primary health care to a broad swath of the rural and urban population.

What first sparked your interest in human rights? The day of my 16^th birthday found me waiting in line at the DMV in Washington, DC. When I reached the front of the line, I was given one final form to fill out. I mindlessly scribbled my name and date of birth before I stumbled upon a question that I did not know the answer to: “Would you like to be an organ donor?” This was my first exposure to a human rights issue that I hope to pursue well into the future. Upon doing some research, I became hooked on the topic of organ donation. The future human biology major in me enjoyed reading about the dire need for kidneys in the US, but the humanitarian in me found another area of the debate more gripping – the black market for organs. 

What are your post-Stanford aspirations?  Find a job that allows me to combine my interests in medicine and human rights! 

Fun fact about yourself: My parents made me take classes in juggling and unicycling growing up in case the whole college thing didn't work out.

 

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Name: Nicolle Richards (’16)

Major: Human Biology (planned)

Hometown: Vienna, Austria

Tell us about your project. I will be traveling to Guatemala to work with Kids Alive, a nonprofit that works to rescue orphans and at-risk children. In Guatemala, they run a care home for girls who have been abandoned or abused – often in the form of forced labor and/or physical and sexual abuse. I will be working with the girls in the care home, and also evaluating a program that works to continue supporting the girls who have returned home.

What first sparked your interest in human rights? Throughout high school, I volunteered at a care home in Romania for women and girls who had experienced abuse. This first exposure to drastic poverty sparked my interest in social work and development, and led me to explore different aspects of human rights. Later in high school, I taught summer school in the Dominican Republic to at-risk children, where exposure to obvious injustice solidified my passion to fight for human rights. As a Christian, I believe that I have a responsibility to help those less fortunate – and fighting for human rights is an obvious way to do this!

What are your post-Stanford aspirations? I hope to study international human rights law and eventually work combatting human trafficking around the world. 

Fun fact about yourself: I get to spend my vacations in Seoul, South Korea where my family currently lives.

 

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Name: Garima Sharma (’15)

Major: Economics

Hometown: New Delhi, India

Tell us about your project. I am going to be working with Apne Aap: Women Worldwide, an anti-trafficking NGO based in Forbesganj, India. Forbesganj is in close proximity to the Indo-Nepalese border, which has led to its emergence as a source, transit center, and destination for women trafficked for prostitution. I have spent the past two quarters designing an interactive human rights education curriculum focused on sex trafficking, which I will use in Forbesganj to engage with at-risk girls who are the daughters of sex workers in the red light district, as well as 12-14 year-old girls belonging to the Nutt (lower-caste) community. Simultaneously, I will be working with older men, women and community leaders, with the goal of making preliminary headway into a community-wide anti-trafficking strategy.

What first sparked your interest in human rights? I cannot count the number of times that I have been verbally harassed, whistled at or sung to by strange men in the course of my fairly “normal” existence as a middle-class girl in India. My passion for wanting to ensure that women are able to demand and access a life of dignity is a consequence of having grown up in a society that normalizes aggression against us. This prompted me to intern at the National Human Rights Commission of India, where I spent my time reading reports on trafficking, examining anti-trafficking legislation, and talking to activists and victims of human rights violations. I realized we critically need to place greater focus on the prevention of violations and develop a true, nuanced appreciation for the concept of human rights – a change I am hoping to effect through this fellowship.

What are your post-Stanford aspirations? A few years down the line, I hope to work as a policymaker advancing women’s rights in India.

Fun fact about yourself: I am one of two—I have a twin sister named Anima, who attends medical school in India.

 

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Comparative, policy-oriented research aimed at improving health care and the overall quality of life across the Asia-Pacific region is at the heart of AHPP’s mission and activities. As a research program within a world-class university, focusing exclusively on comparative health policy in Asia, it is unique. AHPP aims to provide evidence for addressing key health policy challenges in the Asia-Pacific, from links between poverty and ill health, to improving “value for money” and defining appropriate government and market roles in health systems. The program brings researchers to Stanford for on-site collaboration, and creates opportunities for Stanford students to conduct research in and about Asia.

The study of comparative health policy at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) dates back almost a quarter century, with its roots in the Comparative Health Care Policy Research Project inaugurated in 1990. Starting with pioneering research on health economics in Japan, the program has expanded since then to encompass research on health policy and demographic change throughout the region, albeit with a continuing focus on East Asia in comparative perspective.

Collaborative initiatives and global researchers

AHPP’s leading-edge research involves experts on both sides of the Pacific. Among its current core research initiatives, AHPP is investigating the economic and social implications of Asia’s unprecedented demographic change, especially population aging and gender imbalance in China, as well as examining the determinants of health and health disparities among Asian populations.

AHPP is also analyzing evidence on health service delivery and financing in the Asia-Pacific region, such as the impact of expanding insurance coverage, reforming provider payment incentives, and contracting with the private sector. In addition, the program is conducting a comparative analysis of the historical development of health care institutions — like physician drug dispensing and recent reforms to separate prescribing from dispensing. AHPP also sponsors collaborative initiatives to address critical global health issues, including tobacco control, promotion of child health, and control of infectious diseases.

Preparing future health care policy experts

The program is dedicated to training the next generation of health policy experts: undergraduate and graduate students gain crucial research experience by their involvement in AHPP’s research initiatives, as well as invaluable mentoring for their own projects. A postdoctoral fellowship was initiated in 2008, followed three years later by a fellowship for young health policy experts from low-income countries of Asia.

In addition to numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, recent AHPP publications include Aging Asia: The Economic and Social Implications of Rapid Demographic Change in China, Japan, and South Korea and Prescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policy in the Asia-Pacific. AHPP also runs its own working paper series that is open to scholars and health policy experts around the world.

Annual workshops and engaging seminars

Each year, AHPP assembles some of the world’s greatest health policy minds at Stanford to examine focused topics at conferences and workshops, resulting in special issues of journals, edited volumes, and ongoing collaborative research. In this thirtieth anniversary year of Shorenstein APARC, director Karen Eggleston organized a conference on “Economic Aspects of Population Aging in China and India,” co-sponsored by several related research programs at Harvard University.

In addition, AHPP organizes numerous public seminars throughout the academic year. Recent topics have included the battle against HIV/AIDS in Cambodia; immunizations and child health in Bangladesh; population aging in Japan; Vietnam’s health policy challenges; tobacco control in China; air pollution in South Asia; private health insurance in South Korea; and many other important health policy-related issues.

Although the Japan Studies Program (JSP) was formally established in 2011, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s (Shorenstein APARC) newest addition has a rich history that equals or even exceeds that of the Center itself. The archives—through dozens of occasional and working papers, studies, photographs of landmark events, and books—reveal three vibrant decades of research on Japanese economics, industry, government, and international relations.

Japan studies took root when the Center was founded in 1983 and has evolved with the political, economic, and social changes in Japan, and with developments in U.S.-Japan relations. Under the leadership of co-founding Center director Daniel I. Okimoto, one of the earliest projects explored U.S.-Japan competition and collaboration in high-tech industries during the 1980s and 1990s. Other initiatives led to a definitive three volume comparative study of Japan’s political economy, and an exploration of the United States’ evolving ties with its Northeast Asia allies, including Japan.

Early Center activities brought together distinguished scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from Japan and the United States for fruitful interdisciplinary academic collaboration and meaningful policy dialogue, and laid the groundwork for many enduring relationships with Japanese universities, ministries, and other organizations. One of the first of such activities was the U.S.-Japan Congressional Seminar series, through which members of the U.S. Senate and the Japanese Diet met for candid, in-depth discussion on issues of mutual significance related to trade, international economic policy, industrial policy, and security.

After Japan’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, the country underwent a range of political, economic, and social transformations. Even amidst challenges, Japan has adapted, as its firms continue to be globally competitive in many areas, and it persists as an Asian economic powerhouse; on the security front, Japan remains one of the closest allies of the United States. Emerging out of these transformations is a new Japan that offers quite a different picture from the old rapid-growth era.

The newly instituted Japan Studies Program aims to make Stanford a U.S. leader in the field of contemporary Japan studies. As an integral component of the Center, JSP facilitates multidisciplinary, social science–oriented research on contemporary Japan, emphasizing both academic scholarship and policy-relevant research. The program aims to become a central platform for Stanford students and the broader community for understanding and engaging with Japan.

JSP actively collaborates with other organizations on campus, such as the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), the US-Asia Technology Management Center, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. During the one-year anniversary of the March 11 Great Tohoku Disaster, JSP co-sponsored a lecture series with CEAS examining Japan’s growth and recovery, and it held a major conference focused on restructuring Japan’s energy industry. Since 2011, its popular lunchtime seminar series has brought numerous high-caliber guest speakers to Stanford for insightful talks on subjects ranging from cloud computing in Japan and the United States to the comeback of Japan’s conservative party and the new era of “Abenomics.”

JSP experts actively contribute to Shorenstein APARC’s publishing program of timely, policy-oriented edited volumes and working papers, and regularly contribute op-eds and journal articles to numerous leading newspapers and scholarly journals, including the Journal of East Asian Studies, Socio-Economic Review, and Energy Policy.

Looking ahead, Takeo Hoshi, who joined the Center as JSP’s director in December 2012, says, “I want to make Shorenstein APARC the first place that researchers, policymakers, business practitioners, and students visit to understand more about the Japanese economy and politics—I look forward to working with everyone at Shorenstein APARC (and beyond) to achieve this goal.” With a strong, growing core of affiliated faculty, researchers, and staff, the future for Japan studies at Stanford looks bright.

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In 2007, Daniel Okimoto, Shorenstein APARC director emeritus, received Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in recognition of decades of work. (Credit: courtesy Daniel Okimoto)

(l-r) Kenji Kushida, Masahiko Aoki, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, and Takeo Hoshi ( JSP director). Kurokawa, chair of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, spoke at JSP on how the scientific community can help policymakers respond to change in a globalized world. (Credit: Wena Rosario)

For almost two decades, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) produced outstanding work in Korean affairs but lacked a separate program for Korean studies; by the turn of the millennium, however, it was clear that more attention and resources needed to be devoted to Korea. Between 1960 and 1990, capitalist South Korea had risen from the devastation of the Korean War to produce an economic “miracle on the Han River,” followed soon by full democratization. In the process, it became a global model of development. Meanwhile, North Korea was pursuing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles while maintaining one of the world’s last Stalinist systems, even outlasting the Soviet Union itself despite a devastating famine in the mid-1990s, and the regime’s threats presented a major concern to policymakers. Together, the two Korean states with radically different systems, competing for hegemony on the divided Korean Peninsula, constituted an unparalleled “natural experiment” for social scientists.

Since 2001 when Gi-Wook Shin was invited to found a program within Shorenstein APARC, the Stanford Korean Studies Program (KSP) has developed into a world-renowned center offering impactful programs addressing current, policy-relevant issues and events. KSP sponsors conferences and workshops that bring together leading Korea scholars and policymakers for meaningful dialogue. Special events afford the general public the opportunity to engage with distinguished practitioners as well as emerging scholars. KSP also supports fellowships, collaborates with a broad range of visiting scholars, publishes award-winning books and reports, and offers commentary to leading media.

Amassing talent to create a premier program

From its one-person beginning a decade ago, KSP now has faculty members in sociology, history, and literature, with two more appointments pending. In addition, KSP has two full-time staff members and a research assistant. A Korean language lecturer and a Korean Studies librarian support program activities. KSP taps into the rich array of Stanford-based faculty and senior fellows who conduct policy-related research on Korea within FSI-affiliated centers and programs, and at the neighboring Hoover Institution.

KSP has sponsored collaborative research projects on a range of Korea-related subjects. The South Korean National Assembly Project considered the generational change under way in South Korea’s government and its political and ideological implications, specifically how such changes affect Assembly votes—and Korean policy—on major issues. Other projects focus on mass media and U.S.-Korea relations, including the ROK-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, the Korean experience of historical injustice and reconciliation, and a book series on Korean democratization sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies. Findings from such groundbreaking projects are regularly presented at KSP seminars and conferences, and published as books and journal articles.

A next generation of scholars

KSP is devoted to training the next generation of Korea scholars by offering courses on Korea through various academic departments, working closely with the Center for East Asian Studies, which offers an MA in East Asian studies with a specialty in Korea. A writing prize in Korean studies was created in 2012, and KSP co-sponsors a Korea internship program and convenes popular overseas seminars in Seoul, enabling Stanford undergraduates to experience Korean politics, history, and culture firsthand. In collaboration with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, Stanford KSP is expanding opportunities for high school students to take online courses on Korea and for U.S. secondary school teachers to bring Korean studies into their curricula.

Each year, KSP offers outstanding opportunities for fellowships and visiting scholars from Korea and elsewhere. With generous fellowship support from the Pantech Group and the Koret Foundation, KSP has hosted over 100 alumni, including two former South Korean foreign ministers, former senior officials from the United States, South Korea, and China, and leading Korea scholars and experts. These visiting scholars participate intensively in KSP research, educational, and outreach programs, and continue their association with the program after leaving Stanford through an active alumni association.

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John Everard, former British ambassador to Pyongyang and a Pantech Fellow, speaks on North Korea at the annual Koret Conference, part of the 2011 celebration of Stanford KSP’s tenth anniversary. (Credit: Rod Searcey)

Students from Seoul’s Hana Academy perform traditional Korean music for participants of the Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea. (Credit: Rod Searcey)

In 2007, in recognition of the importance of developing a program devoted to the study of contemporary China, the Stanford China Program (SCP) was established within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), which for decades had already been the home for extensive research on China at Stanford University; within a few short years, SCP has become an integral part of the Center, establishing a reputation as one of the top research programs in the country focusing on contemporary China, especially political economy.

Conducting cutting-edge research and training the next generation of scholars

SCP faculty are doing cutting-edge research on a wide range of challenges facing China: fiscal shortfalls and local governance, property rights reform and corporate restructuring, social inequality and mobility, food security, markets, education and poverty alleviation, environmental pollution and public health, and political participation and popular protests. SCP research is a vital part of Shorenstein APARC’s publishing program, and has resulted in several acclaimed edited volumes. The program has also played an integral role in bringing top visiting scholars from China and the United States to Stanford for a valuable cross-pollination of research and knowledge on China.

While primarily a research entity, SCP recognizes the critical importance of training new generations of Stanford students for broader and deeper interactions with China. Bringing together both research and teaching, the SCP-pioneered China Social Science Workshop has become an in-house forum for faculty and their doctoral students, as well as invited outside scholars, to present work in progress. It has fostered critical analysis and feedback essential to turn research into high-quality publications.

Other ongoing SCP academic workshops and conferences promote intellectual exchange with leading scholars within the United States and from China; the program also provides opportunities to educate broader audiences through public lectures on timely topics, such as the recent “China Under New Management” series in the wake of China’s once-in-a-decade leadership change following the 18th Party Congress.

Apart from its regular quarterly seminar series, SCP has also played a vital role in the Oksenberg Lecture, held annually to honor the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg. A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, Oksenberg consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific. Recent Oksenberg Lectures have illuminated key issues, such as the modernization of China’s military, constraints on China’s foreign policy, and areas of friction in U.S.-China relations.

Establishing the Stanford Center at Peking University

Aside from making great strides in building China studies at Stanford, SCP has played a special role in the university’s globalization efforts. Shortly after SCP was founded, director Jean Oi, with the help of Andrew Walder and strong support from FSI director Chip Blacker and dean of research Ann Arvin, started to work on creating Stanford’s first university-wide center abroad—in Beijing.

In March 2012 the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) officially opened, housed in a historic courtyard compound in the middle of Peking University, on the former site of an imperial palace. Oi concurrently serves as the Lee Shau Kee Director of SCPKU. Stanford is the only university to have a standalone center in a top Chinese university, with SCPKU serving as a unique platform for all of its seven schools, one that enables all Stanford faculty—not just those affiliated with SCP—to do cutting-edge research on a wide range of topics. Shorenstein APARC is a core program at SCPKU, with a dedicated office, and with SCP has already held a number of conferences and meetings at SCPKU since its opening. Ever cognizant of its academic mission, SCP is proud to have played a role in creating a home away from home for Stanford students to have a hands-on understanding of what China is—the kind of training you cannot get from reading a book.

Much has changed in the region since SEAF first began to bring Southeast Asia to Stanford. Its population has grown from 485 million in 1999 to more than 620 million in 2013. While in 1999 Southeast Asia was just recovering from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the region weathered the 2008 American financial crisis almost unscathed, and in 2013 is a largely prospering zone of growth in a faltering world economy.

In 1999 SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson, having observed East Timor’s resounding “yes” vote for independence from Indonesia, was evacuated from the half-island as it fell prey to lethal pro-Indonesian militias wreaking revenge. In 2013 the independent country now known as Timor-Leste enjoys domestic stability, good relations with Indonesia, and one of the world’s highest rates of economic growth. A brutal, isolated dictatorship in 1999, Myanmar (Burma) has undergone significant reform and is set to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014. Yet across the region daunting challenges remain, including poverty, corruption, pollution, repression, intolerance, and tensions with China over who owns what in the South China Sea.

Over fourteen years SEAF has hosted more than 150 speakers on these and other aspects of Southeast Asia’s polities, economies, and cultures, and the region’s interactions with the rest of the world. In the latest academic year a dozen SEAF speakers—scholars and diplomats, journalists and activists—have shared their views of authoritarian development in Singapore, bigotry and rebellion in Indonesia, the Cao Dai religion in Vietnam and the United States, climate change in Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Summit, foreign aid to Cambodia, Muslim politics in Malaysia, and the modernity of Thai peasants.

Advancing Scholars and Scholarship

SEAF has also enabled a series of academic specialists on Southeast Asia to spend time at Stanford doing research and writing. Noteworthy among these visiting scholars have been the recipients of the endowed Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellowship on Southeast Asia, awarded annually in cooperation with the National University of Singapore (NUS), where recipients spend half their fellowship term. Inaugurated at Stanford by the presidents of Stanford and NUS in 2007, the program’s first awardee was Robert Hefner, a Boston University anthropologist who went on to become president of the Association for Asian Studies. Two Lee Kong Chian professors were on campus in 2013—a development expert from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an anthropologist from the University of Southern California.

The many books and articles that SEAF has facilitated include a volume edited by its director, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia. Co-published by Shorenstein APARC and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, one reviewer called Hard Choices “required reading for graduate students specializing in Southeast Asia and a must-have for ASEAN specialists and observers.”

Outreach in Southeast Asia and at Home

SEAF has also brought Stanford to Southeast Asia. Every year SEAF’s director has traveled to the region to do research, lecture, take part in workshops, and interact with Southeast Asian colleagues, including a 2012 SEAF-organized workshop in Singapore for the authors of a planned volume on Southeast Asia’s relations with China. SEAF’s director has also taken Stanford students to the region to do research, most recently in Indonesia.

SEAF has even stimulated the formation of two Stanford student-led organizations designed to share knowledge and ideas about Southeast Asia. The Malaysia Forum has grown from its 2003 founding into a global community that encourages “civil conversation” on the many issues the country faces. In 2004, also on campus, SEALNet was born—the Southeast Asian Service and Leadership Network—and it too has expanded far beyond Stanford. Its activities include sending Southeast Asian students abroad back to the region for community service during vacations.

These highlights illustrate how, since its birth fourteen years ago, SEAF has managed “to bring Southeast Asia to Stanford, and Stanford to Southeast Asia”—and how it hopes to continue that mission in the years to come.

"Countries that restrict free and open access to the internet are really walling themselves off from the progress of the next century," says Ambassador Locke at China 2.0 event in Beijing

In his opening keynote to a capacity audience at the China 2.0 Beijing 2013 Forum, U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China Gary Locke delivered a clear message: for any country operating in today’s global economy, free and open access to the internet is vital to kindle innovation, attract capital, and cultivate entrepreneurship.

“Attempts to unleash the transformative power of the internet, while controlling political and cultural content, are ultimately counterproductive,” said Locke on April 12th at the Stanford Center at Peking University. “Censorship not only harms the internet industry, it hurts the economy.”

Locke, who assumed the ambassadorship in August 2011 and previously served as President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, addressed a diverse audience of tech leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, academics, and Stanford alumni from mainland China and overseas.

The one-day, invitation-only forum was part of a series of events at Stanford University and in China organized by the China 2.0 Initiative of the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Other speakers included founders, venture capitalists, executives and leaders from Alibaba, AppAnnie, Baidu, Bertelsmann, Evernote, GSR Ventures, Kuwo, La Miu, Qiming Ventures, RedAtoms, Renren and Stanford University.

Attempts to unleash the transformative power of the internet, while controlling political and cultural content, are ultimately counterproductive.
                                                 -- Ambassador Gary Locke

In wide-ranging remarks on "China and the Global Digital Economy," Locke began by pointing out that the internet has transformed not only China’s economy, but society too. He said the internet has raised Chinese people’s awareness about the environment and inspired them to demand greater accountability from their government.

“In 2008, we placed a single air monitor on top of the embassy and began to tweet information to American citizens in Beijing about air quality.” By late 2011, Locke said, Chinese citizens began re-tweeting the data on popular microblogging sites, and began demanding of the Chinese government better environmental data and stronger air quality regulations.

Locke admits he never anticipated the extent to which Chinese citizens would take interest in the embassy’s air quality data, but suggests the recent groundswell of public attention surrounding air pollution is the fillip that has pushed the Chinese government to adopt more stringent environmental standards and install some 500 particulate matter (PM) monitors in over 70 cities in China. The Ambassador drew laughs from the audience when he added that “PM 2.5” had become a common phrase in the Chinese vernacular; citing a family trip to southern China, he said, “people were coming up to us and saying ‘PM 2.5!’”

The Ambassador also offered a blunt assessment about the challenges of internet security, especially regarding the protection of intellectual property rights. “We know, for example, that cyber-based theft of personal information [and] corporate information is occurring”, Locke noted. “Whether you’re a private citizen transferring money from your bank account or a multinational corporation engaged in international transactions or simply trying to safeguard your trade secrets… everyone is concerned about protecting their data online.”

Ambassador Locke was careful to make one point clear: intellectual property rights is not a US versus China issue. To the contrary, he pointed out, in order for China to become an entrepreneurial, high-tech economy, it must redouble its efforts to protect the fruits of its own inventors and innovators. “For every foreign firm calling for stronger IP protection,” Locke told the audience, “there are many more Chinese companies and entrepreneurs demanding the same.”

Locke closed his talk by offering reasons for optimism, saying that China recognizes where it needs to go if it wants to create an innovation-based society— and that’s what’s important. “The bottom line is—we’re seeing progress here in China.”