Full article and photos at San Jose Mercury News

BEIJING -- On the walls of the stunning new multimillion-dollar Stanford Center here are hand-painted Chinese landscapes and scenes from the Palo Alto campus -- signs of a new cross-Pacific partnership that offers great promise as well as some perils for the university.

The facility -- which provides Stanford with its first center for research and teaching for its faculty and students in China but will not offer degrees -- blends traditional Chinese courtyard architecture with state-of-the-art classroom technology. Stanford, one of many Western universities scrambling to set up an outpost in the country with the world's second-largest economy, begins its experiment in just a few weeks, when the initial wave of Stanford faculty begin arriving to use it for the first time as a base for research and lectures.

Located on the grounds of a former imperial palace at Peking University, the $7 million donor-funded center will give Stanford faculty and students direct exposure to China. But there are risks, university officials admit, because Stanford is setting up a permanent presence in a country that routinely restricts free speech and political activities, censorship that is anathema to the missions of elite U.S. Colleges.

But as China's global influence increases, institutions like Stanford want a foothold in the nation to enhance the educational experiences of its students, increase research opportunities for faculty, attract more wealthy and smart Chinese to their campuses and, in some cases, tap funds available from the cash-rich government.

"Everyone realizes China will be a major player -- economically, politically, in all the realms," said Jean Oi, director of the Stanford Center at Peking University, as she strolled through the just-completed, 36,000-square-foot, three-level complex.

Increasingly, she added, Stanford graduates, from engineers to humanities majors, will need to interact with Chinese businesses and colleagues based in China. "So they need to have hands-on understanding of what China is -- the kind of training you can't get from reading a book," Oi said.

Chinese educators and students, in turn, get more opportunities for close collaboration with Stanford researchers and scholars.

Stanford is far from the only Western university to succumb to the lure

In July, UC Berkeley's prestigious College of Engineering is scheduled to open a research and teaching facility in Shanghai's sprawling Zhangjiang High-Tech Park, which is providing a 50,000-square-foot building for the university at no cost. The tech park is also raising at least $10 million a year for five years to finance research between the engineering school and Chinese institutions.

Columbia University has a center in Beijing, while Johns Hopkins University has one in Nanjing. Duke University is planning to open a campus in the eastern city of Kunshan next year and will offer two degree programs.

"We are seeing increased interest in sending students to China, recruiting students from China, faculty cooperations and joint offices (in China)," said Peggy Blumenthal, an executive with the Institute of International Education.

Such arrangements, though, raise concerns among faculty, who worry about academic independence in the communist country, she said.

That conundrum was underscored during the March opening ceremony for the Stanford Center. Among the many dignitaries attending was Stanford President John Hennessy, a Google board member, whose refusal to censor search results in China led to a clash with the Chinese government. Also on hand was Stanford alumnus and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, one of the center's donors, who in 2007 publicly apologized to the families of two Chinese journalists imprisoned after his Sunnyvale company gave their email records to Chinese authorities.

At Stanford, the university's Beijing center raised "some concerns about freedom of expression," said Coit Blacker, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which oversees Stanford's China outpost.

"I had to talk to the faculty senate about this on more than one occasion, as well as the board of trustees," Blacker said. "I said, 'This is Stanford's space and I believe the leadership at Peking University understands this and they know it won't succeed if there is an attempt to censor the work that goes on within the (center's) four walls.' "

Stanford made sure academic freedom was written into the agreement, he said, adding, "As they say, the proof is in the pudding. But I think they understand what the stakes are. They want to demonstrate that China is a modernizing, developing, evolving county."

Blumenthal said that to her knowledge, there has never been an attempt to censor work being done at programs involving U.S. universities in China. However, she said, certain research, such as that looking into corruption by Chinese officials, or political demonstrations, could trigger a negative government response.

Peking University is the most academically open and free educational institution in China, said Scott Rozelle, co-director of Stanford's Rural Education Action Project. He has repeatedly been critical of China's government in his 30 years of research in that country but has never had his academic freedom threatened, Rozelle said.

"Sometimes people get sensitive and bent out of shape," the economist said. "But never has anyone said, 'You can't write this.' "

The center will be used by 10 Stanford programs and departments, including the Graduate School of Business, the school's overseas study program, the Law School and the School of Medicine's Asian Liver Center. While Peking University students may, in some cases, attend lectures or classes at the center, Stanford will not award them credits.

Dr. Samuel So, a Stanford liver cancer surgeon, will use the center to research ways to eliminate hepatitis B and liver cancer, a neglected pandemic and leading cause of preventable death in Asia, he said.

Stanford and Peking University have collaborated on a wide range of research projects and academic exchanges for three decades. About 70 Stanford undergraduate students study at Peking University every year. One thousand students from all over China study at Stanford.

The center is the first facility built and owned by a U.S. university for its use on a major Chinese college campus, according to Stanford.

The facility, named the Lee Jung Sen Building, is a spectacular mix of Eastern and Western architecture that, while honoring China's rich cultural heritage, transports a bit of The Farm to China's capital city.

The four ground-level courtyard structures were constructed in the traditional interlocking-woodwork method that eliminates the need for nails or glue. Offices have exposed ceilings and large, lantern-style lights. The courtyard has a traditional Chinese "spirit screen" to keep away evil spirits. Below ground are two floors of modern classrooms, conference rooms and meeting spaces, including a cafe and student lounge sporting photos of a past Big Game between Stanford and Cal -- all bathed in natural light from skylights. There are indoor gardens and a water wall.

Already Stanford has had a modest impact on the campus.

Peking University initially resisted Stanford's plans to build an underground facility. But now the university, known locally as Beida, is using similar underground designs on new buildings, including one for Fan Zeng, one of China's foremost artists.

"We kind of raised the bar on what kind of facilities are possible on the Beida campus," Oi said.

Katharina Zellweger sat down recently to speak with Radio Free Asia in conjunction with the launch of her Korea Society-hosted exhibition of North Korean propaganda posters. She also described her current writing about modernization in North Korea, and the need to build more trusting, transparent relations with its government.

Karl Eikenberry M.A. ’94 has had a distinguished military and diplomatic career. Prior to his current position as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), he spent 35 years in the United States Army. As U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to June 2011, he led President Obama’s civilian surge, which occurred in conjunction with a 30,000-troop surge.

On Tuesday, December 11, 2012, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development will host an all-day conference on "The New U.S. Role in Global Fossil Fuel Markets"

As recently as 2007, the United States seemed headed towards ever greater fossil fuel import dependence, as domestic oil and natural gas production dwindled and consumption continued to grow.   Five years later, the landscape looks dramatically different. An explosion in natural gas production from shales has overturned paradigms and sparked bold talk of LNG exports. While less remarked-upon, unconventional oil production has followed suit, helping to boost liquids output 20% from 50-year lows and vaulting North Dakota ahead of Alaska to become the nation’s second-largest oil producer. A new order is emerging in the coal market as well, with efforts underway to ship cheap, low-sulfur coal from the western U.S. to China.

The new role for the U.S. as a hotbed of production and technology development for unconventional resources, a reduced import market, and a possible key exporter of natural gas and coal raises a host of political, economic, and environmental questions. The goal of this conference is to contribute to insightful and data-driven dialogue on these pressing (and often politically-charged) issues by bringing together academics, policymakers, industry experts, and other stakeholder groups.

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As the U.S. presidential election race heats up, taking a tough stance on China's trade and economic policies has become part of the campaign rhetoric. Daniel C. Sneider speaks with Bloomberg and Medill News Service about Mitt Romney's focus on China.

How has Japan responded to China's growing influence in Northeast Asia? Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke about recent tensions and developments in Japan-China relations, including over historical issues. The podcast from the event is now available.

Despite accelerating economic growth in India over the last thirty years, India’s structural transformation remains stunted, said economist Hans Binswanger-Mkhize at a May 10 FSE symposium on global food policy and food security. Unlike China, urban migration and labor absorption have been slower than expected, especially in the typically labor-intensive manufacturing sector. Formal sector jobs are few and declining as a share of employment, and agricultural employment (and growth) remains low.

The rural non-farm sector has been left to pick up the slack, and has emerged as the largest source of new jobs in the Indian economy. This will likely remain so over the next few decades given that two-thirds of India’s growing population is projected to live in rural areas. Add to the equation the need to increase crop yields by 50 percent under changing climate conditions and it becomes apparent that improving rural incomes and supporting agricultural growth is essential to decreasing poverty and unemployment in India now and in the future.

“The importance of India's rural non-farm sector shows us that structural transformation does not follow a recipe,” said commentator Marianne Banziger, a senior scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico.

While non-farm jobs offer significantly higher wages than farm labor, most jobs are informal and/or insecure (i.e., no health benefits, unemployment insurance or pensions). These jobs go mostly to men 18-26 years old who have some education, while the illiterate and women struggle to transition into this sector. Retail trade and transport, construction, and services (internet and phone booths, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles, and hotels and restaurants) are growing especially fast, partly due to urban-rural spillovers, but manufacturing is still only 20 percent of non-farm jobs.

“For rural households, non-farm employment is not distress employment, but a profitable diversification strategy,” said Binswanger-Mkhize. “At the same time, it has selectively absorbed young males into wage employment, decreased the number of farmers, and increasingly concentrated women in agriculture, contributing to a progressive feminization of agriculture.” 

As a result, farms on average have declined in both land and household size, and have moved toward the production of higher-valued goods and a modern model of part-time farming. This transformation concerned Banziger.

“Will the urban and land-less poor be held hostage by part-time farmers?” she asked.

Banziger projects in the next 20 years food and energy price inflation will likely exceed the income growth of the urban poor. Food price increases will push net consumers, who spend a third of their income on food staples, back into poverty.

“For food prices to remain constant, farmers yield gains will have to increase by 50 percent on essentially the same land area, with less water, nutrients, energy, labor and as climate changes,” said Banziger. "The more we delay investments, the steeper the challenge.”

Fortunately, small farmers are now better equipped to respond to these challenges, but are still limited by scale. Precision irrigation and fertilization technology coupled with remote sensing and cell phone technology enable better yield predictions that affect nutrient application. Better farm-level nutrient management increases farmer income and nutrient use efficiency.

For an optimistic Indian future to be realized government policy must support ways in which households increase their incomes, said Binswanger-Mkhize. A positive outcome for rural areas depends on continued urban spillovers, and on better agriculture and rural development policies, institutions, and programs.

Productivity growth needs to be sustained at very high levels. This requires more responsive, accountable, and better-financed research systems, more diversification of agriculture, and larger, better financed, and more accountable agricultural extension system. India currently employs one-seventh the number of extension workers as China.

"Rapid policy and institutional change will be required to overcome poor performance of many government programs," said Binswanger-Mkhize. "Current subsidies to fertilizer, electricity, water, and support to crop prices are already large, but are an inefficient means to transfer income to farmers."

Direct payments may be a more efficient way of supporting income growth. This is beginning to happen with fertilizers, but should be extended to electricity and food subsidies, said Binswanger-Mkhize.

“Maybe the people who have been disadvantaged in the past are the core for future change. With appropriate support, smallholder farmers can become the engines for agricultural productivity growth and transform India's growing economy,” concluded Banziger.