The United States and Russia should keep working together to stop the spread of nuclear weapons even while disagreeing on issues like Ukraine, Stanford scholars say.

In a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Professor Siegfried Hecker and researcher Peter Davis advocate continued U.S.-Russia collaboration on nuclear weapon safety and security.

"The Ukraine crisis has exacerbated what had already become a strained nuclear relationship," Hecker said in an interview. "As one of our Russian colleagues told us, nuclear issues are global and accidents or mishaps in one region can affect the entire world."

Hecker is a professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Over the past 20-plus years, he has worked with Russian scientists to help stop nuclear proliferation. He and Davis returned from a trip this spring to Russia, where they met with nuclear scientists.

"We agreed that we have made a lot of progress working together over the past 20-plus years, but that we are not done," they wrote in the journal essay.

Hecker and Davis described Moscow as a reluctant partner in talks on nuclear proliferation. As for the United States, it actually backed away from cooperation first. A House of Representatives committee recently approved legislation that would put nuclear security cooperation with Russia on hold. And though the White House has opposed this, the Energy Department has issued its own restrictions on scientific interchanges as part of the U.S. sanctions regime against Russia.

But, Hecker said, "Cooperation is needed to deal with some of the lingering nuclear safety and security issues in Russia and the rest of the world, with the threats of nuclear smuggling and nuclear terrorism, and to limit the spread of nuclear weapons."

Washington does not have to choose between the two. It still can pressure Moscow on Ukraine while cooperating on nuclear issues, Hecker and Davis wrote.

They called for further nuclear arms reductions between the two countries, rather than a resumption of the nuclear arms race that took place in the mid-20th century.

Changing relationship

Hecker and Davis acknowledged that the U.S.-Russian relationship overall is changing.

"We realize … that the nature of nuclear cooperation must change to reflect Russia's economic recovery and its political evolution over the past two decades," they wrote.

For example, due to the strained relationship, nuclear proliferation programs must change from U.S.-directed activities to more jointly sponsored collaborations that serve both countries' interests.

As they noted, one huge problem is that Russia still has no inventory or record of all the nuclear materials the Soviet Union produced – or where those materials might be today.

"Moreover, it has shown no interest in trying to discover just how much material is unaccounted for. Our Russian colleagues voice concern that progress on nuclear security in their country will not be sustained once American cooperation is terminated," Hecker and Davis said.

Iran is a flashpoint

America needs Russia to help in its effort to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Hecker and Davis wrote. Russia is a close ally of Iran: "Much progress has been made toward a negotiated settlement of Iran's nuclear program since President Hassan Rouhani was elected in June, 2013. However, little would have been possible without U.S.-Russia cooperation."

In a June 2 interview in the Tehran Times, Hecker said that the only way forward for Iran's nuclear program is transparency and international cooperation. He suggested that the country follow the South Korean model of peaceful nuclear power.

"In my opinion, South Korea will not move in a direction of developing a nuclear weapon option because it simply has too much to lose commercially. That is the place I would like to see Tehran. In other words, it decides that a nuclear program that benefits its people does not include a nuclear weapons option," he told the interviewer.

Hecker said that it is not in Russia's interest to have nuclear weapons in Iran so close to its border.

"Washington, in turn, needs Moscow, especially if it is to develop more effective measures to prevent proliferation as Russia and other nuclear vendors support nuclear power expansion around the globe," Hecker said.

In February, the Iranian government republished an article by Hecker and Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University. The story ran in Farsi on at least one official website, possibly indicating a genuine internal debate in Tehran on the nuclear subject. Hecker and Milani described such a "peaceful path" in another essay on Iranian nuclear power.

Hecker is working with Russian colleagues to write a book about how Russian and American nuclear scientists joined forces at the end of the Cold War to stymie nuclear risks in Russia.

Media Contact

Siegfried Hecker, Freeman Spogli Institute: (650) 725-6468, shecker@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, cbparker@stanford.edu

In early 2014, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) launched a new organization structured to further increase the research support of our faculty and their teaching objectives. That group, called Centers and Initiatives for Research, Curriculum and Learning Experiences (CIRCLE), supports areas of academic focus including social innovation, entrepreneurship, value chain, data and analytics, and corporate governance, in addition to China-related work.

With staffing and a facility now grounded in Beijing, the GSB is transitioning management of our China initiatives to CIRCLE led by Wendy York-Fess, Assistant Dean and Executive Director. Within CIRCLE, Frank Hawke, located in Beijing, is the director of GSB China-related activities designed to continue the focus on building a bridge between China and Silicon Valley.

Going forward, updates on China programs will be communicated through other GSB online channels. Content hosted on this site will remain available, and we encourage you to engage with our rich library of videos, podcasts, and stories.

China 2.0 originated from within the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), which was active from 1998 through fall 2013. Led by faculty co-directors William F. Miller and Henry S. Rowen, with Associate Director Marguerite Gong Hancock, SPRIE was dedicated to the understanding and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship in leading regions around the world. SPRIE fulfilled its mission through interdisciplinary and international collaborative research, seminars and conferences, publications, and briefings for industry and government leaders.

“We are grateful to have made our home at two remarkable parts of Stanford, the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center until 2011 and then the Graduate School of Business,” said Henry Rowen. William Miller added, “The impact of SPRIE’s work among leaders around the world has been made possible through wonderful relationships with faculty colleagues across the university and beyond, active Advisory Board members, generous donors, engaging alumni and students, strong corporate and government partners, and extraordinary staff.”

SPRIE’s work resulted in publications in journals and monographs, as well as three books published by Stanford: The Silicon Valley Edge (2000), Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech (2006), and Greater China’s Quest for Innovation (2008), including editions in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. During the most recent phase of work, SPRIE included four major projects: the Silicon Valley Project, Smart Green Cities, the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship, and China 2.0.

Through conferences at Stanford University and in Beijing, to date China 2.0 has engaged with more than 100 speakers, dozens of media, and more than 2,500 Stanford faculty, students, and alumni. China 2.0 seminars have enhanced student educational experiences and facilitated cross-campus faculty and student interaction. China 2.0 content has become part of our classrooms, online resources, and also reached hundreds of thousands of viewers in English and Chinese.

As part of the GSB reorganization, we are pleased to announce that Marguerite Gong Hancock is now the director for a new CIRCLE research effort called Stanford Project on Emerging Companies 2.0 (SPEC 2.0), where she will focus on supporting faculty research on entrepreneurship, as part of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

While our organization has changed, Stanford Graduate School of Business remains committed to bringing together executives, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, academics and students through a number of existing and emerging programs related to innovation and entrepreneurship around the world.

Mari Tanaka

Mari Tanaka1, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Stanford, has been named the Shorenstein APARC Predoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia for 2014­–15. She will join the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center this fall, examining the effects of enterprise development and international trade in low-income countries.

The fellowship supports a Stanford predoctoral student researching topics related to contemporary political, economic and social change in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Tanaka’s dissertation focuses on the impact of Myanmar’s recent trade opening on local manufacturing firms. She is interested in how trade with the United States, European Union and Japanese buyers affects firms’ management practices and working conditions, particularly safety and health standards.

By analyzing data collected in about 400 firms in 2013–14, Tanaka plans to compare the evolutions of those measures in garment plants, an industry heavily affected by trade opening, to processed food plants, an industry little affected because of strict food regulations imposed by developed countries.

Tanaka is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in economics at Stanford. She holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Tokyo and a bachelor’s degree from the International Christian University, Japan.

South Korea held their regional elections on June 4th, not long after the Sewol ferry capsized and claimed the lives of many school-aged children. The ballot was largely viewed as a referendum on President Park Geun-hye’s response to the ferry tragedy. In the Economist, Shorentein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin says Ms. Park will likely take the poll results as an opportunity to reform.

In front of a packed audience at the Stanford Center at Peking University, Victor Koo, Chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou Inc., described the convergence of China and Silicon Valley in terms of innovation. "Success in China is a matter of localization," Koo commented in his keynote address at the 2014 China 2.0 Forum, because many industries remain fragmented at the local level. This fragmentation has necessitated the transformation of China's internet ecosystem into a hotbed of innovation, going a long way to catch up with Silicon Valley.

The convergence described by Koo also means that China's internet space and its players are increasingly globalized. WeChat, for instance, recently made headlines for its new partnership with LinkedIn in China. Hugo Barra, Vice President of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker, shared the company's international expansion strategy. With its international headquarters in Singapore, Xiaomi is expanding into Singapore and plans for many more countries by the end of the year, the compant aspires to become a truly global company. Vaughan Smith, Vice President of Special Projects at Facebook, shared with the Forum audience how Facebook represents an opportunity for thousands of developers in China to reach a worldwide audience, citing the success of the game Family Farm, which was developed by Beijing-headquartered FunPlus and "has the highest retention rate" of any game on Facebook worldwide.

Shift to mobile

Arguably one of the most disruptive forces in the internet industry today, Koo explained how the shift to mobile is even more drastic in China, where hundreds of millions of people in rural areas and small cities have little access to personal computers and rely on smartphones to access the internet. In addition, the widespread use of public transportation in China, in contrast with America's car-centric culture, means that Chinese commuters spend much more time on their mobile phones.

Koo noted that various internet companies have struggled to adapt to mobile, while others such as Tencent's WeChat, have prospered. Valued at $30 billion, China's popular social media and messaging app counts around 300 million users and an expected revenue of $1.1 billion in 2014.

Yongfu Yu, CEO of UCWeb Inc., discussed how disruptive the shift to mobile could be in the near future, predicting that the surge in apps that has followed the shift to mobile will lead to the emergence of an "app browser," enabling the integration of all apps on a unified platform. In such a scenario, this 'mega app' would challenge traditional web browsers such as Firefox or Google Chrome.

The multi-screen internet

The ubiquity of mobile phones does not put an expiration date on the use of computers and TVs, according to Koo. Instead, it has led to the emergence of the multi-screen internet. This phenomenon is particularly visible in China, where users continuously switch from their mobile phones to computers and TVs, and vice versa. Think about this: these users watch a show on their smartphones or tablets in the subway as they commute to work, then resume the same show once at home on their TVs or computers. According to Koo, the multi-screen internet unequivocally represents one of the major changes that content strategists and marketers have to deal with.

The integration of offline and online

O2O (Online-to-Offline) is another key trend that is dramatically reshaping many industries and the internet industry worldwide, Koo said. For example, Captain America 2's promotion in China took place offline and online with a premiere in Beijing and content broadcast simultaneously on Youku Tudou.

The convergence of online and offline spaces is probably faster in China than anywhere else, noted Koo, due to the large number of sectors highly regulated by the government. The central role of the state in entire industries has left a void for private companies to fill since they don't have to compete with an incumbent offline company also competing in the online space. For this reason, Koo argued that "offline industries in China are changing much faster and in a more fundamental way than in developed countries like the United States."

The Obama administration’s policy of “re-balance” toward Asia, that began as early as 2009, is now increasingly under stress, as those in the region question American staying power and China emerges as a challenger to U.S. dominance. As the territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas in recent months have demonstrated, China’s relations with the region and the United States have become visibly strained, bringing the U.S. re-balance policy into question and raising concerns about security tensions and the danger of conflict. 

U.S.-China relations are heading, for the foreseeable future, into “a very scratchy time,” predicted Kenneth Lieberthal, a respected senior China scholar at The Brookings Institution, in his keynote speech delivered at the annual Oksenberg Lecture on June 3 at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Lieberthal told a standing room audience in Encina Hall that while the U.S. attempt to temper its relations with China and others has “worked quite well over time,” now, “at a geostrategic level, we seem to be sliding with increasing speed toward an inflection point in U.S.-China relations.”

Lieberthal was joined by a panel of China experts, including Cui Liru of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), and Stanford’s Karl Eikenberry and Thomas Fingar, distinguished fellows at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Jean C. Oi, director of the Stanford China Program.

The discussion was part of the Oksenberg Lecture, an annual dialogue that functions as a policy workshop on U.S.-Asia relations, named in honor of late professor and senior fellow Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001). Oksenberg was a noted China specialist, who served as a senior member of the National Security Council and is credited as the architect of the normalization of relations with China under the Carter administration in the late 1970s.

Points of tension in the U.S.-China relationship have been increasingly visible. Senior American officials have assailed China for its aggressive actions toward its neighbors over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and in South China Sea, including its latest altercations with Vietnam and the Philippines. The United States recently indicted five members of China’s People’s Liberation Army for carrying out cyber espionage against U.S. technology companies.

Incidents like these have prompted both countries to throw harsh words at each other, leading to a situation of brinkmanship. However, Lieberthal pointed out that tense relations between the United States and China are certainly not new. Most notably, relations took a nosedive in 1989 when China cracked down on democratization protests at Tiananmen Square, in 1999 after the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia, and in 2008, in response to the global financial crisis.

The U.S.-China relationship has been riddled with periods of distrust in the past. But now, “the speed and scale of China’s economic growth, especially over the last two decades, has also increased concerns, on all sides, that the evolving distribution of power may create new frictions and suspicions,” Lieberthal said.

Yet, refusing to work with each other is not an option, the senior scholar, who also served in the Clinton administration, told the audience. Without the United States and China in conversation, progress in multilateral areas such as climate change and trade would falter, he argued. Given the two countries’ position as the world’s largest economies, the international system would effectively be constrained if the two were entrenched in long-term bitterness.

Lieberthal recognized the common admonition, “if we treat China as an enemy, it will surely become one,” saying this warning could be applied to both sides. China and the United States must make greater efforts to manage and mitigate tensions.

“The question is whether we can prevent bad things, not only specific conflicts, but the political tensions and politics that make cooperation on major issues very, very difficult at best.”

He then outlined a few steps that could help China and the United States sort out their disputes. His recommendations began with the need for strong determination on the part of top political leaders to move things forward and the importance of clear, consistent use of vocabulary when discussing issues.

As a final point, but one that was offered as a contingent factor to success, Lieberthal said U.S.-China relations and both countries’ roles in greater Asia will depend on “how effective each of us is in dealing with domestic reforms,” because, “that will determine how dynamic, how vibrant, how innovative, and how secure we feel.”

______________________________________________________ 

During the lecture, Ret. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry shared his observations from the Shangri-La Dialogue, an inter-governmental security forum held from May 30 – June 1 in Singapore. The Dialogue has in recent years become a gathering of premiere defense ministers to discuss security issues in Track I and “quasi-track” meetings.

Afterward, Eikenberry talked with Shorenstein APARC about key highlights and implications that emerged from the Dialogue:

Shangri-La Dialogue

Photo credit: Flickr/The International Institute for Strategic Studies 

Media reported a tense environment overlaid the Dialogue. What was the general atmosphere there?

The remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue by Japanese Prime Minister Abe and U.S. Defense Secretary Hagel on the one hand, and Chinese General Wang Guanzhong, made clear very different views on the causes for tension surrounding various maritime sovereignty claims in the East and South China Seas. Still, if you read the full text of all three speeches and the Q&As that followed, there is still great emphasis placed on dialogue and common interests. And in the many meetings that took place between national delegations on the margins of the conference events, the emphasis was on cooperation. 

What revelations at the Dialogue were surprising?

I think the degree to which dissatisfaction with China’s assertive behavior in pursuing its maritime claims was expressed by many of the participants – not just the United States and Japan. Vietnam, the Philippines and India were explicit. Analysts have said the only China (through threatening behavior) could contain China by catalyzing a counterbalancing response. From the results of the Dialogue, I think this is correct.   

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized values and international law throughout his keynote speech. What is your take on this?

The Prime Minister did emphasize both democracy and rule of law during his prepared remarks and answers to questions from conference participants. He was drawing an obvious distinction between Japan’s and China’s political systems and commitment to approaches to resolving territorial disputes. I think the Prime Minister is trying to establish Japan as a leader in East and Southeast Asia, and wanted to make clear what he views as important differences between the Japanese and Chinese “models.” 

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel referenced China’s suspension of the U.S.-China Cyber Working Group. What direction do you think the cybersecurity dialogue will go now?

It was unfortunate that China suspended its participation in the U.S.-China Cyber Working Group after the U.S. Government’s indictment of five People’s Liberation Army officers for alleged cyber theft. The U.S. Government has been providing the PRC Government with evidence of cyber theft being conducted by entities in China and has failed to receive any meaningful response so the indictments seem warranted. It would seem that the Cyber Working Group is precisely the forum to discuss this matter and the many related to managing the cyber domain with agreed rules and procedures. Working Groups provide a forum to address disagreement and disputes. I think China’s response was counterproductive and hope the government will indicate a willingness to resume the dialogues in the near future.

Where do you see the regional security conversation heading next?

The risk is that security dialogues will be divided into two camps – one led by the United States and its close allies and partners, and the other by China – somewhat isolated at this time but seeking to entice Asian nations to bandwagon to its side. Perhaps further regional economic integration can facilitate a more common approach to security, but this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue is perhaps a warning that trends, for now, are not heading in a positive direction.

At every conference we attend, we hear statements from our colleagues like: “I study Left Behind Children, the most vulnerable children in China.”

Each year in the media, journalists write literally thousands of investigative reports about Left Behind Children. In nearly all of these articles, the reporter interviews young children that live with their grandparents because their parents are working far away in the city. The conclusion of these reports is almost always the same: Left Behind Children are one of China’s largest social problems. Society and the government need to pay special attention to them.

When you look at the websites of China’s ministries and their provincial/sub-provincial counterparts, one can find that more than 10 ministerial systems – among them the Ministry of Education; Ministry of Health; Center for Disease Control; Ministry of Civil Affairs; All China Women’s Federation and more – have special programs to meet the needs of China’s Left Behind Children: China’s so-called “most vulnerable children”.

With this background, let us be clear about the three main messages of this month’s column:

1. Left Behind Children are NOT the most vulnerable children in China.
2. Left Behind Children do NOT need any special treatment.
3. Policies that target Left Behind Children are misguided.

Wow!

(Is that what you are thinking?)

We actually have made these same statements at seminars in front of fellow academics, at meetings with NGOs, and in conversations with policy makers and government officials. Their responses are almost always the same: “Wow!”

Do we really believe these statements?

The answer is a “qualified yes.”

Yes: Because these are absolutely true statements. In almost every dimension that we can think of, Left Behind Children are not the most vulnerable children in China. Other children in poor rural areas (such as those who live with their parents) are in even greater need of more education; of better nutrition; of higher quality health care,

But, qualified: Because, while all of this is true, Left Behind Children are still vulnerable and in need of the nation’s support.

In other words, Left Behind Children are NOT the most vulnerable children in China. All children in poor rural areas are in need of more education, better nutrition, and higher quality health care. Left Behind Children certainly have tremendous needs. However, other children in poor rural areas—including children living with their parents—have either equal or even greater needs. And with all of the attention lavished on Left Behind Children, these other vulnerable children are being systematically overlooked.

We hope that the media, government policy makers, academics who work on under-resourced areas, and all concerned readers of CaiXin Magazine will take the time to read about the facts.

The facts will tell our story.

But, before we get into the facts, let’s take a minute to describe where the facts came from.

If you have been following our column since last fall, you know that our organization, the Rural Education Action Project (REAP), has been working in poor rural areas across Western China for the past ten years. Our mission is to help narrow the gap in education, nutrition and health between children in poor rural areas and children in the rest of China. To do so, we conduct “action research.” In carrying out action research, we not only identify the problems facing rural children and their families, we also experiment with solutions. Partnering with foundations, NGOs and government agencies (as well as implementing our own action research projects), we seek to find out what types of programs, projects and investments lead to improvements in rural education, nutrition and health … and which ones do not. We then work with government agencies to upscale the successful ones.

In the past we have worked on many issues: school nutrition, life counseling; computer assisted learning; infant nutrition; intestinal worms; poverty; school drop outs; and more. In total, over the past 10 years, we have conducted more than 20 action research projects in poor rural schools and villages. In conducting these in-the-field experiments and partnering with many creative and influential groups, we have discovered many new ways to help increase human capital in poor areas and have been associated with several successful efforts to upscale our small projects across whole counties, prefectures, provinces and indeed the whole country.

In the course of doing our work, we always evaluate our projects and seek to identify impact. And in carrying out these evaluations, we conduct a detailed baseline survey before each and every project. Not only were all of the samples randomly selected, we also know for each child what type of family he was living with: (1) Both mother and father live at home; (2) Mother living at home, father not living at home; (3) Father living at home, mother not living at home; (4) Left Behind Children (mother and father both live away from home). We have objective measures of 14 different outcomes, including health, nutrition, mental health, and many others. In total, our surveys include data from more than 130,000 children and their families

Armed with this data, our approach is simple: We will compare the nutrition, health and educational outcomes of children from Type 1 families (children living with both parents) to the outcomes of Type 4 families (where both parents live away from home and children are cared for by their grandparents or other relative—Left Behind Children).

As empirical economists, we like to let the data speak. What do the numbers say?

Nutrition

Both Left Behind Children and children living with both parents have the same incidence of anemia. A full 27 percent of both types of children are malnourished. Their levels of hemoglobin, a measure of iron deficiency, are also identical.

Health

The rates of stunting and wasting among Left Behind Children is not low. However, the weight for age indices (WAZ) and height for age indices (HAZ) are more favorable than those of Children Living with their Parents. The body mass indices of Left Behind Children also are more favorable than the body mass indices of Children Living with Their Parents.

In the case of intestinal worm infections there is even a larger gap. The prevalence of intestinal worm infections is high among Left Behind Children, at 25 percent. To be clear, this means that more than one out of four school-aged children live and go to school with worms in their intestines. However, the prevalence is even higher among children living with both parents: fully 39 percent are infected with worms.

Education

To compare the educational performance of Left Behind Children and children living with both parents, we gave standardized exams in math, Chinese language and English. These are the three main academic subjects that students must learn in the Chinese school system. In other work, REAP researchers have shown the huge gap between children from poor rural areas and children from China’s cities. We showed that, on average, children in poor rural areas perform much, much worse than children in urban areas. Poor rural children are nearly two years behind by the time they reach fourth grade.

So while all of the different subgroups of poor children perform poorly, on average, Left Behind Children actually outperform children living with both parents in all subjects. To be clear, the children who score the lowest on their math tests, their Chinese language tests, and their English tests are not Left Behind Children; they are children living with both parents.

These trends continue even as children get older. The drop out rate from junior high school (which is technically supposed to be zero) is equally high for children living with both parents as it is for Left Behind Children.

Mental Health

There is one set of outcomes for which Left Behind Children do show the most vulnerability: mental health. Around 37 percent of Left Behind Children had high levels of anxiety, and 33 percent were “lonely.” These levels were, indeed, higher (although only slightly higher) than those of children living with both parents.

The numbers have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. Left Behind Children are NOT the most vulnerable children in China. All children in poor rural areas are in need of more education, better nutrition, and higher quality health care. Left Behind Children have tremendous needs, no question. However, other children in poor rural areas—including children living with both parents—have equal or even greater needs.

What can we say about this message except: “Wow!”

A postscript: Resources versus Care

We really do not know why it is that, with the exception of mental health outcomes, Left Behind Children perform either equally as well or even better than children living with both parents in terms of nutrition, health and education. Our guess is that it is almost certainly because there is some sort of “care versus resources” tradeoff at play. Without question, children living with both parents receive more care than Left Behind Children. However, with the high and rising wage rates in China, if both parents of a Left Behind Child are working full time, they will have access to more resources than the families of children living with both parents. If both parents are working in the city, their monthly income will be much higher than a family in which both parents are working on the farm. Hence, it appears as if access to more resources helps, at least in part, to offset the negative effects of the absence of care.

And perhaps the care of Left Behind Children is not as bad as everyone thinks. In interview after interview with parents of Left Behind Children, parents told us that they would never leave their child at home if Grandma and/or Grandpa were not capable of giving quality care. So, it may be that the additional resources that are brought in by migrant parents coupled with care from capable grandparents are jointly enough to allow Left Behind Children to outperform (or match) children living with both parents in most measures of nutrition, health and education.

No matter the reason, it is clear that children living with both parents are being overlooked by the popular media, by policymakers, and by academics. While it is premature to suggest that Left Behind Children are no longer in need of help, it is equally unconscionable to imagine that rural children living with their parents are not in need of the same social assistance that is granted to Left Behind Children. We need to come up with a policy solution that will allow all poor children better access to the resources they need to thrive.

About this series:

REAP co-directors Scott Rozelle and Linxiu Zhang wrote a ten-part series for Caixin Magazine titled, "Inequality 2030: Glimmering Hope in China in a Future Facing Extreme Despair." See below for more columns in this series:

> Column 1: Why We Need to Worry About Inequality

> Column 2: China's Inequality Starts During the First 1,000 Days

> Column 3: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 1)

> Column 4: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 2) 

> Column 5: How to Cure China's Largest Epidemic

> Column 6: A Tale of Two Travesties

>Columns 7 & 8: China's Widest Divide

> Column 9: China's Most Vulnerable Children

> Column 10: Why Drop Out?

> Column 11: The Problem with Vocational Education

> Column 12: Reforming China's Vocational Schools (in Chinese)

An increasing number of Chinese internet companies are whetting U.S. investors’ appetite in China’s burgeoning technology industry. Eight Chinese companies have already successfully listed on a U.S. exchange so far in 2014—including the largest ever offering by a Chinese internet firm from JD.com Inc., which raised $1.78 billion when it IPOed on May 22.

As CEOs who have gone through the process of taking a Chinese company public in the U.S., Chenchao (CC) Zhuang of Qunar and David Xueling Li of YY Inc. shared what they view as the biggest advantages and challenges post IPO for their respective companies. YY and Qunar went public on NASDAQ in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

Although there are many advantages enjoyed by public companies, including an enhanced reputation and expanded opportunities when it comes to financing and growing the business, both Zhuang and Li commented that continuing to be innovative and a disruptive force was the greatest challenge faced by their businesses post IPO.

Fritz Demopoulos, Founder of Queen's Road Capital, moderated the panel "Post-IPO: The Next Vanguard" featuring Li and Zhuang at the 2014 China 2.0 Forum in Beijing hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business on April 11. 

In a rare and exclusive interview in the Tehran Times, CISAC and FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker tells Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari that the only way forward for the country’s nuclear program is transparency and international cooperation.

The interview comes during an unprecedented period of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. Several days after his inauguration last August, President Hassan Rouhani called for the resumption of negotiations with the so-called P5+1, a group of six world powers using diplomatic efforts to monitor Iran’s energy program.

In September, President Barack Obama called Rouhani, marking the highest-level contact between the United States and Iran since 1979 hostage crisis.

The P5+1 and Iran are drafting a comprehensive nuclear agreement to ensure that Tehran is not building a nuclear bomb, but trying to expand its nuclear energy program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has given Iran until Aug. 25 to provide more details about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program.

In the interview, Ziabari did not pull any punches with Hecker.

“You’ve argued that Iran doesn’t possess sufficient uranium reserves like Japan, and its uranium enrichment program is not cost-effective,” Ziabari asks. “However, you know that Iran’s nuclear program was first launched in 1950s as part of the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. At that time, the United States thought that it’s beneficial to help Iran with its nuclear energy program, because Iran was an ally, but now, Iran is a foe, and does not need nuclear power anymore. Is it really like that?”

You can read Hecker's response and the entire the Q&A in its entirely on Ziabari’s website.

In Feburary, the Iranian government republished an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Hecker and Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University. The story ran in Farsi on at least one official website. That could reflect, the scholars say, a genuine internal debate in Tehran regarding the future of its nuclear program.