Living and studying all over East Asia, some of Hannah Kim’s most favorite activities were to meet and talk to diverse people from different backgrounds. Those conversations sparked her interest in how public opinion and perceptions of democracy differ across societies — a question that turned into the focus of her doctoral dissertation, which she completed last year at the University of California, Irvine.

Hannah is spending the 2019-20 academic year at APARC as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia. While here, she has been researching material for a forthcoming book about the relationship between the middle class and democratic ideals in different Asian societies. Her work has been published in The Journal of Politics, PS: Political Science & Politics, and the Japanese Journal of Political Science.

We sat down with Hannah to talk about her current work and her plans for future projects.

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Q: As you’ve been here at APARC researching your book, what kinds of relationships have you found between the middle classes of East Asia and their perceptions of a democratic society?

Middle-class groups in many East Asian countries are significantly different than those in other regions because they are newer and smaller. They also tend to be much more dependent on the state, and this state dependency has led to fundamentally different views of democracy than we see in other places.

Modernization theory — which is one of the most prominent theories in comparative politics — contends that higher levels of economic growth lead to a rise of a middle class. This middle class then becomes a driving force for democracy. In East Asian countries, however, state-led economic growth played a central role in the creation and development of middle-class groups, which fostered a dependent and mutually supportive relationship between middle-class groups and the state. This suggests that middle-class groups may prefer a stronger role of the state and be less likely to support liberal democracy relative to other groups.

Q: What research findings surprised you about the relationship between the middle class and democracy?

There have been a number of unexpected results. For one, middle-class East Asians are more likely to support good governance ahead of freedom and liberty, which is often reversed among middle-class groups in Western democracies. I’ve found that many East Asian middle-class citizens view democracy more illiberally and prefer a political system that has a mix of democratic and autocratic properties — a hybrid regime — rather than a liberal democracy.

For example, the most recent wave of the World Values Survey (2010-14) shows that 62% of Taiwanese respondents, 31% of Chinese respondents, 29% of Japanese respondents, and 49% of South Korean respondents stated that it is “Very good” or “Fairly good” to have a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections. This indicates a culture of implicit support for an authoritarian-like leader. Recent studies also show that there is a negative correlation between the middle class and support for democracy in China.

Q: You have also been doing work that looks at democratization and gender in East Asia. How do gender, gender roles, and traditional culture impact the progress and perception of democratization?

Even though there are three full-fledged democracies in East Asia – namely, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – their citizens’ views on gender equality remain far from liberal. A majority of respondents to surveys in those democracies support the ideas that men should have more employment and education opportunities than women, and that men make better political and business leaders than women. This may be in part due to the historically patriarchal culture that continues to legitimize these views. However, in my study, I suggest that culturally democratic citizens are more likely to break away from these traditional patriarchal norms and challenge gendered practices within these societies. Increasing democratic citizenship, therefore, may enhance support for gender equality and other liberal values.

Q: What pressing challenges do you see facing Asia’s democratic societies?

The last ten years have been described as a decade of decline for liberal democracies worldwide and public opinion data further shows that support for democracy is rapidly declining. East Asian democracies, many of which democratized during the so-called second and third waves of that trend in the late twentieth century, are no exception to this democratic recession. While there are many institutional limitations, the biggest challenge for East Asian democracies may come from authoritarian legacies that encourage middle-class citizens to support traditional values that often go against liberal democracy. While East Asian democracies may not necessarily evolve towards autocracy, it may be a while before the middle class and the general public in East Asian countries fully support liberal democratic values and help democracies overcome this democratic recession.

Q: What’s next on your research agenda?

After my fellowship with APARC concludes, I will be moving to Omaha, Nebraska, where I’ll be working as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska. I’m scheduled to teach Asian politics there this coming fall, which I am really looking forward to. My immediate research goal is to continue working on my book, but I would also like to start pursuing research on gender and political behavior in South Korea.

David M. Lampton gave a talk titled “Chinese Power and Rail Connectivity in Southeast Asia” before the Stanford China Program audience on February 6^th. He addressed three issues in particular: the scope of his research project, conducted in partnership with two co-authors based in Singapore and Malaysia; the long genesis of this railroad construction idea from Southeast Asia to China; and, third, the overarching question of whether China can effectively implement the gargantuan feat – technologically, financially, and politically. The high-and conventional-speed rail project will span seven Southeast Asian countries, plus China, Lampton highlighted.  This project is not only geographically forbidding, but the political terrain, and its socio-economic variety, is an even greater challenge.  Lampton’s talk comprised part of Stanford China Program’s 2019 Colloquia Series, “A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations.”

Lampton began by clarifying that the vision of rail connectivity through Southeast Asia into China is not the brainchild of either China’s leadership or Xi Jinping. This idea has a long history, he stated, beginning with the British and the French in the 19^th century when they were occupying Burma and Indochina, respectively; and even during World War II when Japan further entertained building railroads from the Korean Peninsula to Singapore to advance their military ambitions. In contemporary times, ASEAN had articulated a plan in 1995 to develop a rail line from Singapore to Kunming city, P.R.C. In 2010, ASEAN again put forth a master connectivity plan for 2025 where railroad development comprised a prominent part. Only in the aftermath of these many plans and proposals did Xi Jinping, in 2013, officially announce China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure initiative with a scope far greater than simply Southeast Asia. The idea of infrastructural connectivity in the region, in other words, has a long history that predates China entering the picture as a major actor. Only recently has China amassed the technological capacity and financial wherewithal to realize this enormous project, with economic, diplomatic, and strategic military implications.

Next he described the key role that Beijing’s industrial policy has played in the rapid development of China’s high-speed rail. From a nonexistent industry in 2001, China has built a sector that is now an international powerhouse in high-speed rail technology. As of 2014, China boasted four trunk lines, North and South; and four trunk lines, East and West, crisscrossing the P.R.C. China’s industrial policy has clearly delivered striking results (as well as some setbacks) not only with respect to high-speed rail but also in other industries.  In light of this, Lampton opined that China is not likely to yield to U.S. demands for major structural reforms in onoing trade talks with China. 

Lampton described the progress in high-speed and conventional-speed rail construction with partners in Southeast Asia (ASEAN) that the Chinese have made, with Laos and Thailand furthest along in implementation. Nonetheless, Beijing also has met with significant resistance due to the complicated political situation in various regions. Lampton described, for example, the drawn-out financial negotiations between Singapore and Malaysia with respect to the rail line connecting Singapore to Kuala Lumpur; and the jockeying among various heads of Malaysia’s federation of local states. The election of Mr. Mahathir in 2018 also put an at least temporary halt to the construction and planning of two rail projects for many reasons, including the corruption of the preceding regime of Najib in Kuala Lumpur. Although Lampton expressed overall confidence that the rail lines will get built to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, for example, in the not-too-distant future, the political complexities of the region and China’s ability to successfully navigate them are still open questions.

He also described the competing world views regarding infrastructure construction and economic development. There are powerful constituents in China – now backed by Xi Jinping himself – who believe that infrastructure development drives growth: i.e., “if you want to get rich, build a road.” By contrast, the U.S. and entities such as the World Bank are more cautious, seeing all the negative social and environment extenalities such massive projects create. They also want to see greater assurances of projected returns from these infrastructure projects before devoting resources. Having said this, both multilateral financial and development institutions, and the United States Government, are gradually adopting a more supportive posture on large infrastructure projects, in part not wishing to abandon the commercial and strategic battlegrounds of the future to the PRC.

Lastly, Lampton debunked the notion that the BRI is a unified, top-down “plan.” Rather, he described it as Beijing’s “umbrella policy” that “creates a predisposition [among Chinese entities] to build infrastructure.” It incentivizes “entrepreneurial SOEs, provinces, localities, overseas Chinese . . . to push their pet projects . . . onto . . . the national largesse.” This being the case, Lampton described the BRI as a dynamic, chaotic and, sometimes, even a rapacious process for the transit countries. Yunnan Province, for example, started a rail line even before the central government had approved it; and Guangdong Province began developing its own special economic zone and port construction in Malacca all without central approval. As Lampton stated, the “BRI isn’t just about Xi Jinping and Beijing . . . . [I]t’s about local initative, and how Beijing can or cannot control or . . . under what circumstances, it chooses to control [its local actors].”

The recording and transcript are available below.  

Armed conflict continues its brutal march in Syria, Yemen, Southeast Asia and South Sudan — to name a few of the international hotspots that contributed to an 11% increase in political violence around the world in 2018.

Nearly 10 million Yemenis are facing famine this year; Syria was the deadliest place on earth for civilians last year, with more than 7,100 fatalities.

Many of those killed — and even more who face starvation — are children. And that’s when Stanford professor of pediatrics Paul Wise finds it hard to stand on the sidelines. Wise, who has traveled to Guatemala annually for the last 40 years to treat children in rural communities, also travels to the frontlines of global calamities.

As part of a small team of physicians, Wise went to Mosul, the northern city in Iraq once controlled by ISIS, in 2017 to evaluate the World Health Organization-led system to treat civilians injured in the brutal battle for the city. 

Working with colleagues at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Wise has collaborated with the U.S. military, non-governmental organizations and the United Nations on the interaction of humanitarian and security challenges.

So, it should come as no surprise that the American Academy of Arts & Sciences — of which he is a member — recently appointed him and two other global health experts to lead a new initiative to develop new strategies to protect civilians, health care and cultural heritage in areas of extreme violence. 

The initiative, Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violence Conflict, will be a collaboration among political scientists, international human rights lawyers, physicians, academics and even the curators of major museums. They will develop strategies to prevent civilian harm and deliver critical health services in areas plagued by violent conflict, most notably in the Middle East, central and north Africa and parts of Asia. 

“We also want to address the humanitarian and protective frameworks that operate in areas that are extremely violent but wouldn’t necessarily be defined as being in armed conflict, like in the northern triangle of Central America. The human toll in these areas is at least as great as some of these other more traditionally defined areas,” Wise said.

Another of those areas is Myanmar, where nearly 700,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid sectarian violence in the northern Rakhine province, in what the United Nations calls a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Rethinking is also headed up by global health expert Jaime Sepulvedaof the University of California, San Francisco, and Jennifer M. Welsh, a global governance and security expert at   McGill University in Canada. Their work will result in a series of publications, blog posts, videos, podcasts and op-eds as a means to reach not only a general audience but also local and field-based humanitarian health providers. The initiative will also seek the engagement of those directly victimized by violence in the areas of greatest concern. 

“We will come up with new strategies to protect civilians and deal with their needs when protection fails in the real world,” Wise said. “The goal is to make a difference in the real world. That’s a much more ambitious goal of course, but it’s the only goal that’s worthy of this kind of initiative.” 

A professor of pediatrics in the Medical School and core faculty member at Stanford Health Policy, Wise is also appointed in several international security programs at Stanford, including the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law,and the Center for International Security and Cooperation,and is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Wise said he is particularly excited about the prospect of working with those who curate and protect cultural heritage sites and objects.

“The other thing about the American Academy of Arts & Sciences is that we are not just academics, but artists, musicians, novelists — and we expect to take full advantage of breaking out into these disciplines that aren’t normally part of these conversations,” Wise said.

When fire nearly toppled Notre Dame in Paris three months ago, Parisians gathered near the French Gothic cathedral to pray and to sing. When al-Qaida seized control of the North African country of Mali in 2012, a band of librarians undertook a dangerous mission to protect 350,000 centuries-old Arabic texts and smuggled them out of the library in Timbuktu.

At a recent meeting at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Wise met with museum directors, archeologists and political scientists about the preservation of cultural heritage.

“It was very clear that there were enormous areas of overlap between the efforts to protect cultural heritage and the efforts to protect people,” he said. “They’re just pragmatically connected because when you start destroying things of cultural importance, it tends to be associated ultimately with atrocities against people.”