In early July, the Center for East Asian Studies explored contemporary arts development in China in a major event at the Stanford Center at Peking University. The China Arts Forum featured two visual artists, one performing artist, and one art market executive, all of whom were women.  Read more. 

A new course jointly taught by Stanford and Peking University brought together students and scholars in China and the United States in dialogue using videoconferencing.

Each week during the past spring quarter, students at Stanford and Peking University (PKU) gathered in a classroom to learn, just as they would for any other course. The only difference was these students were neither in the same classroom nor on the same continent.

Despite being separated by nearly 6,000 miles, 18 students in Palo Alto and 28 students in Beijing held ‘face-to-face’ conversations via high definition videoconference in a course taught by American and Chinese scholars. On each side, they sat in a three-rowed amphitheater and looked directly ahead – not at a whiteboard – but at a screen that projects a video ‘wall’ of their colleagues at the other campus. The venue, known as a ‘Highly Immersive Classroom,’ enabled the distance learning experience between the two universities, using advanced software to create a cross-Pacific virtual classroom. The course titled The United States, China, & Global Security, led by former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and PKU professor Fan Shiming, was organized under the auspices of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative whose research focuses on security challenges in Asia with teaching as one of its core activities.

“We set out to host a course that addressed topics critical to China and the United States in a new type of classroom format,” said Eikenberry, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and director of the Initiative. “What resulted was a truly unique academic exchange that considered topics even beyond the bilateral relationship and carried a certain ‘Silicon Valley spirit’ being divided by an ocean yet connected through technology.”

Over eight weeks, a select group of graduate students from the two universities explored a wide array of subjects related to international security, ranging from terrorism to trade and energy and the environment. The course aimed to provide students with a forum to discuss current issues in U.S.-China relations and to analyze areas that could be applied to other case studies. 

“Because each week was a different topic, it didn’t feel like I was just thinking about the United States and China again every Wednesday night,” said Sam Ide, a Stanford graduate student who studies China’s relations with Central Asia. “Each session was very interesting to me in a different way.”

Guest-taught by prominent scholars and former senior government officials from the United States and China, the course sessions allocated thirty minutes for each lecturer to present, followed by a thirty minute question-and-answer period in which students were given the opportunity to interact with the lecturers and their peers on the other campus. Lecturers from Stanford included nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Thomas Fingar, a former deputy director at the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and from PKU, Dean of the School of International Studies Jia Qingguo, and arms control and disarmament expert Han Hua. All discussions were off-the-record to encourage candid exchange of ideas. 

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At Stanford's Highly Immersive Classroom in Palo Alto, students look ahead at their counterparts in Beijing.

One course session in particular resonated with students. The session, taught by Zha Daojiong, a professor of political economy at PKU and Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, focused on the changing nature and future of cybersecurity relations between China and the United States.

“I loved the cybersecurity class because there was a lot of candor on both sides,” PKU student Shan Jee Chua recalled.

Kimberly Chang, a second year Stanford graduate student in management science and engineering, noted that it was beneficial to hear the Chinese view on cyber “because most of the talk within the United States has been from an American perspective.”

The course revealed a broader range of perspectives and provided a chance to interact first-hand with international colleagues while remaining at their home campus. Discussion amongst peers uncovered the “behind the scenes stories” and added context to media reports found online or in print, said Seung Kim, a student in Stanford’s East Asian studies program.

Besides the technology, a unique aspect of the course was its diversity. More than half of the course participants were international, representing 15 countries beyond China and the United States. That setting encouraged debate and reinforced the notion that “neither the United States nor China is the center of the universe,” said Zhu Jun Zhao, a PKU international relations student.

When students were asked what could bring about better understanding between China and the United States, continued dialogue was a common answer. The future of U.S.-China relations rests in the hands of people talking to one another: “I think we need more honest conversations,” Chang said.

And for some students, an opportunity to hold those conversations in-person may be close. Ide said he anticipates traveling to Beijing over the summer and plans to try and meet with a few of his counterparts whom he met through the course.

“Hopefully, I’ll be able to meet some of these people in real life who I’ve met on the ‘wall.’”

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Video showcases SCPKU's Highly Immersive Classroom enabling co-teaching across the Pacific

On the heels of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, scholars, members of think tanks and former U.S. and Chinese government officials came to Beijing to discuss what many participants considered “the most important bilateral relationship” in the world: the relationship between the United States and China. As former U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte described during his opening remarks, the relationship, “if properly managed,” can result in an enormous boon for the world; but if mismanaged, can bring great harm to global stability and prosperity.

Stanford and Peking University jointly hosted a forum titled “A Changing Global and Political Order: Perspectives from China-United States Cooperation” on June 6-7 in Beijing. All attendees, who participated in their capacity as private individuals, acknowledged that a level of uncertainty and tension clouds the bilateral relationship, exemplified most clearly in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Having participated in the restoration of Sino-U.S. relations in 1972, Negroponte and former Chinese Ambassador Wu Jianmin remarked upon the geopolitical rationale that first motivated this rapprochement: to counter the Soviet Union. They noted that the bilateral relationship has grown increasingly robust and multi-dimensional over time. For example, Wu cited that trade between the United States and China has increased exponentially, from a mere US$1 billion in 1978 to $550 billion in 2015. Investment, economic cooperation and competition have also grown. Despite disagreements on regional security matters, both countries have worked together on global challenges such as climate change, North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues, anti-piracy efforts and the Ebola outbreak.

However, with China’s rapid rise, both militarily and economically, and as the developing world has gained increasing clout on the world’s stage, many participants suggested that the current global order, originally envisaged in 1944 with the Bretton-Woods Agreement, needed an update. Many participants, especially on the Chinese side, stated that the “balance of power was shifting” with the G7/G8 yielding economic momentum to the G20. The American participants generally did not share Chinese views of a power transition, but conceded that reforms were necessary to the global order to take into account China’s meteoric rise.  Participants did not dispute the benefits that China has derived from the current international order and most agreed that some type of evolutionary change is needed to increase inclusivity. As one participant asked regarding China’s perception of the United States (and vice versa), “Are we foes, enemies or friends?” Despite such ambiguity, U.S.-China cooperation is essential to effecting any type of change.

Questions were rife and specificity was scant with respect to what the key changes were or the mechanisms by which those reforms should be effected, however. Which countries should partake in this decision-making body? Should other entities and institutions other than nation-states be included? What are the rules of participation and criteria for membership? How large should the governing body be? What key reforms need to be undertaken?

Both Negroponte and Wu disavowed the zero-sum mentality of the Cold War, which, Wu stated, continues to impact perceptions on both sides. They both highlighted the critical importance of frequent dialogue by the Chinese and American heads of state and by their militaries. Calling summit-level meetings between the two presidents “indispensable,” Negroponte emphasized that “[both] leaders have to understand [the] viewpoints and attitudes of each country” in order to formulate the right policies. Negroponte added, “[d]iplomacy at that level is probably more important than it has ever been.”

As this summary of the forum is posted, we note with sadness the untimely death of Ambassador Wu Jianmin on June 18, 2016, in a tragic car accident in Wuhan, China.

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Photo gallery from the conference

As the inaugural meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank sets to convene, Stanford researcher Thomas Fingar discusses findings from his new book that seeks to study China’s objectives and methods of engagement with other countries. Much of China’s behavior is determined by its own cost-benefit analysis of the perceived effect engagement would have on its security and development.

As China has pursued modernization over the past 35 years, patterns have emerged that shed light on the government’s foreign policy decision-making, according to new research by Thomas Fingar, a Stanford distinguished fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).

Since 1979, China’s foreign policy has been underscored by two priorities – security and development. Knowing those priorities, analysts can attempt to better study and anticipate China’s relations with other countries even in the wake of unforeseen events in the global system.

“China’s increased activity around the world has elicited both anxiety and admiration in neighboring countries eager to capitalize on opportunities but worried about Beijing’s growing capabilities. Yet as is the case with all countries, what China can do is shaped by global and regional developments beyond its control,” said Fingar, the editor of The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform.

The book, which has a total of 13 authors, is the first in a series published by Stanford University Press that examines China’s changing relationships in Asia and with other portions of the world. It is also an outcome of the research project “China and the World.” Fingar, who heads the project, draws upon his experience from five decades working on Asia and more than 25 years in U.S. government, including as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Framework to analyze China’s foreign policy

One dimension of the research project examines how China’s policies and priorities are shaped by China’s perceptions about how much a country threatens or addresses China’s security concerns; a second dimension examines China’s perceptions about how much a country can contribute to China’s pursuit of sustained economic growth and modernization.

To explore these relationships, Fingar developed a framework for analysis using a matrix that displays, on one axis, China’s perceptions about the threat to China’s security posed by a country or region, and on the other axis, China’s perceptions about a country or region’s capacity to contribute to China’s development.

By comparing the position of a given country or region from one period to another, the matrix both predicts the character of China’s policies and reveals a pattern over time. The figure below illustrates China’s views in 1979 and 2016.

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In 1979, India and countries in Central Asia figured high on the threat axis because of their relationship with the Soviet Union and low on capacity to provide the resources China needed to jumpstart its economy, Fingar said.

At that time, China sought to address both its priority security concerns and developmental goals by improving ties with Europe, Japan and the United States. South and Central Asia were afforded lower priority, he said.

In the 1990s, however, China’s perceptions shifted as a result of the demise of the Soviet Union and a decade of economic success in China, Fingar explained. Shown in the matrix, China’s policies toward Central Asia changed as the region transitioned to a more favorable security position by 2000 and as China required additional resources (energy, technology, training, etc.) to fuel its growing economy.

Fingar said China’s increased engagement with South Asia was buttressed by a need for markets and investment opportunities, and furthered along by a reduction in the threat environment as India altered its relationship with Russia and Pakistan became a less valuable security partner.

Calculating who China will engage with and how has become much clearer, yet in some ways it has also become more complicated, according to Fingar.

“The countries that can do the most for China today often pose the greatest perceived long-term threat, namely the United States and its allies,” he said. “Conversely, China’s proclaimed closest friends—North Korea and Pakistan—can do little to assist China’s development and pose increasing danger to its security.”

Current policy applications

Over the past three years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has embarked on numerous projects with neighbors and other countries around the world, such as the “new Silk Road,” a trans-continental trade route that will link countries together, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development bank that plans to lend money to poorer parts of Asia for building infrastructure.

The objectives of both initiatives are consistent with the China’s prioritization of security and development, Fingar said. The AIIB and Silk Road initiative indicate that China assumes there are gains from economic integration, and this is largely due to the fact that China has already benefited from past projects.

In 2001, the Chinese government launched concerted efforts to improve its relationships with Central Asian countries because of China’s concern that the United States was seeking to “contain” China, he said. Outcomes have included newfound markets for China’s manufactured goods and increased stability in separatist areas near or on its borders.

“By taking such a big stake in building infrastructure, China has changed the dynamic of the region,” he said. “Anybody can use a road, railroad or bridge. China has helped stitch together the economies of different countries in ways they have never been before.”

For China, the AIIB and the Silk Road initiative are also a form of “soft power,” said Fingar. The approach by the Chinese government evokes memories of U.S. “dollar diplomacy” early in the last century and Japanese “yen diplomacy” when financial assistance was extended to developing countries.

But Fingar doubts that “buying friends by building infrastructure” will be a major contributor to China’s quest for security and development. Going forward, the Chinese government must face the growing paradox between its foreign infrastructure projects and its principle of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said.

“When working in other countries, China cannot afford to dismiss internal stability, governance, rule of law,” he said. “Those facets are the baseline for building infrastructure.”

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The Diplomat - Q&A on Chinese diplomacy in the 21st century

In 2013, China’s president, Xi Jinping, launched a massive reclamation and construction campaign on seven reefs in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Beijing insisted that its actions were responsible and in accord with international law, but foreign critics questioned Xi’s real intentions. Recently available internal documents involving China’s leader reveal his views about war, the importance of oceans in protecting and rejuvenating the nation, and the motives underlying his moves in the South China Sea. Central to those motives is China’s rivalry with the United States and the grand strategy needed to determine its outcome. To this end, Xi created five externally oriented and proactive military theater commands, one of which would protect newly built assets in the South China Sea and the sea lanes – sometimes referred to as the Maritime Silk Road – that pass through this sea to Eurasia and beyond. Simultaneously, China’s actions in the Spratlys complicated and worsened the US-China rivalry, and security communities in both countries recognized that these actions could erupt into armed crises – despite decades of engagement to prevent them. A permanent problem-solving mechanism may allow the two countries to move toward a positive shared future.

You can read the full article from CISAC co-founder John Lewis and Xue Litai on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Web site.