What are the patterns of Japan’s foreign policy behavior toward Taiwan in the post-Cold War era? It is generally taken for granted that the origin of Japan’s foreign policy to Taiwan has been derived from a unitary strategic calculation related to East Asian international politics and its maritime security in the Asia-Pacific region. This conventional interpretation is insufficient. In this seminar, by reviewing three case studies in 2006, 2019 and 2021 through the theoretical lens of neoclassical realism and empirical investigation based on primary and secondary Japanese-language sources, the speaker suggests that Japan’s Taiwan policy has been shaped by the combination of three factors: the degree of systemic clarity at the international level, the Japanese prime minister’s political survival and bureaucratic prudence over the Taiwan issue at the domestic level. Since 2021, Japan has adopted a subtle approach to Taiwan, driven more by a defensive and precautionary response to the heightened sense of crisis across the Taiwan Strait.

Speaker:

Mong Cheung is Professor of School of International Liberal Studies (SILS) at Waseda University, Japan. He received his PhD degree in international relations from Waseda University and M.Phil degree in political science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2025). His research interests include contemporary Sino-Japanese relations, Japan’s foreign and security policy, foreign-domestic linkage in Chinese and Japanese foreign policy, misperception and reconciliation in China-Japan relations, and comparative strategic culture. He is the author of Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan`s Relations with China (London: Routledge, 2017, Paperback, 2018). He has published widely in peer-reviewed international journals such as The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, East Asia Forum, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Contemporary East Asian Studies. He serves as a peer reviewer for several international academic journals such as International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Contemporary East Asian Studies. He is also a columnist for the "Japan Outlook" section of Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.

Moderator:

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. His most recent publication, Human Rights and the State: The Power of Ideas and the Realities of International Politics (Iwanami Shinsho, 2022), was awarded the 2022 Ishibashi Tanzan Award and the 44th Suntory Prize for Arts and Sciences.

What is everyday life under autocracy like? We have an image of violence, all-powerful elites, and jackbooted thugs, but many people living in modern autocratic regimes instead experience mundane repression, self-censorship, and distrust of formal institutions. In this panel, several Stanford scholars who research and who have lived through authoritarian rule reflect on how autocracies govern people’s daily lives, and how it is possible to resist these incursions. At a time when democracy is threatened in many countries, these experiences and lessons in resistance are more relevant than ever.

Panel

Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, the Director of the Europe Center, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Her research focuses on the historical development of the state and its transformation, political parties, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. Other areas of interest include populism, informal institutions, and causal mechanisms.

Jovana Lazić is an historian whose research and teaching interests focus on belligerent occupation and the social and cultural history of the First World War; urban history; and the Habsburg Empire, the Balkans and Yugoslavia. She is author of several book chapters and articles on gender and war and the Habsburg-occupied Serbian capital of Belgrade during World War I.  A graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and recipient of a diplome from Sciences Po-Paris, she received her PhD from Yale University. Jovana came to Stanford in 2006 to teach in the History Department and joined the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies in 2013.

Haiyan Lee is Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Walter A. Haas Professor of the Humanities. Her first book, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950, is a critical genealogy of the idea of “love” (qing) in modern Chinese literary and cultural history. It was awarded the 2009 Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for the best English-language book on post-1900 China. It is the first recipient of this prize in the field of modern Chinese literature. Her second book,  The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination, examines how the figure of “the stranger”—foreigner, migrant, class enemy, woman, animal, ghost—in Chinese fiction, film, television, and exhibition culture tests the moral limits of a society known for the primacy of consanguinity and familiarity. Her third book,  A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination investigates Chinese visions of “justice” at the intersection of narrative, law, and ethics. She is working on a new project on animism, cognition, and the Chinese environmental imagination.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

Ali Yaycıoğlu is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies Forum. He is a historian specializing in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. His research examines various dimensions of political, economic, and legal institutions and practices, as well as the social and cultural dynamics of the Ottoman world and Turkey, from the sixteenth century to the present. He is also interested in using digital tools to understand, visualize, and conceptualize historical developments. Dr. Yaycıoğlu teaches courses on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey; Empires, Markets & Networks in the Early Modern World; the Age of Revolutions; Histories of Democracy and Capitalism; and Digital Humanities.

This event is sponsored by The Europe Center; Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL); Office of the Dean of Humanities & Sciences; and CREEES Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 

Don't Panic, Don't Panic! The Baltic States in the New World Orde

Russia's annexation of Crimea in early 2014 kick-started a process of reassessing security threats to the Baltic region and profound political and social change in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 further raised the temperature and saw sharp rises in defense spending, a restructuring of the party system and new nationalizing domestic policies aimed at increasing social cohesion and tackling intelligence and misinformation threats from the East.

However, the first few months of the new presidential administration in the U.S.A. have, arguably, accelerated even greater change in the three Baltic states as they are forced to rapidly adjust to a new world order.

This talk will reflect on how swiftly shifting US-European relations have led the Baltic states to reconsider their security arrangements, realign diplomatic partnerships and refocus core domestic policies.

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Daunis Auers is Professor of European Studies and Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Latvia, Director of the Latvia’s Strategy and Economic Research (LaSER) think tank and a member of the Latvian president’s National Competitiveness Council. His recent research interests are in the comparative politics, economics and regional integration of the Baltic and Nordic states and has recently worked on bureaucratic reform and efficiency. He is a member of the Latvian prime minister's working group on "Cutting Bureaucracy". Professor Auers defended his PhD at University College London and previously studied at the London School of Economics. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley (2005-2006), University of Washington in Seattle (2023-2024) and a Baltic-American Freedom Foundation Scholar at Wayne State University in Detroit (2014).

Free and open to the public. Registration is requested.

This event is part of Global Conversations, a series of talks, lectures, and seminars hosted by Stanford University Libraries and Vabamu with the goal of educating scholars, students, leaders, and the public on the benefits of but also challenges related to sustaining freedom.