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Global Talent seeks to examine the utility of skilled foreigners beyond their human capital value by focusing on their social capital potential, especially their role as transnational bridges between host and home countries. Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University) and Joon Nak Choi (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) build on an emerging stream of research that conceptualizes global labor mobility as a positive-sum game in which countries and businesses benefit from building ties across geographic space, rather than the zero-sum game implied by the "global war for talent" and "brain drain" metaphors.

"Advanced economies like Korea face a growing mismatch between low birth rates and increasing demand for skilled labor. Shin and Choi use original, comprehensive data and a global outlook to provide careful, accessible and persuasive analysis. Their prescriptions for Korea and other economies challenged by high-level labor shortages will amply reward readers of this landmark study."  —Mark Granovetter, Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

The book empirically demonstrates its thesis by examination of the case of Korea: a state archetypical of those that have been embracing economic globalization while facing a demographic crisis—and one where the dominant narrative on the recruitment of skilled foreigners is largely negative. It reveals the unique benefits that foreign students and professionals can provide to Korea, by enhancing Korean firms' competitiveness in the global marketplace and by generating new jobs for Korean citizens rather than taking them away. As this research and its key findings are relevant to other advanced societies that seek to utilize skilled foreigners for economic development, the arguments made in this book offer insights that extend well beyond the Korean experience.

Books will be available for purchase at the event or  purchase online

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations.

Shin is the author/editor of more than a dozen books and numerous articles. His recent books include Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015), Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Asia’s Middle Powers? (2013); Troubled Transition: North Korea's Politics, Economy, and External Relations (2013); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia (2006); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many of them have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic journals including American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, and Asian Survey. Shin is currently writing a book on historical memories of the Asia-Pacific wars with Daniel Sneider. 

Joon Nak Choi is an associate professor in the Department of Management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Prior to joining HKUST, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D and M.A in Sociology at Stanford  University and his B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Brown University. His ongoing research continues to focus upon the effects of social and political capital, especially in Korea.

Hwy-Chang Moon joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for the 2015-2016 academic year. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Moon will be working on a research project titled, “The Global Strategy of Korean Firms in Silicon Valley.”

Moon received his PhD from the University of Washington and is currently a professor of international business strategy in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University in South Korea, where he also served as the Dean. He has previously taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Keio University, and Hitotsubashi University. Moon has also consulted for several multinational companies, international organizations, and governments (e.g., Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and the Guangdong Province of China).

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China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.

Mao’s China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao’s greatest achievements—victory in the civil war, the creation of China’s first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life—also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.

Misdiagnosing China’s problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided.

Books will be available for purchase at the event

Andrew G. Walder, Author, has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on China have ranged from the political and economic organization of the Mao era to changing patterns of stratification, social mobility, and political conflict in the post-Mao era. Another focus of his research has been on the political economy of Soviet-type economies and their subsequent reform and restructuring. His current research focuses on popular political mobilization in late-1960s China and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty the fall of 1997. He received his PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. As a professor of sociology, he served as chair of Harvard's MA Program on Regional Studies-East Asia for several years. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. From 1996 to 2006, as a member of the Hong Kong Government's Research Grants Council, he chaired its Panel on the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business Studies.

Thomas P. Bernstein, Discussant, earned his PhD from Columbia University, 1970. He joined the faculty of the Department of Political Science and of the East Asian Institute in 1975, having previously taught at Yale and Indiana Universities. He retired in December 2007.  He is a specialist on comparative politics, with a focus on China as well as on communist systems generally. He has written on the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union and China and on the two famines that each country experienced in the l930's and late l950's. Publications on China include a book on Chinese youth (Yale University Press, 1977), which was translated into China in 1993, as well as articles and  book chapters on the Mao era, China’s growth without political liberalization, prospects for democratization, and on education. His recent writings have focused on various aspects of state-peasant relations in China’s reform period. Together with Professor Xiaobo Lu, he co-authored Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (Cambridge University Press, 2003). In recent years, he has resumed work on Sino-Soviet relations and comparisons. In 2010, he published a co-edited book with Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present (Lexington Book). And he has written on reform and authoritarian rule in contemporary China and Russia. Prior to retirement, he served on various editorial boards, including Comparative Politics and China Quarterly.  He has held various fellowships, including a Guggenheim. He served as Chair of the Department of Political Science from 1986-l989 and again from 1991 to l994.

Abstract

Social and economic grievances of Tunisian youth played a major role in igniting the uprising in Tunisia, and more generally, the so-called Arab Spring. Despite a successful political transition in the country, progress on addressing youth grievances has been slow in light of deteriorating living conditions, rampant corruption, and rising unemployment. These realities continue to pose a serious challenge to the prospects of building a sustainable democracy in Tunisia. Based on data gathered from meetings with a diverse group of 500 young Tunisians, this talk will shed light on youth’s perceived and actual exclusion from social, economic, and political opportunities. In doing so it will provide a critical assessment of the underlying causes of youth alienation in the country and prospects for greater political, social and economic inclusion.

Speaker Bio

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Ghazi Ben Ahmed leads the Mediterranean Development Initiative of the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS in Tunisia. He is the founder and the Secretary General of the Club de Tunis, a Tunisian based foundation that helps policymakers and entrepreneurs devise strategies and development projects for inclusive growth. He has set up jointly with Dar El Dhekra (Remembrance House, the first Tunisian Jewish Association), a project to safeguard Tunisian Jewish Heritage by promoting its products on the US market. Ghazi Ben Ahmed is the Tunisia Coordinator for Leaders Engaged in New Democracies (LEND). He cooperates with the U.S. State Department, the Community of Democracies, and the Club de Madrid to provide peer advice, peer support, and capacity building to political leaders and policy makers in Tunisia. Previously he was the Lead Trade Expert in the African Development Bank (AfDB). Before joining the AfDB, he was a Senior Advisor at the United Nation agency for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in the Africa and LDC Division. He also worked for almost 10 years in the European Commission in Brussels, in several Directorates-Generals: Trade, EuropeAid and External Relations, responsible for trade issues, EU trade and development policy, textile negotiations, macroeconomic analysis, structural adjustment and institutional building in the Mediterranean countries.

*This event is co-sponsored with the Mediterranean Studies Forum.*

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This is a time at which the global movement for universal health coverage (UHC) is under intense review.  As an isolated country which recently opened up to the world, Myanmar has endorsed the goal of achieving UHC by 2030. However, current evidence has shown that there will be significant challenges for Myanmar to achieve this target.  The Myanmar health system comprises a pluralistic mix of public and private systems both in financing and provision. It was ranked the second worst in terms of ‘overall health system performance’ by the WHO in 2000. According to World Bank (2012), the country’s out-of-pocket payment burden is one of the highest in the world, at 81% of total health expenditures, resulting in high levels of catastrophic health expenditure. About three-quarters of Myanmar’s citizens, including the poorest and most marginalized communities, find themselves with very limited access to essential health services. And too many of these same populations suffer a further burden of being pushed, or kept, in poverty because they have to pay for their health care. Recognizing the fragility of its health system, Myanmar launched some transformations in the health sector in 2011. The most significant changes were increasing the health budget four-fold since 2011, launching some health insurance programs in some areas, starting to collaborate with a diversity of actors in the health sector, and major structural changes in the Ministry of Health, Myanmar. This colloquium will reflect upon these transformations and discuss how the changes will shape Myanmar’s future health system, drawing upon comparisons with health reforms in other South East Asian countries.

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After receiving her MBBS degree from the University of Medicine (Mandalay), Phyu Phyu worked for two years at a public hospital. In 2009, she became an active researcher at the Department of Medical Research (Upper Myanmar). As a researcher, she participated in various clinical and public health researches and presented papers at national and international conferences. She was also actively involved in the welfare of underprivileged groups in Myanmar. She earned her PhD in Epidemiology from the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand in 2013. After her PhD, she continued her work at DMR (Upper Myanmar) as a research officer as well as a member of the secretariat of the Academic Committee. She was also as a field supervisor in two national surveys on HIV and RH commodities and services in Myanmar. She has also published journal articles on equity, gender differences and RH services utilization among the poor.

At APARC, Phyu Phyu will study the current trends of Myanmar health policies in general, as well as the specific sex education programs of the country. She will investigate how Myanmar/Burmese culture affects the objectives of the current sex education programs at schools based on the perceptions of adolescent students, teachers and parents.