This colloquium will feature presentations by two visiting scholars from China. First, Dr. Huijun Liu will present research on health risks associated with gender imbalance in China. The problems of abnormal sex ratio at birth and high female infant mortality have plagued many Asian countries with a strong male preference and gender inequality. In China, these problems having lasted for more than twenty years and contributed to a serious gender imbalance in the population. As a direct consequence, “surplus men” or “forced bachelors,” are expected to increase to more than 30 million. Dr. Liu will discuss the potential health risks and other social problems likely to be exacerbated by this large-scale gender imbalance in China.

Second, Dr. Dahai Zhao will present “How Is Health Insurance Coverage Utilized among Migrant Workers in Shanghai, China?” According to the regulations of the Chinese national and Shanghai municipal governments, migrant workers employed in Shanghai should all be entitled to the Shanghai Migrant Worker Hospitalization Insurance (SMWHI) without premium and the vast majority should also have coverage through the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS). Dr. Zhao will present results from research, conducted jointly with Dr. Wei Yu and Dr. Alan M. Garber, examining the status of the coverage and utilization of health insurance among migrant workers employed in Shanghai. Through their study, they found that a significant minority of migrant workers in Shanghai still had no health insurance, and that health insurance utilization among migrant workers was strongly limited by hospital location.

Huijun Liu is an associate professor in the Public Policy and Administration School at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. She received her PhD in management science and engineering from the Management School of Xi'an Jiaotong University. Her main areas of research focus on gender imbalance, reproductive health, vulnerability, and social support. Her current research focuses on how gender imbalance and migration amplify the risk of HIV transmission in China. Liu has published over twenty papers in Chinese academic journals, including China Soft Science, Population and Economics, Psychological Science Advance, Collection of Women's Studies, and Modern Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Zhao is an assistant professor with the School of Public Economics and Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), and a fellow with the Center for Health Policy at SUFE. He earned a master's degree in medicine in 2005 and a PhD in 2008, both from Fudan University, China.

Professor Li Liang Dong of the Central Party School's Politics and Law Department advises directly senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party.  Professor Li received his doctorate from the Central Party School in Law.  His main research areas are:  democratic perspective, Western political thought, and political theory. 

Some of his key works include: "Contemporary Chinese Studies of Public Opinion" (Central Party School Press, 1996), "Mao Zedong and Chinese farmers" (China Farmers Press, 1993), "Contemporary Chinese Democracy Studies" (Contemporary World Press, 2001 edition) and "Third Wave and the Chinese Democracy" (Central Party School Press, 2001 edition).  He has published over 300 articiles.  Professor Li has hosted discussions on topics including "Public Discussion in China",  "Societal Transitions", and "Study of Political Stability".

Co-sponsored by The Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University

Frédéric Mitterrand is the French Minister of Culture and Communication. Throughout his career, he has been an actor, screenwriter, television presenter, writer, producer and director.

Sponsored by The France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, The San Francisco French Consulate, The Stanford Humanities Center and The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University.

This EWG talk will highlight PESD's first analysis using our new coal model by demonstrating how it can be used to analyze the effects of China's import behavior on world thermal coal consumption. We will explore China's capability as a consumer to exercise market power in the domestic Chinese markets, and to what extent this behavior affects the price, consumption, and production of steam coal globally. Two scenarios will be presented: 1) we assume Chinese consumers with import capability behave competitively and 2) we assume they exercise market power.

The use of coal as a fuel has increased tremendously over the past decade, with most of the growth coming from rapidly expanding economies like those in China and India. As coal continues to be the fuel of choice for electricity generation around the world, PESD is excited to be developing a model to further understand the global steam coal market.  In the future, we anticipate the model will help answer questions regarding climate and trade policies, market structure, and technology improvements.

Michael Joined PESD in July of 2010 as a research assistant after graduating from Stanford University with a BA in Economics.

About the speaker:

Dr. Franz Cede is a retired Austrian diplomat who served as the Austrian Ambassador to Russia (1999-2003) and to NATO (2003-2007). He also was the Legal Advisor to the Austrian Foreign Ministry. He has a strong California connection dating back to the time when he was the Austrian Consul General in Los Angeles 20 years ago. Dr Cede holds the degree "Doctor of Law" from Innsbruck University. He received an M.A. in international affairs from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and is currently an associate professor at the Andrassy University in Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Cede has published several books and articles in the field of international relations, international law and diplomacy.

Jointly sponsored by The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Audio Synopsis:

In this talk, Dr. Cede details his views on Russia's evolving relationships with the EU, NATO, and the US, drawing on his experiences as Austrian ambassador to the Soviet Union from1999 to 2003. Cede first outlines his perceptions of present-day Russia-US and Russia-NATO relations. Russia, he explains, still thinks in Cold War terms of bilateral relations and considers the United States to be its primary strategic partner on global security issues, especially in light of the Obama administration's recent "reset" of relations and ratification of the new START treaty. In contrast, Russia views NATO as outdated and yet still a threat. Its expansion to the East is viewed with suspicion by Putin's administration, which considers these developments to be distinctly anti-Russian. Russia engages with NATO only to the extent that it believes it can influence the organization's behavior and policies toward Moscow.  Still, in Cede's experience, the NATO-US-Russia triangle continues to be at the forefront of Russian policymakers' dialogue. Russian leaders prefer to avoid dealing with the EU because it lacks a coherent foreign policy, and also because Russia prefers bilateral relations with countries that offer a strategic benefit. Dr. Cede quotes Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote in a recent op-ed that "much of the Russian foreign policy elite treats the European Union as a kind of transient, post-modern late 20th century anachronism: flawed in principle, and feeble in practice. What matters in the 21st century, as much as it did in the 19th century, is the...determination of great powers." Dr. Cede cites the Georgian military intervention and recent Ukrainian gas crisis as examples of Russia's renewed attempts to reestablish dominance in its neighborhood.  

In the second portion of his talk Dr. Cede traces the evolution of Russian views of the EU and NATO.  Ten years ago, the EU-Russia relationship was largely ignored in the Russian media. When Cede asked Russian citizens for their views on the EU, they "either didn't know or didn't care." As Ambassador, Dr. Cede found Russian officials better informed, but  disdainful of being given orders by EU donors and "treated like a developing country." Cede illustrates this dynamic by recounting the 2004 incident in which the EU forced the residents of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast region to apply for EU Shengen visas, which then required special permits to travel throughout Russia.  Western assurances that EU expansion to the east was not an attack on Russia but rather an attempt to extend stability to the Eastern bloc fell on deaf ears. Cede believes that notwithstanding Russia's attitude, the country is too big to ever join the EU, or to be influenced by Europe in its policy decisions. Because Russia still views itself as "one of the poles in a multipolar world," Dr. Cede insists that any change must come from within the country. However, Cede views Russia's candidacy to the WTO, which would require a clearer commitment to democracy and open economic policies, as a glimmer of hope.

Finally, Dr. Cede outlines several "permanent" features of Russia's relationship with the world, including economic interdependence, lack of cooperation on security policy, and weak relations with stateless organizations like the EU and NATO. He lays out several recommendations, which are elaborated on during the Q&A session:

1. EU policymakers and other Western powers (notably the US) should strengthen their common Russia policy. Given the EU's dependence on Russia for oil and gas, it should also diversify its own energy sources to strengthen its bargaining position.
2. The EU should consider membership for "bridge countries" such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus.
3. Personal diplomacy between universities, civil society, and citizens is important.  This includes reevaluation of visa policy. Cede hopes that the advent of the internet will also help improve attitudes between Russia and the rest of the world.

The Japanese economy has been stagnating for almost two decades. During this event, Takeo Hoshi will describe the findings of a report that he co-authored with Anil Kashyap of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In the report, Hoshi and Kashyap utilized the neoclassical growth model in order to try to explain the causes of this stagnation and to identify policy choices that might help restore growth. Their focus was intentionally on longer-term issues, rather than the immediate challenges that are associated with the fallout from the global recession.

Looking at financial globalization and the collapse of the fixed exchange rate regime they found that by the end of the 1970s Japan could not rely on an undervalued currency to boost its exports. It had to rearrange its production system and other economic institutions to cope with globalization to reduce its reliance on external demand.

Japan's population structure was shifting and becoming increasingly elderly. Aging meant slower growth of the labor force. Declining fertility combined with aging eventually reduced the domestic saving that supported economic expansion during the rapid economic growth period.

Finally, monetary and fiscal policy performed poorly. The Bank of Japan consistently undershot its inflation objective. The government pursued massive fiscal stimulus during the 1990s and 2000s, so much so that Japan went from having the best debt position amongst advanced economies to the worst.

Hoshi is a Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in international economic relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a research associate at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research, and is on the board of directors for Union Bank. His major research area is the study of the financial aspects of the Japanese economy, especially corporate finance and governance.

He is a recipient of the 2011 Reischauer International Education award, the 2006 Enjoji Jiro Memorial Prize, and the 2005 JEA-Nakahara Prize. Among his many publications is Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001), which received the Nikkei Award for the Best Economics Books in 2002.

Except for specialists working on the period, the Korean Empire's (1897–1910) project to develop Pyongyang as the "Western Capital" (Sŏgyŏng) is not all that well known even among Korea historians. From the perspective of international relations, there can be no doubt that the Russo-Japanese War sealed independent Korea’s fate. All the same, in the last two decades or so, Korea’s own effort toward modernization has received more attention among historians who no longer dismiss the history of the Korean Empire as the tail end of the Chosŏn Dynasty. For sure, the official rhetoric that empires old and new have had two capitals conceals imperial Korea’s self-perceptions about its place in the civilized world of the past, the present, and the future. Moreover, scrutiny of the circumstances in which the government undertook the project before it came to a halt allows insight into the Korean Empire’s understanding of geopolitical realities at the time.

Eugene Y. Park is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor in History in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of Penn's Korean Studies Program. Dr. Park completed his doctorate in East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard in 1999 and has received numerous research grants and fellowships, including: a 2007–08 Seoul National University Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies Fellowship; a 2003–04 Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant; a 1999–2000 Yale University Council on East Asian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship; a 1996–97 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship; and a 1995–96 Fulbright Fellowship. His research interests focus on the sociopolitical history of early modern Korea, and his current work examines the chungin ("middle people") to address questions of modernity, identities, and agency. His book, Between Dreams and Reality: The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600–1894, was published by the Harvard University Asia Center in 2007. He has published chapters and articles in venues such as Journal of Social History and Yŏksa wa hyŏnsil.

About the event

On Tuesday, March 1, SPRIE and Alibaba.com hosted “Entrepreneurship in the Global Marketplace,” a seminar featuring noted venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and executives. The seminar was the first in a series being conducted at several California universities under the auspices of the Schwarzenegger Emerging Entrepreneur Initiative.

Famed venture capitalist Tim Draper kicked off the event, sharing his insight on trends and strategies relevant to global business.  Multiple facets of China’s role in supporting and enabling entrepreneurial ventures were spotlighted, including the presentation of new research on the rise and global impact of Chinese e-commerce, a talk by an executive from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.com, and lessons from a diverse set of entrepreneurs whose businesses depend on international trade. Additional perspectives were shared by China- and U.S.-based VCs.

This event was one of many being held at Stanford University during Entrepreneurship Week 2011, including compelling lectures, workshops, mentoring sessions, a job fair, and more. See full details at the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week website.

About the hosts

The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) is dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship in leading high technology regions in the global economy. Through and international and interdisciplinary research, publications, executive education, and conferences, SPRIE impacts the arenas of academia, policy, and business.

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