Lee Kong Chian was among the most influential Chinese entrepreneurs in the Asian diasporic landscape from the 1920s to 1960s. In 1903, as a young boy, he migrated from China to then-British Singapore. He went on to build a formidable plantation-based business empire. Known in his heyday as Southeast Asia’s “Rubber King” and “Pineapple King,” he left profound imprints on business, education, and philanthropy that can still be felt in the region today.

Lee Kong Chian lived through tumultuous times: the rise of Chinese nationalism, World War II, British decolonization, independent state formation, and the Cold War. Different impressions of him have been produced and projected at different times in different places: as “a leading capitalist and philanthropist in Nanyang,” “a representative patriot of the Chinese Diaspora,” and “a virtuous pioneer in the revised national history template.” After reviewing these images, Prof. Huang will move “beyond representation” to explore less well-known aspects of Lee’s life including the nature of his economic empire and the political sensitivity of his position at a time when the sun was setting over the British empire.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006). Further details including contact information are accessible at http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/hishjl.

The movement of people leaving and returning to China from the second half of the 19th century to the present is a vast and complex subject. Among scholars worldwide, none has contributed more to the study of these cycles of migration and settlement in Southeast Asian contexts than National University of Singapore Prof. Wang Gungwu. His extensive writings on the topic richly illustrate the conceptual difficulties involved. 

The very terms used to name the phenomenon are contested: “Greater China,” “Chinese Diaspora,” “Huaqiao,” and “Nanyang Chinese”? Are these migrants and settlers and their descendants “Overseas Chinese” or “Chinese Overseas”? Are they even “Chinese” at all?  Prof. Wang’s struggles with nomenclature will be used by Prof. Huang to discuss larger issues, including how language can bias thought and influence policy and how to navigate the troubled waters at the confluence of scholarship and policy.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006).

A workshop on designing and delivering effective oral presentations.

A workshop on designing and delivering effective oral presentations.

Claire Hunsaker, VP of Product Management and Strategy: Claire manages Samasource's microwork platform, worker training and management tools, and corporate websites. She is responsible for keeping Samasource at the leading edge of virtual work technologies and integrating Samasource products with clients and service partners. Prior to Samasource, Claire was Director of Virtual Agent Acquisition at LiveOps and she has also worked in rural Vietnam with ADAPT to combat anti-human trafficking on the Vietnam/Cambodia border. As a management consultant with Katzenbach Partners, she supported national technology companies and non-profits with strategic planning. Claire holds a BA in English with departmental honors from Columbia College, and an MA in English Literature from the University of London, and an MBA from Stanford.

Co-sponsored by Stanford Association for International Development (SAID).

As the United States struggles to emerge from recession, India and China's continued robust growth is the subject of much interest and concern. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Adam Segal will talk about his new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge, analyzing Asia's technological rise, questioning assumptions about the United States inevitable decline, and explaining how America can preserve and improve its position in the global economy by optimizing its strength of moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace.

In his book, Segal argues that the emergence of India and China does not mean the end of American economic and technological power. Instead, the United States should now leverage its many advantages.

Through his research, Segal concludes the United States has an advantage over Asia in the realm of the software of innovation. “In America, your ideas can make you rich. Intellectual property is protected, and individual scientists are able to exploit their breakthroughs for commercial gains,” he writes. “It is time to realize that software in its most expansive sense offers the most opportunities for the United States to ensure its competitive place in the world.” The challenge is “to recover a culture of innovation that was driven underground, overshadowed by sexy credit default swaps and easy spending.”

Speaker

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman senior fellow for counterterrorism and national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Dr. Segal currently leads study groups on cybersecurity and cyber conflict as well as Asian innovation and technological entrepreneurship. His new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge (W.W. Norton, 2011) looks at the technological rise of Asia. Dr. Segal is a research associate of the National Asia Research Program and was the project director for a CFR-sponsored independent task force on Chinese military modernization.

Before coming to CFR, Dr. Segal was an arms control analyst for the China Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, he wrote about missile defense, nuclear weapons, and Asian security issues. Dr. Segal has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has taught at Vassar College and Columbia University. Dr. Segal is the author of Digital Dragon: High-Technology Enterprises in China (Cornell University Press, 2003), as well as several articles and book chapters on Chinese technology policy. His work has recently appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Washington Quarterly, Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Segal currently writes for the CFR blog, “Asia Unbound".

Dr. Segal has a BA and PhD in government from Cornell University, and an MA in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He reads and speaks Chinese.

Koji Murata received his M.Phil in Political Science from the George Washington University, where he studied as a Fulbright student, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Kobe University, Kobe, Japan.

Dr. Murata's specialties include US foreign policy in East Asia, Japans foreign and
defense policy, and the history of U.S.-Japan alliance. Dr. Murata was a visiting fellow of the Henry L. Stimson Center and the Mike Mansfield Foundation in DC.

Dr. Murata is an author of many books, chapters and articles both in Japanese and English. He has testified in Japanese National Diet many times, and is a frequent commentator on Japanese TVs and newspapers. Professor Murata will assume the deanship of School of Law, Doshisha University beginning in April, 2011.

Paul Wise is a clinical professor of pediatrics and a CHP/PCOR core faculty member. His work focuses on children's health policy; health disparities by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status; and the interaction of genetics and the environment as these factors influence child and maternal health.

Before coming to Stanford in July 2004, he was a professor of pediatrics at Boston University and vice-chief of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He previously served as director of emergency and primary care services at the Children's Hospital of Boston, and as director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health at Harvard Medical School. He has also served as a special expert at the National Institutes of Health and as special assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General.

Wise has worked to improve healthcare practices and policies in developing countries. He is involved in child health projects in India, South Africa and Latin America, targeting diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS. He currently chairs the steering committee of the NIH's Global Network for Maternal and Child Health Research, and he has served on many other boards and committees including the Physicians' Task Force on Hunger and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Consortium on Health Disparities. He has received honors from organizations including the American Public Health Association, the March of Dimes, and the New York Academy of Medicine.

He received a BA in Latin American studies from Cornell University, an MD from Cornell University and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston.