On May 25-26, the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) will hold its seventh annual Taiwan Democracy Project conference on, "How the Public Views Democracy and its Competitors in East Asia: Taiwan in Comparative Perspective” at Stanford University. Held in partnership with the Program for East Asia Democratic Studies and the Institute for the Advanced Studies for Humanities and Social Sciences at National Taiwan University, the conference will bring together leading social scientists from Taiwan and other Asian countries to present and discuss papers analyzing the third wave of data from the Asian Barometer Survey.

The Asian Barometer Survey is a cross-national comparative survey that has been implemented in 17 Asian countries. Collecting micro-level data under a common research framework and methodology, the survey provides insights into commonly held attitudes and values towards politics, power, reform, and democracy in Asia. Over the course of the two-day period, experts in comparative politics and public opinion will present papers analyzing the data from the Asian Barometer in greater detail to examine the challenges of democratic consolidation in East Asia.

According to CDDRL Director Larry Diamond, “The goal of the conference is to examine the levels, trends, and causal determinants of support for democracy in Taiwan and throughout East Asia. The papers presented at this forum will be published in an edited volume to document democratic attitudes and values in Asia."

Paper presenters include; Chong-min Park, professor of public administration at Korea University and director of Survey Research Center of Institute of Governmental Studies, who  will discuss a region-wide comparison of the quality of governance and its implications for democratic legitimacy; Feng-Yu Lee, assistant professor in the department of political science at National Taiwan University who will present a paper alongside Chinen Wu, associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, about the comparative analysis of the wealth divide and the issue of political inclusion; and Doh Shin, the Jack W. Peltason Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Democracy in the University of California-Irvine and  founder of the Korea Barometer Surveys, who will share a comparative analysis of cultural sources of diffuse regime support.

All sessions will be held in the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall and are free and open to the public. To view the agenda and RSVP to the conference, please click here.

Xiaojun Li

Xiaojun Li, a Stanford predoctoral candidate in political science, is the inaugural recipient of a grant from the John and Jackie Lewis Fund to Support Research on Asia.

Xiaojun, whose Ph.D. dissertation chair is Jean Oi, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and director of the Stanford China Program, will use the $1,000 travel grant to present a paper on trade protection in China at a conference in Hong Kong, and a second paper on environmental controls and clean technology at private and state-run companies at a conference in Beijing.

The John and Jackie Lewis Fund was established to recognize the intellectual and moral support they have provided to students from Asia.  John Lewis is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, emeritus, an FSI senior fellow by courtesy, as well as the co-founder of the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Chinese politics and U.S.-China relations. 

In October 2006, only a few short months after John Everard, a former Pantech Fellow with Stanford’s Korean Studies Program, arrived in Pyongyang to serve as the British ambassador, North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear test. Everard spent the next two-and-a-half years meeting with North Korean government officials and attending the official events so beloved by the North Korean regime. During this complicated period he provided crucial reports back to the British government on political developments.

He also traveled extensively throughout North Korea, witnessing scenes of daily life experienced by few foreigners: people shopping for food in Pyongyang’s informal street markets, urban residents taking time off to relax at the beach, and many other very human moments. Everard captured such snapshots of everyday life through dozens of photographs and detailed notes.

Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea, released in June from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, recounts Everard’s experiences during his stay in North Korea. The book goes beyond official North Korea to unveil the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation. Everard recounts his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. He provides a picture as well of the life of foreigners in this closed society, considers how the DPRK evolved to its current state, and discusses the failure of current approaches to tackle the challenges that it throws up. The book is illustrated with striking and never-before-seen photographs taken by Everard during his stay in North Korea.

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On May 18, 2012, the Pentagon released its annual report about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) recent military developments. The PRC Ministry of Defense has sharply criticized the report, saying it portrays China as rapidly building up its military for non-defense purposes.

Military strength is only one part of the national security strategies of both countries and stable U.S.-China relations are an important factor for the overall peace and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, said Karl Eikenberry during the annual Oksenberg lecture, held May 14 at Stanford.Eikenberry, FSI’s Payne Distinguished Lecturer and a Shorenstein APARC affiliate, discussed key factors shaping China’s national security strategy and corresponding developments in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); constraints on China’s military capabilities; and implications of China’s economic and political growth for U.S. defense strategy.

In his opening remarks, Eikenberry, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011 and whose distinguished military career included three decades of significant China experience, described Shorenstein APARC senior fellow Michel Oksenberg’s passionate commitment to teaching Stanford students about China. The annual lecture, established by Shorenstein APARC in 2002, honors the memory of Oksenberg’s academic career and the major role he played in normalizing and strengthening U.S.-China relations.

The key drivers behind the PRC’s current national security strategy, Eikenberry said, include preserving the legitimacy and power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), resolving territorial and sovereignty issues, and maintaining China’s rapid economic growth. The PLA, which has watched its budget grow at an annual rate of 10 percent nearly every single year since 1989, exists to support the goals of the CCP. Its own tasks are, in turn, driven by the most urgent needs of the CCP, including protecting China’s economic and territorial interests in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing it into potential conflict with the United States. A major goal of the PLA at present, Eikenberry said, is to develop its technological capabilities, in areas such as space and naval defense, to prevail in regional conflicts if peaceful resolution is not possible. He said China’s immediate motive, however, is less about driving the United States out of the Asia-Pacific as it is about reconfiguring the region’s—and the overall U.S.—power paradigm, which has remained unchanged since World War Two.

China’s defense budget is second in the world only to the United States—approximately 1.3 percent of the country’s GDP—but it faces several potential challenges to its continued rapid expansion and operational capabilities, Eikenberry said. Maintaining economic growth and social stability are likely to tax the CCP in the coming years, he said, and domestic security concerns could constrain the pace of Chinese defense modernization. In addition, issues within the PLA itself, such as corruption and the over-centralization of its command, could hold China’s military capabilities back. 

Eikenberry concluded his remarks with thoughts on how the United States should respond to China’s “rise” and increasing military strength. An important first step, he said, is to address U.S. domestic issues, including balancing the national budget while still allowing significant resources for military R&D and personnel training. Eikenberry also advocated supporting regional and global institutions, both economic and security oriented, in which China can participate as a responsible stakeholder. He further stressed the importance of improved engagement with U.S. regional allies. Finally, he emphasized the significance of developing processes of dialogue for avoiding and managing future conflicts between the United States and China.

Eikenberry’s remarks were followed by a lively question-and-answer session with the audience, which included numerous China experts from the Stanford community, students, and members of the general public.