As the new year begins, the administration of ROK President Lee Myung-bak faces an unusually complex and rapidly evolving regional security landscape as he seeks to craft a strategy that simultaneously deepens ties with the U.S., protects South Korean equities in North Korea, continues to reduce tensions with neighboring countries and promotes economic objectives in Northeast Asia (including eastern Siberia). What are his options, considerations and prospects for success?

The past year witnessed an accelerated pace and apparent deepening in substance of the nascent security ties between and among the nations of Northeast Asia. A veritable whirlwind of diplomatic activity featured “upgraded” dialogue and symbolic steps. Meanwhile, as token of warming relations and impetus for even closer regional cooperation, China, Japan and the ROK met trilaterally on an array of issues. Ambitious proposals – and cutthroat bargaining – attended competition for a stake in Russian energy resources and potential infrastructure projects in the conjunction of eastern Siberia, Korea and China. Through the year all involved parties – the ROK, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S. – met in the Six-Party talks context. Each party, excepting North Korea, paid public obeisance to the goal of “transforming” the talks into a new regional security mechanism.

But the year 2009 dawns against the backdrop of uncertainties that cast a cloud over the promise suggested by these developments: the global economic and financial crisis; battered, untested or unpopular political leaderships; competing nationalisms – and national interests; and the import and implications of China’s “rise.”

Mr. Keyser retired from the U.S. Department of State in September 2004 after a 32-year career. He had been a member of the Senior Foreign Service since 1990, and held Washington-based ambassadorial-level assignments 1998-2004. Throughout his career he focused on U.S. policy toward East Asia, particularly China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Fluent in Chinese and professionally conversant in Japanese, Russian and French, he served three tours at the American Embassy in Beijing, two tours at the American Embassy in Tokyo, and almost a dozen years in relevant domestic assignments. In the course of his career, Keyser logged extensive domestic and foreign experience in senior management operations, conflict resolution, intelligence operations and analysis, and law enforcement programs and operations.

Marcus Mietzner is currently Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. Between 1998 and 2008, he lived, worked and researched in Indonesia. He has published extensively on Indonesian politics, among others in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Research and Contemporary Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Military Politics, Islam, and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation, published by ISEAS in Singapore in December 2008.

This talk is an overview of the changing role of foreign investment in Chinese workplaces. Foreign investment inflows helped transform the Chinese industrial landscape in the 1990s. As ownership has become blurred and increasingly mixed between domestic-foreign and public-private in China, preferential policies and laws for foreign-invested firms have diminished. A more level playing field has raised the stakes for foreign business and led to their increased participation in national debates on labor legislation and legal protections for workers. This talk will focus on this new role for foreign investors and how it is changing Chinese laws and the Chinese workplace.

Professor Gallagher studies Chinese politics, law and society, and comparative politics. She is currently working on two projects. The first, funded by a Fulbright Research Award and the National Science Foundation, examines the development of rule of law in China by examining the dynamics of legal mobilization of Chinese workers. "The Rule of Law in China: If They Build It, Who Will Come?" focuses on the demand-side of rule of law through an exploration of legal aid plaintiffs in Shanghai, a four-city household survey on legal knowledge, attitude, and practice, and in-depth case analysis of labor disputes. The second project examines labor standards and practices in four Chinese regions. One goal is to find if there are diffusion effects in legislation, court behavior, and labor practices across different regions. Another goal is to look for evidence of a "race to the bottom" in labor standards and social welfare not between China and other competing economies, but within China's own domestic economy.

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform and Opening in China: How Far from the Cage?"

A central element of Deng Xiaoping's political reforms initiated during the 1980s was to reform the ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) related to other national institutions (the state and military), sectors of society, and the Party itself.  While there have been significant ups and downs over the past thirty years, many elements of Deng's original vision for Party reform have been carried out and continue to be pursued. As a result, today's Chinese Communist Party is a stronger institution that has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist party-states worldwide. Yet, it faces new challenges, to which it must adapt. Professor Shambaugh's lecture will assess the CCP's adaptations and reforms over the past three decades.

David Shambaugh has been Professor of Political Science & International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University since 1996.  He directed the Elliott School's Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 1996-98, and since that time has been the founding Director of the China Policy Program.  He has also been a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution since 1998.  In 2008 he was also appointed an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he previously taught at the University of London's School of Oriental & African Studies (1987-1996), served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-1996), and directed the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1986-87).  He received his B.A. in East Asian Studies from the Elliott School at George Washington, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.  Professor Shambaugh has published widely-having authored or edited 25 books, approximately 200 articles and book chapters, and 100 opinion-editorials and book reviews.  He is a frequent commentator on Chinese and Asian affairs in the international media, sits on the editorial boards of a number of scholarly journals, and has served as a consultant to various governments, research institutes, and private corporations. 

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform in China: How Far from the Cage?"

Barbara Geddes, who earned her Ph.D. from UC, Berkeley, has written about politics and breakdown in authoritarian regimes, bureaucratic reform and corruption, political bargaining over institutional choice and change, and research design. Her publications include Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politic (2003), Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America (1994), "What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?" Annual Review of Political Science (1999) and "A Game Theoretic Model of Reform in Latin American Democracies," American Political Science Review (1991). Her current research focuses on politics inside dictatorships. She teaches Latin American politics, authoritarian politics, and research design at UCLA.

Mark Fathi Massoud's research focuses on the development of law in volatile states rife with violent conflict. An attorney of the California Bar, he received his JD and PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Massoud's current research examines tensions between international rule-of-law aid and local perceptions of rights in a divided society.

Massoud's dissertation, which he is revising into a book manuscript at Stanford, builds on the interdisciplinary tradition of law and society to examine the role of law in development. Taking Sudan as a case, it explores how government officials, civil society activists, and the international aid community all use law to construct and maintain their influence over society.

Shadi Hamid is a Hewlett Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He currently also serves as director of research at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). This past year, he was a research fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, where he conducted research on the evolving relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jordanian regime. His articles on Middle East politics and U.S. democracy promotion policy have appeared in The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, The American Prospect, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications. A Marshall Scholar, Hamid is completing his doctoral degree in politics at Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Islamist political behavior in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

Previously, Hamid served as a program specialist on public diplomacy at the State Department and a Legislative Fellow at the Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. During 2004-5, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Jordan, researching Islamist participation in the democratic process. He writes for the National Security Network's foreign affairs blog Democracy Arsenal and is a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He has been a consultant to various organizations on reform-related issues in the Arab world, and has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, Voice of America, and the BBC. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. 

Minxin Pei is a senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006). Pei’s research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. Pei is a frequent commentator on BBC World News, Voice of America, and National Public Radio; his op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek International, and International Herald Tribune, and other major newspapers. Pei received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.

The world is grappling with how to restructure its economies around lower carbon fuel sources. But the set of possible alternatives, especially concerning coal and natural gas, thrusts us into a complicated nexus of environmental and political outcomes. If we readjust our fuel consumption to emit less CO2 will that expose our economies to dangerous political risks lurking in the global fuel markets? Is coal the answer to our energy security worries? Join the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development as our panel of energy and political experts debate some of the hardest questions posed by today's global energy and geopolitical landscape.

» PESD Winter Coal Seminar 2009 (password protected)