Speaker Bio:

Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.

For more on Greg's research, please visit:

http://web.mit.edu/polisci/people/gradstudents/greg-distelhorst.html

This seminar will discuss the current issues surrounding the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai Islets and the East China Sea peace initiative of the government of the Republic of China, Taiwan, through which ROC president Ma ying-jeou is calling for dialogue to resolve disputes over the archipelago.

Prof. Edward I–Hsin Chen, who earned his Ph.D. from Department of Political Science at Columbia University in 1986, is currently teaching in the Graduate Institute of Americas (GIA) at Tamkang University. He was a Legislator from 1996 to 1999, an Assemblyman in 2005, and the director of the institute from 2001 to 2005. He specializes in IR theories, IPE theories, and decision-making theories of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan. 

His recent English articles include U.S. Role in Future Taipei-Beijing Relation, in King-yuh Chang, ed., Political Economic Security in Asia-Pacific (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2004); A Retrospective and Prospective Overview of U.S.-PRC-ROC Relations, in Views & Policies: Taiwan Forum, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 2005 (A Journal of Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation in Taipei); The Decision-Making Process of the Clinton Administration in the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-96, in King-yuh Chang, ed., The 1996 Strait Crisis Decisions, Lessons & Prospects (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2006); From Balance to Imbalance: The U.S. Cross-Strait Policy in the First Term of the Bush Administration, in Quansheng Zhao and Tai Wan-chin, ed.,Globalization and East Asia (Taipei: Taiwan Elite, 2007); The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Negotiations: A Taiwanese Perspective, in Jacob Bercovitch, Kwei-bo Huang and Chung-chian Teng, eds.,Conflict Management, Security and Intervention in East Asia. (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 193-216; and The Security Dilemma in U.S.-Taiwan Informal Alliance Politics, Issues & Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, March 2012, 1-50

Dr. Yann-huei Song is currently a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, and joint research fellow at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China. 

Professor Song received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Kent State University, Ohio, and L.L.M. as well as J.S.D. from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, the United States. He has broad academic interests covering ocean law and policy studies, international fisheries law, international environmental law, maritime security, and the South China Sea issues. He has been actively participating in the Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea (the SCS Workshop) that is organized by the government of the Republic of Indonesia. 

Professor Song is the convener of Academia Sinica's South China Sea Interdisciplinary Study Group and the convener of the Sino-American Research Programme at the Institute of European American Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of Ocean Development and International Law and Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs. He has frequently been asked to provide advisory opinions by a number of government agencies in Taiwan on the policy issues related to the East and South China Seas.

Prof. Edward I–Hsin Chen, who earned his Ph.D. from Department of Political Science at Columbia University in 1986, is currently teaching in the Graduate Institute of Americas (GIA) at Tamkang University. He was a Legislator from 1996 to1999, an Assemblyman in 2005, and the director of the institute from 2001 to 2005. He specializes in IR theories, IPE theories, and decision-making theories of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan. His recent English articles include “U.S. Role in Future Taipei-Beijing Relations” in King-yuh Chang, ed., Political Economic Security in Asia-Pacific (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2004); “A Retrospective and Prospective Overview of U.S.-PRC-ROC Relations,” in Views & Policies: Taiwan Forum, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 2005 (A Journal of Cross-Strait Interflow Prospect Foundation in Taipei); “The Decision-Making Process of the Clinton Administration in the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-96,” in King-yuh Chang, ed., The 1996 Strait Crisis Decisions, Lessons & Prospects (Taipei: Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies, 2006); “From Balance to Imbalance: The U.S. Cross-Strait Policy in the First Term of the Bush Administration,” in Quansheng Zhao and Tai Wan-chin, ed., Globalization and East Asia (Taipei: Taiwan Elite, 2007); “The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Negotiations: A Taiwanese Perspective,” in Jacob Bercovitch, Kwei-bo Huang and Chung-chian Teng, eds., Conflict Management, Security and Intervention in East Asia. (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 193-216; and “The Security Dilemma in U.S.-Taiwan Informal Alliance Politics, Issues & Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, March 2012, 1-50.

Prof. Yann-huei Song is currently a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, and joint research fellow at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China. 

Professor Song received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Kent State University, Ohio, and L.L.M. as well as J.S.D. from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, the United States. 

He has broad academic interests covering ocean law and policy studies, international fisheries law, international environmental law, maritime security, and the South China Sea issues. He has been actively participating in the Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea (the SCS Workshop) that is organized by the government of the Republic of Indonesia. 

Professor Song is the convener of Academia Sinica’s South China Sea Interdisciplinary Study Group and the convener of the Sino-American Research Programme at the Institute of European American Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of Ocean Development and International Law and Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs. He has frequently been asked to provide advisory opinions by a number of government agencies in Taiwan on the policy issues related to the East and South China Seas.

Abstract:

This talk will unveil the story of Taiwan’s economic transformation between 1949 and 1960, as Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist leaders turned away from a command economy to build a market economy more productive than any in Chinese history.

The talk gives special attention to how a small group ofpolitical and economic leaders began to formulate and later implement a bold new economic vision for Taiwan. In the process, they embraced institutional and organizational innovations that led to a dismantling of Taiwan's earlier centralized command economy and the growth of a new market system.

Much information in this research was obtained from historical papers that were recently made available at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University: the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang party archives, and personal papers of Kuomintang leaders. It also makes use of first-hand oral interviews with former Nationalist officials and economists.

Speaker Bio:

Tai-chun Kuo is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. She was a Visiting Lecturer at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University (2003) and Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of American Studies, Tamkang University (Taiwan, 1997-2000). Prior to these positions, she served as Press Secretary to the President of the Republic of China (1990-1995), Deputy Director-General of the First Bureau of the Presidential Office (1989-1997), and Director of the ROC Government Information Office in Boston (1987-1988).

Outside of her own research, since 2003 she has assisted the Hoover Institution Archives in developing its Modern China Archives and Special Collections, including Kuomintang (Nationalist) party archives, diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, personal papers of T. V. Soong, H. H. K’ung, and other leading Chinese individuals.

Her major publications include Taiwan's Economic Transformation: Leadership, Property Rights, and Institutional Change; T. V. Soong in Modern Chinese History, China’s Quest for Unification, National Security, and Modernization; Breaking with the Past: China’s First Market Economy; Watching Communist China, 1949-79: A Methodological Review of China Studies in the United States of America and Taiwan; and The Power and Personality of Mao Tse-tung, among others.

The talk , based on a recent paper, will describe and examine the social understanding of selling sex for a visa among migrant Filipina hostesses in Tokyo. The paper examines the different constitutions of love in Japan and the Philippines to understand the making of love in the marriages of Filipina hostesses and their Japanese customers. The paper will attempt to argue why the act of selling sex for a visa does not necessarily reduce marriage to prostitution while at the same time questioning the assumption that marriage is ever free of rational motivation.

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include the sociology of gender and labor, the family, and globalization. Her latest book Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo received the 2012 Distinguished Book Award in the Labor and Labor Movements Section of the American Sociological Association.