The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Asia, invites nominations for the 2025 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award recognizes outstanding journalists and journalism organizations for their significant contributions to reporting on the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2025 award will honor an Asian news media outlet or a journalist whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media. Award nomination entries are due by Saturday, February 15, 2025.

Sponsored by APARC, the award carries a cash prize of US $10,000. It alternates between recipients who have primarily contributed to Asian news media and those whose work has mainly appeared in Western news media. In the 2025 cycle, the award will recognize a recipient from the former category. The Award Selection Committee invites nominations from news editors, publishers, scholars, teachers, journalists, news media outlets, journalism associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region. Self-nominations are not accepted.

The award defines the Asia-Pacific region as encompassing Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia, as well as Australasia. Both individual journalists with a substantial body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in print or broadcast journalism or in emerging forms of multimedia journalism. The Award Selection Committee, comprised of journalism and Asia experts, judges nomination entries and selects the honorees.

An annual tradition since 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. Throughout its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of reporting on Asia. Recent honorees include The New York Times' Chief China Correspondent Chris Buckley; India's long-form narrative journalism magazine The Caravan; Burmese journalist and human rights defender Swe Win; and Maria Ressa, CEO of the Philippine news platform Rappler and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Award nominations are accepted electronically via our online entry form through Saturday, February 15, 2025, at 11:59 PM PST. For information about the nomination rules and to submit an entry please visit the award nomination entry page. APARC will announce the winner by April 2025 and present the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in autumn quarter 2025.

Please direct all inquiries to aparc-communications@stanford.edu.

As China’s military has modernized, Beijing’s territorial pursuits have become more pronounced. In May 2020, after years of mounting tensions on the India-China border, China pressed its claims in Ladakh. The resulting deadly skirmish on the Line of Actual Control shattered the existing strategic balance that had defined the bilateral relations between India and China, and New Delhi became convinced that the region needed more effective bulwarks against Chinese coercion. But what options do states like India have to balance the threats posed by ambitious neighbors, especially when internal and external balancing can be costly or provocative? How might India deter Chinese intrusion in the broader Indo-Pacific region, and if so, who will help? 

In a new International Affairs article, Shorenstein APARC South Asia Research Scholar Arzan Tarapore advances the concept of ‘zone balancing’ to answer these questions, using it to explain India's post-2020 strategic adjustment, including its warmer embrace of the Quad—the minilateral grouping comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States. According to Tarapore, zone balancing provides a convincing rationale for the Quad's recently-clarified strategic logic.

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Zone balancing is a term that denotes efforts to build the capacity and resilience of third-party states, differently from efforts to match the rival state's power symmetrically, as in internal and external balancing.  In zone balancing, “the balancer seeks to harden other states against the adversary’s coercion or inducements, thereby limiting the adversary’s opportunities to build strategic influence […] the balancing is still designed to gain an advantage over the adversary, but indirectly, by shaping the ‘zone’—or geographic region—of strategic competition, rather than directly, as a dyadic race for power between rivals.”

Tarapore cites the Marshall Plan as an early example for the application of zone balancing. For additional context, he establishes the theoretical foundations of more common approaches to balancing, and how India has applied such strategies against a rising China. The case of India demonstrates how changed structural conditions prompted it to shift emphasis from evasive balancing to zone balancing. Before concurrent crises drove New Delhi’s post-2020 strategic adjustment, “India had cautiously sought to soften its balancing against China by persisting with diplomatic reassurance—an approach Rajesh Rajagopalan labeled in this journal as ‘evasive balancing’.” 

Evasive balancing managed to regulate the India-China rivalry for some time but ultimately failed to deter China from aggression against India. The most notable crisis that prompted the shift to zone balancing was the border dispute in May 2020, when Chinese forces launched major incursions into the Indian territory of Ladakh, prompting a deadly skirmish, as well as further militarization of border areas that marked a rupture in the broader bilateral relationship. 

Enter the Quad, the minilateral security grouping comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States. Minilateral security organs like the Quad could address some of the challenges posed by China, and India began to see the Quad as the logical vehicle to implement zone balancing. Re-established in late 2017, after a decade-long hiatus, The Quad “represented a signal, especially to China, that powerful like-minded states could and would coordinate…Beijing regarded this as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to contain China; therefore, simply sustaining the Quad and slowly building its momentum posed a threat to China’s plans.”

According to Tarapore, this signaling function was the early Quad’s greatest strategic significance, regardless of its architect's intentions. The Quad’s significance has shifted since the leaders’ summits began in 2021, and its mere existence is no longer enough; it seeks to achieve policy outcomes. 

Indeed, zone balancing depends on policy outcomes: “building target states’ capacity and resilience depends on the achievement of actual effects, whether material or institutional…These effects are greater when we also consider the informal Quad, with some or all of its members acting in other channels, for example to track submarines across the whole Indo-Pacific, or to build resilient undersea communication cables in the south Pacific.” While achieving policy outcomes represents new ground for the formal Quad, the group's capacity for zone balancing to advance a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific,’ even without officially committing its members to combined military action, remains a promising prospect. 

Like any deterrent strategy, zone balancing is limited in its applicability. For Tarapore, zone balancing alone “is not enough to safeguard regional stability…most fundamentally, the Quad’s zone balancing does not offer broad-spectrum protection against aggression.” Insisting that the Quad’s strategy of zone balancing can succeed only if it “leavens its priorities with a sensitive and nuanced appreciation for regional concerns,” Tarapore emphasizes that the Quad’s success as a vehicle for zone balancing relies on its credibility as a provider of international public goods and its ability to deliver on key policy goals.

This commentary was first published by The Lowy Institute.

The Quad has a lot on its plate. The informal grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States began modestly, but stepped up its ambition two years ago, with regular summit meetings and an ever-growing agenda of work. Recognising the dearth of effective groupings to address some of the Indo-Pacific region’s thorniest problems, the Quad has assumed the job of providing international public goods. Its work program is dizzyingly broad, covering everything from climate change to telecommunications regulation to international scholarships.

It may be time, however, for the Quad to plunge into another endeavour – intelligence cooperation. In particular, the Quad is ideally suited to develop new intelligence tools and enterprise management practices to harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI).

Risks and opportunities of collaboration

Sharing intelligence is a fraught proposition. Intelligence services jealously guard their secrets. The United States and Australia at least have the advantage of being members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, with deeply entrenched institutional links and trust built over decades of shoulder-to-shoulder cooperation. Japan lies outside that tent, but is at least a US treaty ally, with deep military cooperation. India is a newer security partner, still lacking any trusted systems or habits of sharing with its Quad partners.

Collaborating on AI tools and processes may seem especially fraught because that cutting edge technology is still so nascent, and its mastery will be so consequential for national security. But that is precisely what makes it so important. As it matures, AI is likely to transform every intelligence function: automation can help to cue sensors to fill collection gaps; data analytics can structure, fuse, and sort colossal amounts of raw data; machine learning can quickly detect anomalies or changes and bring them to analysts’ attention; and so on.

On AI, Quad members India and Japan would bring advantages that Five Eyes members cannot muster. They are both AI powerhouses, but bring particular strengths in an enormous pool of trained AI talent and computing power, respectively. When these resources are pooled, they would represent a meaningful contribution to the intelligence capabilities of the extravagantly-resourced US and its allies. In the race for digital mastery, the likeminded partners of the Indo-Pacific need all the help they can get.

The counterintelligence risk would be as real as ever, but manageable. AI collaboration would require sharing tools and business processes, not sensitive sources and methods. Some data sharing would be necessary, but data can be compartmented and tiered, so that a subset of more-sensitive data remains more restricted.

AI tools themselves are largely sourced from the private sector – start-ups such as CuttingEdgeAI, developer of a full-motion-video object detection tool, now supply various arms of the US government. Tools may also be sourced from foreign start-ups – the Indian firm 114ai, developer of a space and multi-domain awareness tool, has similarly won contracts with US government and defence industry. Collaboration on AI tools and processes, then, need not require rethinking existing classification rules. Indeed, export controls may be a bigger hurdle than data classification.

Why AI matters

Sharing assessments is a relatively easy and therefore tempting form of intelligence cooperation. But the effects of such cooperation are ephemeral and limited. If Quad members can co-develop and share new AI tools and enterprise management processes, they would build long-term capability with cascading effects. At a minimum, each member’s intelligence system would be individually better equipped for strategic competition with China. Ideally, they would also develop common standards and more interoperable systems – which would lay a foundation for cooperation in a multitude of other intelligence or operational areas.

Some of this would enable existing Quad policy initiatives. The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), for example, will rely on commercially available data and AI to build a common operating picture (COP) of the Indo-Pacific’s waterways. Improved AI tools for fusing, processing, and disseminating this data would allow IPMDA to deliver faster and more accurate results. AI capabilities would also enable the Quad’s focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, with tools to cue collection and faster – even predictive – intelligence on how to deploy emergency responders.

But collaborative AI capabilities would also equip the Quad to deepen military cooperation, should its leaders choose to take that unprecedented step. The Quad members’ militaries do cooperate – for example in the Malabar series of naval exercises – albeit outside the formal agenda of the Quad. Whether formally a Quad initiative or not, its members could use AI collaboration to develop a tailored COP. The US and Japan have recently initiated such a project for the East China Sea. Other Quad members could explore similar ventures around, for example, the Malacca, Lombok, and Sunda Straits, to jointly find and track targets.

Ultimately, AI-enabled intelligence could help Quad members to lay a foundation for more effective combined military activities to deter and win conflicts. But taking on that military role remains a political decision for Quad leaders, which may be even more fraught than sharing intelligence.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce a suite of training, fellowship, and funding opportunities to support Stanford students interested in the area of contemporary Asia. APARC invites highly motivated and dedicated undergraduate- and graduate-level students to apply for these offerings:

APARC Summer 2023 Research Assistant Internships

APARC seeks current Stanford students to join our team as paid research assistant interns for the duration of the summer 2023 quarter. Research assistants work with assigned APARC faculty members on varied issues related to the politics, economies, populations, security, foreign policies, and international relations of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. This summer's projects include:

• The Biopolitics of Cigarette Smoking and Production
• The Bureaucratic State: A Personnel Management Lens
• China’s Largest Corporations
• Healthy Aging in Asia
• Hiding in Plain Sight: How China Became A Great Power
• Nationalism and Racism in Asia
• U.S. Rivals: Construct or Reality?  
   

All summer research assistant positions will be on campus for eight weeks. The hourly pay rate is $17.25 for undergraduate students, $25 for graduate students.

The deadline for submitting applications and letters of recommendation is March 1, 2023.

Please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A current CV;
• A cover letter (up to 1 page);
• Completed Student Information Sheet

II. Fill out the online application form for summer 2023, including the above two attachments, and submit the complete form.

III. Arrange for a letter of recommendation from a faculty to be sent directly to Shorenstein APARC. Please note: the faculty members should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu. We will consider only applications that include all supporting documents.

For more information and details about each summer research project, visit the Summer Research Assistant Internships Page >

APARC 2023-24 Predoctoral Fellowship

APARC supports Stanford Ph.D. candidates who specialize in contemporary Asia topics. The Center offers a stipend of $37,230 for the 2023-24 academic year, plus Stanford's Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) fee for three quarters. We expect fellows to remain in residence at the Center throughout the year and to participate in Center activities.

Applications for the 2023-24 fellowship cycle of the APARC Predoctoral Fellowship are due March 1, 2023.

Please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A current CV;
• A cover letter including a brief description of your dissertation (up to 5 double-spaced pages);
• A copy of your transcripts. Transcripts should cover all graduate work and include evidence of recently-completed work.

II. Fill out the following online application form, including the above three attachments, and submit the complete application form.

III. Arrange for two (2) letters of recommendation from members of your dissertation committee to be sent directly to Shorenstein APARC.  
Please note: the faculty/advisors should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu.

We will consider only applications that include all supporting documents. The Center will give priority to candidates who are prepared to finish their degree by the end of the 2023-24 academic year.

For more information, visit the APARC Predoctoral Fellowship Page >

APARC Diversity Grant

APARC's diversity grant supports Stanford undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented minorities who are interested in contemporary Asia. The Center will award a maximum of $10,000 per grant to support a wide range of research expenses.

The Center is reviewing grant applications on a rolling basis.  
To be considered for the grant, please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A statement describing the proposed research activity or project (no more than three pages);
• A current CV;
• An itemized budget request explaining research expense needs.

II. Fill out the following online application form, including the above three attachments, and submit the complete application form.

III. Arrange for a letter of recommendation from a faculty to be sent directly to APARC.  

Please note: the faculty members should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu.

For more information, visit the APARC Diversity Grant page >

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education, and engagement on contemporary Asia, invites nominations for the 2023 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award recognizes outstanding journalists and journalism organizations with outstanding track records of helping audiences worldwide understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2023 award will honor a recipient whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media. APARC invites 2023 award nomination submissions from news editors, publishers, scholars, journalism associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region. Submissions are due by Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Sponsored by APARC, the award carries a cash prize of US $10,000. It alternates between recipients whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media and those whose work has primarily appeared in American news media. The 2023 award will recognize a recipient from the former category.

For the purpose of the award, the Asia-Pacific region is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Both individual journalists with a considerable body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in traditional forms of print or broadcast journalism and/or in new forms of multimedia journalism. The Award Selection Committee, whose members are experts in journalism and Asia research and policy, presides over the judging of nominees and is responsible for the selection of honorees.

An annual tradition since 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. Over the course of its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and help advance mutual understanding between audiences in the United States and their Asian counterparts.

Recent honorees include NPR's Beijing Correspondent Emily Feng; Burmese journalist and human rights defender Swe Win; former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Tom Wright; and the internationally esteemed champion of press freedom Maria Ressa, CEO and executive editor of the Philippine news platform Rappler and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Award nominations are accepted electronically through Wednesday, February 15, 2023, at 11:59 PM PST. For information about the nomination procedures and to submit a nomination please visit the award nomination entry page. The Center will announce the winner by April 2023 and present the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in the autumn quarter of 2023.

Please direct all inquiries to aparc-communications@stanford.edu.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation For a Better Future announced today the launch of an annual Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue in Asia to accelerate progress on achieving the United Nations-adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The joint project will spur new research and policy partnerships between experts from the United States and Asia to expedite the implementation of the Agenda’s underlying 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by governments and non-state actors. The two-day inaugural Dialogue will be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, on October 27 and 28, 2022, and will be free and open to the public.

The Dialogue’s co-organizers include the Natural Capital Project (NatCap) of Stanford University, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute (KEITI), Korea Environment Corporation (K-eco), and Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water). 

The first day will take place at The Plaza Seoul and will be co-hosted by the Korea Environment Institute. It will include a series of public sessions headlined by Ban Ki-moon, the eighth secretary-general of the UN, who will join a lineup of world leaders including Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia and chief executive officer and president of the Asia Society; Iván Duque, former president of the Republic of Colombia; and Gombojav Zandanshatar, chairman of the State Great Hural (Parliament) of Mongolia.

“This Dialogue is very timely and relevant as the climate crisis is deepening in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Sustainable Development Goals are becoming more difficult to achieve in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic,” says Mr. Ban Ki-moon. “Asia-Pacific countries should be more aggressive in the fight against climate change and more audacious in the role they play toward achieving the SDGs,” he noted.

In this spirit, expert discussions on the second day will bring together social science researchers and scientists from across the Asia-Pacific region, alongside policymakers and practitioners, to share local and global nature-positive solutions and new pathways of meaningful SDG acceleration actions. Co-hosted by and held at Ewha Womans University, the panel discussions will explore the making of livable, sustainable cities, such as Busan Metropolitan City, and the threats to them by climate change, disasters, and human security issues. To achieve systems transformation and sustainable development, discussions will turn to the need to value and invest in nature.

“Climate and sustainability solutions span disciplines and sectors and require collaboration with partners worldwide,” says Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea at Stanford and director of APARC. “The launch of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability marks an opportune moment to scale up SDGs implementation by leveraging knowledge and expertise from across Stanford and the Asia-Pacific and engaging the next generation of scholars and experts,” Shin adds. “We are honored to join in this effort with Mr. Ban and his team, with whom APARC has an established relationship.”

Highlighting the role of youth in achieving the SDGs, the Dialogue includes student panels that feature young leaders from Stanford University, Ewha Womans University, Osaka University, and De La Salle University, among other Asian universities. Students’ research, applied work, and entrepreneurial endeavors across the region showcase innovations and transformations in green financing and sustainable investments, gender mainstreaming and climate governance, development cooperation for sustainable governance, and scaling environmental solutions through a business and social justice lens.

The Seoul Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue is the inaugural event in APARC and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation’s joint effort to stimulate ambitious action to deliver the 2030 Agenda and SDGs. The annual Dialogue may rotate among different host cities in Asia to address different themes selected from the SDGs framework spearheaded by Mr. Ban Ki-moon during his term as the UN Secretary-General. 

Visit the event page to register to attend the Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue in person in Seoul, as well as for the full program agenda and speaker list.

The event is also offered online via a live webcast: watch the live-streamed sessions on the event page or via the Ban Ki-moon Foundation’s YouTube channel.

About the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) addresses critical issues affecting the countries of Asia, their regional and global affairs, and U.S.-Asia relations. As Stanford University’s hub for the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Asia, APARC produces policy-relevant research, provides education and training to students, scholars, and practitioners, and strengthens dialogue and cooperation between counterparts in the Asia-Pacific and the United States. Founded in 1983, APARC today is home to a scholar community of distinguished academics and practitioners in government, business, and civil society, who specialize in trends that cut across the entire Asia-Pacific region. For more, visit aparc.stanford.edu.

About the Ban Ki-moon Foundation For a Better Future

The Ban Ki-moon Foundation For a Better Future follows and further develops the achievement and philosophy of Ban Ki-moon, the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations through upholding the values of unification, communication and co-existence, and dedication. It promotes three pillars of the UN including peace and security, development, and human rights and contributes to making a better future devoid of conflict and deficiency. In particular, the Ban Ki-moon Foundation actively collaborates with the UN, international organizations, and stakeholders toward achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and realizing the 2050 carbon net-zero of all state parties of the Paris Climate Accord of 2015. For more, visit http://eng.bf4bf.or.kr/. 

Media Contact

Journalists interested in covering the event should contact Shorenstein APARC’s Communications Manager, Michael Breger at mbreger@stanford.edu. For further information on the Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue, please contact Cheryll Alipio, Shorenstein APARC’s Associate Director for Program and Policy at calipio@stanford.edu.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to invite applications for a suite of fellowships in contemporary Asia studies to begin fall quarter 2023.

The Center offers postdoctoral fellowships that promote multidisciplinary research on contemporary Japan and contemporary Asia broadly defined, inaugural postdoctoral fellowships and visiting scholar positions as part of the newly launched Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, and a fellowship for experts on Southeast Asia. Learn more about each opportunity and its eligibility and specific application requirements:

Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Japan

Hosted by the Japan Program at APARC, the fellowship supports research on contemporary Japan in a broad range of disciplines including political science, economics, sociology, law, policy studies, and international relations. Appointments are for one year beginning in fall quarter 2023. The application deadline is December 1, 2022.