For almost two decades, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) produced outstanding work in Korean affairs but lacked a separate program for Korean studies; by the turn of the millennium, however, it was clear that more attention and resources needed to be devoted to Korea. Between 1960 and 1990, capitalist South Korea had risen from the devastation of the Korean War to produce an economic “miracle on the Han River,” followed soon by full democratization. In the process, it became a global model of development. Meanwhile, North Korea was pursuing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles while maintaining one of the world’s last Stalinist systems, even outlasting the Soviet Union itself despite a devastating famine in the mid-1990s, and the regime’s threats presented a major concern to policymakers. Together, the two Korean states with radically different systems, competing for hegemony on the divided Korean Peninsula, constituted an unparalleled “natural experiment” for social scientists.

Since 2001 when Gi-Wook Shin was invited to found a program within Shorenstein APARC, the Stanford Korean Studies Program (KSP) has developed into a world-renowned center offering impactful programs addressing current, policy-relevant issues and events. KSP sponsors conferences and workshops that bring together leading Korea scholars and policymakers for meaningful dialogue. Special events afford the general public the opportunity to engage with distinguished practitioners as well as emerging scholars. KSP also supports fellowships, collaborates with a broad range of visiting scholars, publishes award-winning books and reports, and offers commentary to leading media.

Amassing talent to create a premier program

From its one-person beginning a decade ago, KSP now has faculty members in sociology, history, and literature, with two more appointments pending. In addition, KSP has two full-time staff members and a research assistant. A Korean language lecturer and a Korean Studies librarian support program activities. KSP taps into the rich array of Stanford-based faculty and senior fellows who conduct policy-related research on Korea within FSI-affiliated centers and programs, and at the neighboring Hoover Institution.

KSP has sponsored collaborative research projects on a range of Korea-related subjects. The South Korean National Assembly Project considered the generational change under way in South Korea’s government and its political and ideological implications, specifically how such changes affect Assembly votes—and Korean policy—on major issues. Other projects focus on mass media and U.S.-Korea relations, including the ROK-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, the Korean experience of historical injustice and reconciliation, and a book series on Korean democratization sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies. Findings from such groundbreaking projects are regularly presented at KSP seminars and conferences, and published as books and journal articles.

A next generation of scholars

KSP is devoted to training the next generation of Korea scholars by offering courses on Korea through various academic departments, working closely with the Center for East Asian Studies, which offers an MA in East Asian studies with a specialty in Korea. A writing prize in Korean studies was created in 2012, and KSP co-sponsors a Korea internship program and convenes popular overseas seminars in Seoul, enabling Stanford undergraduates to experience Korean politics, history, and culture firsthand. In collaboration with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, Stanford KSP is expanding opportunities for high school students to take online courses on Korea and for U.S. secondary school teachers to bring Korean studies into their curricula.

Each year, KSP offers outstanding opportunities for fellowships and visiting scholars from Korea and elsewhere. With generous fellowship support from the Pantech Group and the Koret Foundation, KSP has hosted over 100 alumni, including two former South Korean foreign ministers, former senior officials from the United States, South Korea, and China, and leading Korea scholars and experts. These visiting scholars participate intensively in KSP research, educational, and outreach programs, and continue their association with the program after leaving Stanford through an active alumni association.

Images:

John Everard, former British ambassador to Pyongyang and a Pantech Fellow, speaks on North Korea at the annual Koret Conference, part of the 2011 celebration of Stanford KSP’s tenth anniversary. (Credit: Rod Searcey)

Students from Seoul’s Hana Academy perform traditional Korean music for participants of the Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea. (Credit: Rod Searcey)

In 2007, in recognition of the importance of developing a program devoted to the study of contemporary China, the Stanford China Program (SCP) was established within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), which for decades had already been the home for extensive research on China at Stanford University; within a few short years, SCP has become an integral part of the Center, establishing a reputation as one of the top research programs in the country focusing on contemporary China, especially political economy.

Conducting cutting-edge research and training the next generation of scholars

SCP faculty are doing cutting-edge research on a wide range of challenges facing China: fiscal shortfalls and local governance, property rights reform and corporate restructuring, social inequality and mobility, food security, markets, education and poverty alleviation, environmental pollution and public health, and political participation and popular protests. SCP research is a vital part of Shorenstein APARC’s publishing program, and has resulted in several acclaimed edited volumes. The program has also played an integral role in bringing top visiting scholars from China and the United States to Stanford for a valuable cross-pollination of research and knowledge on China.

While primarily a research entity, SCP recognizes the critical importance of training new generations of Stanford students for broader and deeper interactions with China. Bringing together both research and teaching, the SCP-pioneered China Social Science Workshop has become an in-house forum for faculty and their doctoral students, as well as invited outside scholars, to present work in progress. It has fostered critical analysis and feedback essential to turn research into high-quality publications.

Other ongoing SCP academic workshops and conferences promote intellectual exchange with leading scholars within the United States and from China; the program also provides opportunities to educate broader audiences through public lectures on timely topics, such as the recent “China Under New Management” series in the wake of China’s once-in-a-decade leadership change following the 18th Party Congress.

Apart from its regular quarterly seminar series, SCP has also played a vital role in the Oksenberg Lecture, held annually to honor the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg. A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, Oksenberg consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific. Recent Oksenberg Lectures have illuminated key issues, such as the modernization of China’s military, constraints on China’s foreign policy, and areas of friction in U.S.-China relations.

Establishing the Stanford Center at Peking University

Aside from making great strides in building China studies at Stanford, SCP has played a special role in the university’s globalization efforts. Shortly after SCP was founded, director Jean Oi, with the help of Andrew Walder and strong support from FSI director Chip Blacker and dean of research Ann Arvin, started to work on creating Stanford’s first university-wide center abroad—in Beijing.

In March 2012 the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) officially opened, housed in a historic courtyard compound in the middle of Peking University, on the former site of an imperial palace. Oi concurrently serves as the Lee Shau Kee Director of SCPKU. Stanford is the only university to have a standalone center in a top Chinese university, with SCPKU serving as a unique platform for all of its seven schools, one that enables all Stanford faculty—not just those affiliated with SCP—to do cutting-edge research on a wide range of topics. Shorenstein APARC is a core program at SCPKU, with a dedicated office, and with SCP has already held a number of conferences and meetings at SCPKU since its opening. Ever cognizant of its academic mission, SCP is proud to have played a role in creating a home away from home for Stanford students to have a hands-on understanding of what China is—the kind of training you cannot get from reading a book.

Much has changed in the region since SEAF first began to bring Southeast Asia to Stanford. Its population has grown from 485 million in 1999 to more than 620 million in 2013. While in 1999 Southeast Asia was just recovering from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the region weathered the 2008 American financial crisis almost unscathed, and in 2013 is a largely prospering zone of growth in a faltering world economy.

In 1999 SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson, having observed East Timor’s resounding “yes” vote for independence from Indonesia, was evacuated from the half-island as it fell prey to lethal pro-Indonesian militias wreaking revenge. In 2013 the independent country now known as Timor-Leste enjoys domestic stability, good relations with Indonesia, and one of the world’s highest rates of economic growth. A brutal, isolated dictatorship in 1999, Myanmar (Burma) has undergone significant reform and is set to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014. Yet across the region daunting challenges remain, including poverty, corruption, pollution, repression, intolerance, and tensions with China over who owns what in the South China Sea.

Over fourteen years SEAF has hosted more than 150 speakers on these and other aspects of Southeast Asia’s polities, economies, and cultures, and the region’s interactions with the rest of the world. In the latest academic year a dozen SEAF speakers—scholars and diplomats, journalists and activists—have shared their views of authoritarian development in Singapore, bigotry and rebellion in Indonesia, the Cao Dai religion in Vietnam and the United States, climate change in Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Summit, foreign aid to Cambodia, Muslim politics in Malaysia, and the modernity of Thai peasants.

Advancing Scholars and Scholarship

SEAF has also enabled a series of academic specialists on Southeast Asia to spend time at Stanford doing research and writing. Noteworthy among these visiting scholars have been the recipients of the endowed Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellowship on Southeast Asia, awarded annually in cooperation with the National University of Singapore (NUS), where recipients spend half their fellowship term. Inaugurated at Stanford by the presidents of Stanford and NUS in 2007, the program’s first awardee was Robert Hefner, a Boston University anthropologist who went on to become president of the Association for Asian Studies. Two Lee Kong Chian professors were on campus in 2013—a development expert from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an anthropologist from the University of Southern California.

The many books and articles that SEAF has facilitated include a volume edited by its director, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia. Co-published by Shorenstein APARC and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, one reviewer called Hard Choices “required reading for graduate students specializing in Southeast Asia and a must-have for ASEAN specialists and observers.”

Outreach in Southeast Asia and at Home

SEAF has also brought Stanford to Southeast Asia. Every year SEAF’s director has traveled to the region to do research, lecture, take part in workshops, and interact with Southeast Asian colleagues, including a 2012 SEAF-organized workshop in Singapore for the authors of a planned volume on Southeast Asia’s relations with China. SEAF’s director has also taken Stanford students to the region to do research, most recently in Indonesia.

SEAF has even stimulated the formation of two Stanford student-led organizations designed to share knowledge and ideas about Southeast Asia. The Malaysia Forum has grown from its 2003 founding into a global community that encourages “civil conversation” on the many issues the country faces. In 2004, also on campus, SEALNet was born—the Southeast Asian Service and Leadership Network—and it too has expanded far beyond Stanford. Its activities include sending Southeast Asian students abroad back to the region for community service during vacations.

These highlights illustrate how, since its birth fourteen years ago, SEAF has managed “to bring Southeast Asia to Stanford, and Stanford to Southeast Asia”—and how it hopes to continue that mission in the years to come.

"Countries that restrict free and open access to the internet are really walling themselves off from the progress of the next century," says Ambassador Locke at China 2.0 event in Beijing

In his opening keynote to a capacity audience at the China 2.0 Beijing 2013 Forum, U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China Gary Locke delivered a clear message: for any country operating in today’s global economy, free and open access to the internet is vital to kindle innovation, attract capital, and cultivate entrepreneurship.

“Attempts to unleash the transformative power of the internet, while controlling political and cultural content, are ultimately counterproductive,” said Locke on April 12th at the Stanford Center at Peking University. “Censorship not only harms the internet industry, it hurts the economy.”

Locke, who assumed the ambassadorship in August 2011 and previously served as President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, addressed a diverse audience of tech leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, academics, and Stanford alumni from mainland China and overseas.

The one-day, invitation-only forum was part of a series of events at Stanford University and in China organized by the China 2.0 Initiative of the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Other speakers included founders, venture capitalists, executives and leaders from Alibaba, AppAnnie, Baidu, Bertelsmann, Evernote, GSR Ventures, Kuwo, La Miu, Qiming Ventures, RedAtoms, Renren and Stanford University.

Attempts to unleash the transformative power of the internet, while controlling political and cultural content, are ultimately counterproductive.
                                                 -- Ambassador Gary Locke

In wide-ranging remarks on "China and the Global Digital Economy," Locke began by pointing out that the internet has transformed not only China’s economy, but society too. He said the internet has raised Chinese people’s awareness about the environment and inspired them to demand greater accountability from their government.

“In 2008, we placed a single air monitor on top of the embassy and began to tweet information to American citizens in Beijing about air quality.” By late 2011, Locke said, Chinese citizens began re-tweeting the data on popular microblogging sites, and began demanding of the Chinese government better environmental data and stronger air quality regulations.

Locke admits he never anticipated the extent to which Chinese citizens would take interest in the embassy’s air quality data, but suggests the recent groundswell of public attention surrounding air pollution is the fillip that has pushed the Chinese government to adopt more stringent environmental standards and install some 500 particulate matter (PM) monitors in over 70 cities in China. The Ambassador drew laughs from the audience when he added that “PM 2.5” had become a common phrase in the Chinese vernacular; citing a family trip to southern China, he said, “people were coming up to us and saying ‘PM 2.5!’”

The Ambassador also offered a blunt assessment about the challenges of internet security, especially regarding the protection of intellectual property rights. “We know, for example, that cyber-based theft of personal information [and] corporate information is occurring”, Locke noted. “Whether you’re a private citizen transferring money from your bank account or a multinational corporation engaged in international transactions or simply trying to safeguard your trade secrets… everyone is concerned about protecting their data online.”

Ambassador Locke was careful to make one point clear: intellectual property rights is not a US versus China issue. To the contrary, he pointed out, in order for China to become an entrepreneurial, high-tech economy, it must redouble its efforts to protect the fruits of its own inventors and innovators. “For every foreign firm calling for stronger IP protection,” Locke told the audience, “there are many more Chinese companies and entrepreneurs demanding the same.”

Locke closed his talk by offering reasons for optimism, saying that China recognizes where it needs to go if it wants to create an innovation-based society— and that’s what’s important. “The bottom line is—we’re seeing progress here in China.”