The Sino-Japanese competition for influence in Asia is often overlooked by Western observers. While the US-Japan Alliance has been the cornerstone of security in East Asia for over a half-century, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has modernized its military, steadily enhanced it regional activities, and deepened relations with countries around the region. Economically, as well, Tokyo has offered a counterpart to Chinese investment and development aid. The alliance with the United States is a indispensable element in Japan's regional strategy, one which Beijing would like to disrupt. How has China pursued its goal of driving a wedge between Tokyo and Washington? From military buildup, through pressure in the East China Sea, to diplomatic initiatives, Beijing has sought to raise the perceived risk to both Japan and the United States of maintaining their unique relationship. What are the prospects for the future of the US-Japan alliance, especially in the post-Abe era?

 

SPEAKER

Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian by training, he specializes in contemporary and historical U.S. policy in Asia and political and security issues in the Indo-Pacific region. A best-selling author, Dr. Auslin’s latest book is The End of the Asian Century:  War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region (Yale). He is a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review, and his writing appears in other leading publications, including The Atlantic, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico. He comments regularly for U.S. and foreign print and broadcast media. Previously, Dr. Auslin was an associate professor of history at Yale University, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, among other honors, and serves on the board of the Wilton Park USA Foundation. He received a BSc from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

 

PARKING

Please note there is significant construction taking place on campus, which is greatly affecting parking availability and traffic patterns at the university. Please plan accordingly. Nearest parking garage is Structure 7, below the Graduate School of Business Knight School of Management.
 

Please join us for a conversation with United Nations World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley, who will discuss "Challenges of 21^st Century Humanitarian Response." The conversation will be moderated by his predecessor at the agency, Ertharin Cousin, a visiting fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.

R.S.V.P.

As Executive Director of the World Foods Programme (WFP), Mr. Beasley serves at the level of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and is a member of the organization's Senior Management Group under the leadership of Secretary-General António Guterres. At WFP, he is putting to use four decades of leadership and communications skills to mobilize more financial support and public awareness for the global fight against hunger. Under his leadership, WFP kept four countries from slipping into famine in 2017 and is moving beyond emergency food assistance, to advance longer term development that brings peace and stability to troubled regions. Before coming to WFP in April 2017, Beasley spent a decade working with high-profile leaders and on-the-ground programme managers in more than 100 countries, directing projects designed to foster peace, reconciliation and economic progress.

David Beasley was elected at the age of 21 to the South Carolina House of Representatives (1979-1992) and as Governor of South Carolina (1995-1999), one of the youngest in the state’s history.  He received a Profile in Courage Award in 2003 from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and is a 1999 Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Born in 1957, he attended Clemson University and holds a B.A. from the University of South Carolina, as well as a J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

The Conversation with David Beasley is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Center on Food Security and the Environment and the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands.

 The lecture will be held at the David and Joan Traitel Building, 435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University. For more information about the event, contact Sonal Singh at sonals@stanford.edu.

About the Wesson Lecture

The Wesson Lectureship was established at Stanford by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 1988. It provides support for a public address at the university by a prominent scholar or practicing professional in the field of international relations. The series is made possible by a gift from the late Robert G. Wesson, a scholar of international affairs, prolific author, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

WE HAVE REACHED VENUE CAPACITY AND ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING RSVPS

NOTE: THIS EVENT IS CLOSED TO THE MEDIA 

UPDATE: We will provide a live video stream of the conference on this link: https://youtu.be/5D5QSZi6u2w  Please check back at 2:25 PM on October 2 for the livestream.

RSVP required for admission.  No walk-ins.  Only one registration permitted per person. 
Stanford or government-issued photo ID must be presented for admission. 
No cameras, audio, video recording or flash photography will be permitted. 
No signs, flyer distribution, banners or posters will be allowed inside the venue.  
Please arrive 30 minutes early to check-in.  There will be no late seating.  

Sponsored by Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford China Program, and Center for East Asian Studies.

Prompted by the government’s introduction of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019, Hong Kong has been rocked by intense unrest, its most volatile since the handover in 1997. Millions have taken to the streets and violence has escalated on both sides. Beijing has likened Hong Kong’s demonstrations to the “color revolutions,” and has also condemned the disruptions as “near-terrorist acts.”

In this critical time, our conference will explore questions such as: What are the root causes of Hong Kong’s unremitting protests? Why has this extradition bill generated such intense and widespread reactions? Facing massive governance challenges, what will be the future of Hong Kong? Is there a viable future for “one country, two systems”? How should the U.S. and the international community best respond?

 

Speakers

The Honorable Anson Chan retired as the Chief Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Government in 2001, after nearly forty years of service.  As Chief Secretary, she headed the 190,000-strong civil service.  She was the first woman and the first Chinese to hold the second-highest governmental position in Hong Kong.  During her career in the public service, she was responsible, amongst other things, for development of Hong Kong's economic infrastructure including the planning and construction of Hong Kong's new international airport, which opened in July 1998; port expansion and deregulation of the telecommunications market. Mrs. Chan is Convenor of Hong Kong 2020 - a think tank concerned with transparent and accountable Government, universal suffrage and protection of rights and freedoms enshrined in the "one country, two systems" concept that applies to Hong Kong.

Honors & Awards: 
-  Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1992) 
-  Grand Bauhinia Medal (1999): the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s highest honor 
-  Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) conferred by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain (2002) 
-  Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Tufts University (2005) 
-  Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion d’Honneur conferred by the President of France (2008) 
-  American Chamber’s Women of Influence Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) 
-  O’Connor Justice Prize Honoree (2018) 
-  Justice of the Peace

 

Harry Harding is University Professor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he was the founding dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.  He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Professor Harding has previously held appointments at Swarthmore College, Stanford University, The Brookings Institution, as Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Hong Kong.  A specialist on U.S.-China relations, his major publications on that topic include “Has U.S. China Policy Failed?” and A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972. He is now writing a sequel, A Fraught Relationship: The United States and China from Partners to Competitors.

 

 

David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and Research Scholar at FSI and affiliated with Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).  He also is the Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Emeritus.  Professor Lampton's current book project is focused on the development of high-speed railways from southern China to Singapore.  He is the author of a dozen books and monographs, including Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping  (University of California Press, 2014, and second edition 2019) and The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (University of California Press, 2008).  He has testified at multiple congressional and commission sessions and published numerous articles, essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces in many venues, popular and academic, in both the western world and in Chinese-speaking societies, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. 

 

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.  She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in FSI and is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.  Professor Oi has published extensively on political economy and the process of reform in China.  Recent books include Zouping Revisited:  Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (2018); and Challenges in the Process of China's Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017).  Professor Oi also has an edited volume with Tom Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China's Future, Stanford University Press, forthcoming.  Recent articles include "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies (2018); and “Reflections on Forty Years of Rural Reform,” in Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, eds., To Get Rich is Glorious: Challenges Facing China’s Economic Reform and Opening at Forty, Brookings, 2019.  Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

 

Ming Sing is associate professor, Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  His research interests include the comparative study of democracy and democratization, political culture, civil society, quality of life, and Hong Kong politics. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford University in sociology and has been the author or editor of four books and over thirty articles. His refereed publications can be found in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Democracy, Democratization, Government and Opposition, and Social Indicators Research, among others. He has been working on a book comparing Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement.  He has also been an active commentator on Hong Kong politics, whose comments have been solicited by local and international media including BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship for visiting the University of California, San Diego in 2007, and the POSCO Visiting Fellowship by the East-West Center, University of Hawaii in 2010.

Attendees should enter the campus via Galvez Street and park at the Galvez Lot or other designated, paid visitor parking. See also Stanford’s parking map. No parking at the Stanford Oval is allowed.

For a summary, video, audio, photos and transcripts of the event, please see the following webpage:

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/news/hong-kong-turmoil-former-chief-secretary-and-scholars-discuss-causes-implications-and-potential