In this lecture, Professor Okimoto discusses how Japan’s geography and geological factors have influenced its economics, society, and culture. In addition, he explores issues pertaining to the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center
616 Serra St., Encina Hall C302-23
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Research Interests
Asia-Pacific and global competitiveness; national innovation and technology policies; foreign R&D investment; strategy and organization design for transnational firms.
Professional Biography
Joseph L. C. Cheng joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is currently professor of international business and director of the CIC Center for Advanced Study in International Competitiveness. CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) is the nation’s primer consortium of top-tier research universities in the Midwest, including the Big Ten Conference members and the University of Chicago.
During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Cheng will conduct research on the international competitiveness of multinational firms from the Asia-Pacific, with a focus on the JACKS countries (Japan, Australia, China, Korea, and Singapore). The project has two main objectives: (1) to identify the key competitive advantages of the JACKS countries both individually and collectively as a cluster of economies; and (2) to investigate how indigenous firms from the JACKS countries internationalize and leverage home-based advantages to enhance their competitiveness overseas. The research findings will be reported in a forthcoming book that Cheng is currently writing: Asia-Pacific and the JACKS Multinationals: Economics, Culture, and International Competitiveness.
Cheng is a consulting editor for the Journal of International Business Studies and senior editorial consultant to the European Journal of International Management. He is also a guest editor for an upcoming special issue of Long Range Planning on “China Business and International Competitiveness: Economics, Politics, and Technology.” Additionally, he currently serves or has served on the editorial boards of several other journals, including Management International Review, Journal of World Business, Organizational Dynamics, and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management.
Cheng holds a PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan and a BS (with honors) in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Abstract
Two and half years before there was anything called the “Arab Spring,” Wired contributing editor David Wolman traveled to Egypt to research and write about tech-savvy dissidents protesting against the Mubarak regime. Those same activists went on to play a central role in organizing the revolution that began on January 25, 2011. Wolman will share stories about his reporting, both from 2008 and during two trips in 2011, and discuss the role of social media in recent uprisings from Cairo to California.
David Wolman is an author and award-winning journalist. He is a contributing editor for Wired, and he has written for a variety of publications, including Outside, Mother Jones, Newsweek, Discover, Forbes, and Salon. Wolman is a former Fulbright journalism fellow in Japan and a graduate of Stanford University's journalism program. His latest book, The End of Money, will be out in February.
Sloan Mathematics Center
Abstract:
The 2012 Republic of China presidential and legislative elections to be held on January 14th mark the fifth presidential and seventh national legislative direct elections in Taiwan. Incumbent ROC President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT) enjoyed a landslide victory in 2008 over Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Hsieh Chang-ting, winning by over 2.2 million votes. Subsequent revelations of corruption by former President Chen Shui-bian of the DPP and various members of his administration further damaged the DPP's public image and electoral prospects.
In the intervening years, however, current DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen and other members of the DPP have worked to revitalize their party's image, and as chairperson of the DPP Tsai established a special internal investigative committee to root out corruption in the party. A potentially complicating new factor in the race is the first-ever presidential bid by the People's First Party (PFP), led by candidate James Soong. Polling results to date have indicated the potential for a very close race between Ma and Tsai, with Soong also pulling a substantial portion of the vote that may affect the electoral outcome.
On the legislative side, the KMT won 81 out of 113 total seats in the Legislative Yuan in the 2008 elections, a circumstance that has facilitated the passage of various controversial measures supported by the Ma administration, including in particular the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with mainland China, and a significant shift in the composition of this body is likely to have a pronounced impact.
Regardless of the outcome, the results of the 2012 elections promise to offer much insight into the popular attitudes of the Taiwanese people and the prospects for future democratic consolidation and development in Taiwan. Ten days following the elections, Professors Shelly Rigger and Eric Chen-hua Yu will join us for a panel discussion to analyze the outcomes of these elections and discuss their relevance to the US and the world.
Speaker Bios:
Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics and Chair of Political Science at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She has been a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (2005) and a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai (2006). Rigger is the author of two books on Taiwan’s domestic politics, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party(Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). In 2011 she published Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, a book for general readers. She has published articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan-China relations and related topics. Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwan and Mainland China. Her monograph, “Taiwan’s Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and ‘Taiwan Nationalism’” was published by the East West Center in Washington in November 2006.Image
Eric Chen-hua Yu is an assistant research fellow of the Election Study Center and
jointly appointed as an assistant professor of political science at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Before he returned to Taiwan to serve in his Alma mater in 2009, he has been a research fellow and program manager of Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies since 2006. His research interests include public opinion, electoral politics, quantitative methods, and American politics. He also participates in a number of joint survey projects such as Taiwan Election and Democratization Studies (TEDS) and World Value Survey. Yu recently published academic articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics in Taiwan Political Science Review, Journal of Electoral Studies, Review of Social Sciences, and Japanese Journal of Electoral Studies. Yu received a MS (2000) in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in political science (2006) from Columbia University.
CISAC Conference Room
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305
Eric Yu was a research fellow and program manager for the Democracy in Taiwan program at CDDRL. His research interests included public opinion, electoral politics, federalism, and quantitative methods. He worked with Election Study Center at National Chengchi University (Taiwan) on a multi-year research project examining the relationship between public opinion and policy output at the local level in Taiwan. This project aimed to explore the extent to which local policy-makings respond to public opinions across a variety of policy dimensions. His recent studies also include the development of Taiwanese public attitudes toward cross-strait relations, the emergence of the third force under the new "single-district, two-ballot" electoral system for Taiwan's legislative elections, and mass policy preferences and their implications for political parties in Taiwan.
Yu received a BA (1995) in Political Science from the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, a MS (2000) in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. (2006) in Political Science from Columbia University.
At present, the tobacco industry produces some six trillion cigarettes worldwide every year. Six trillion cigarettes per annum, each ready to release smoke filled with highly addictive nicotine and powerful carcinogens. A third of all these sticks were produced in China last year. In 2011, the world’s largest cigarette maker by volume, the China National Tobacco Corporation, contributed an all-time high of U.S. $214 billion in profits and taxes to the Chinese government, up 22 percent year-on-year. Currently the greatest cause of preventable death in the world, the cigarette is likely to kill ten times as many people in the 21st century as it did in the 20th century, epidemiologists tell us, with China bearing the largest burden. Until now, much global health research and intervention has focused with limited success on the cigarette consumer—addressing how one or another variable prompts people to take up or quit smoking, whether the cue for the consumer is biological, psychological, spatial, financial or symbolic. What though of the industrial sources of tobacco-related diseases? Where are the six trillion cigarettes that are released into circulation each year manufactured? Where are they rolled, wrapped, and boxed for shipment? This presentation will introduce the Cigarette Citadels Project, an innovative application of participatory GIS. With special attention given to China’s network of cigarette factories, Matthew Kohrman will explain how the Cigarette Citadels Project not only reveals conceptual roadblocks in public health policy but also lacuna in social theory pertaining to the state and the politics of life.
Matthew Kohrman joined Stanford’s faculty in 1999. His research and writing bring multiple methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated. Focusing on the People's Republic of China, he engages various intellectual terrains such as governmentality, gender theory, political economy, critical science studies, and embodiment. His first monograph, Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, examines links between the emergence of a state-sponsored disability-advocacy organization and the lives of Chinese men who have trouble walking. In recent years, Kohrman has been conducting research projects aimed at analyzing and intervening in the biopolitics of cigarette smoking and production. These projects expand upon analytical themes of Kohrman’s disability research and engage in novel ways techniques of public health.
This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series.
Philippines Conference Room
Stanford University
Department of Anthropology
Building 50, Central Quad
Stanford, California 94305-2034
Matthew Kohrman joined Stanford’s faculty in 1999. His research and writing bring multiple methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated. Focusing on the People's Republic of China, he engages various intellectual terrains such as governmentality, gender theory, political economy, critical science studies, and embodiment. His first monograph, Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, examines links between the emergence of a state-sponsored disability-advocacy organization and the lives of Chinese men who have trouble walking. In recent years, Kohrman has been conducting research projects aimed at analyzing and intervening in the biopolitics of cigarette smoking and production. These projects expand upon analytical themes of Kohrman’s disability research and engage in novel ways techniques of public health.
Abstract:
While the reelection of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, relieved concerns about an immediate deterioration in cross-Strait relations, the future of ties between Beijing and Taipei remain uncertain. Much will depend on the PRC’s policy. Moreover, calls in the United States either to abandon Taiwan or, conversely, to embrace it ever more closely as a hedge against the Mainland’s growing strength, have yet to play themselves out. Alan D. Romberg will address the implications of the election for these issues, as well as for Sino-American relations and for the region.
Speaker Bio:
Alan Romberg is the director of the East Asia program at Stimson.
Before joining Stimson in September 2000, he enjoyed a distinguished career working on Asian issues, both in and out of government, including twenty years as a US Foreign Service Officer. Romberg was the principal deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff and deputy spokesman of the department. He served in various capacities dealing with East Asia, including director of the Office of Japanese Affairs, member of the Policy Planning staff for East Asia, and staff member at the National Security Council for China. He served overseas in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Additionally, Romberg spent almost ten years as the CV Starr Senior Fellow for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.
Romberg holds an MA from Harvard University, and a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
CISAC Conference Room
