Life expectancy at aged 65 is remarkably similar in the three Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei, even though the cities differ in levels of socioeconomic development, health systems, and other factors. Edward Jow-Ching Tu will discuss research that aims to understand this phenomenon. Despite unprecedented increases in life expectancy and attainment of similar current levels of life expectancy, the cities differ in the contributions of changes in major causes of death to the improvements in life expectancy among the elderly. Tu and colleagues have explored several possible determinants of these different patterns and trends in the three cities, including socioeconomic development, health service delivery systems, cause-of-death classification systems, and competing risks from cardiovascular disease and other diseases. Their analysis suggests that the effect of equity of health service delivery has become more important over time.

Edward Jow-Ching Tu is a senior lecturer of demography in the Division of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His work is focused on the impact of fertility, mortality, and migration on socio-economic changes in East Asia countries with special emphasis on nations experiencing a transition from planned economy to market economy; on causes and impacts of mortality changes and health transition on aging societies; and on the causes of lowest-low fertility in many East Asia countries. He has several active research projects ongoing in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He holds graduate degress from West Virginia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). Tu has worked extensively in Asia, and has served as an adjunct professor and taught in many universities in China, including Peking University, Peoples University, Nankai Univerity, and Fudan University. He had served as a senior research scientist at the New York State Health Department and as a research fellow (full professor) at the Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy at Academia Sinica. Tu has also taught at the State University of New York in Albany.

China’s “rise” has elicited envy, admiration, and fear among its neighbors and more distant countries. Much of what has been written about the modalities and impact of China’s increased activism on the world stage comes close to depicting what has happened (and what presumably will happen in the future) as determined almost entirely by goals, approaches, and instruments conceived in Beijing and implemented as designed by their Chinese authors. Such descriptions and explanations minimize or ignore the other side of the equation, namely, what individuals, corporate actors, and governments in other countries do to attract, shape, exploit, or deflect Chinese involvement. The "China and the World" project will redress the imbalance by examining the actions of China’s partners and ways in which initiatives and reactions from partners have shaped Chinese policy and the outcome of engagements with other countries.

The ultimate objective of this study is to understand and anticipate China’s behavior on the world stage. But China’s objectives, methods, and impacts vary from one region to another, and differences between regions are as interesting and as important as are practices and patterns common to all parts of the globe. Describing and explaining regional differences (as well as differences among countries in the same region) is therefore a useful, if not necessary, prerequisite for examining behavior and interactions at the global level.

North America, to be sure, is arguably the most important partner and shaper of China’s international behavior in the decades since Deng Xiaoping launched the policy of “reform and opening” that has transformed China. The reason for not focusing specifically on the United States in this study is that U.S.-China relations have been studied more extensively than any other Chinese relationship. However, the extent and nature of U.S. relations with countries in all regions make it imperative to consider U.S.-China relations in each region and their role, if any, in shaping China’s relationships with other countries.

The “China and the World” project will focus initially on Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia.  China has a long history and deeply varied relationship with these two regions. At the next stage, the project will examine China’s relationship with South Asia. Additional regions, such as Central Asia, may be added.

The project will begin with a one-and-a-half day workshop on March 19–20, 2012, convened in Beijing at the new Stanford Center at Peking University. It will focus on China’s relationships with Japan, Korea, and Russia in Northeast Asia. The participation of scholars from Southeast Asia and North America will help ensure that the core questions developed at the workshop are broadly applicable to other regions as well.