Stanford University

New Dynamic Triangle-Taiwan, US, and China: A Conversation

-

In this conversation, Taiwan's Representative to the United States, Jason Yuan, and Director of CDDRL, Larry Diamond, will talk about a variety of issues associated with the triangular relationship among Taiwan, China, and the United States.

Mr. Jason Yuan took office as Republic of China’s (Taiwan) Representative to the United States in August, 2008. Representative Yuan is a career diplomat who began his government career in 1974 as an acting naval attaché for the Embassy of the Republic of China in the United States. After then, he has been Deputy Director and Director of Congressional Liaison Division for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, Director General of Department of North American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada. He has also served as Ambassador to Panama, and Director General of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. Prior to the current post, Representative Yuan was Representative of Kuomintang-People First Party (KMT-PFP Alliance) to the United States.

Representative Yuan obtained his MA in Business and Public Administration from Southeastern University and BA in Chinese Navy Academy (Taiwan).

This is special event within Democracy in Taiwan Program.

Bechtel Conference Center

Jason Yuan Representative Speaker Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the United States

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
0
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Larry Diamond Director Speaker Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Seminars

Political Animals: Critical Reflections on Sovereignty and Bare Life in Giorgio Agamben's Work

-

Antonis Balasopoulos, Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, is one of the most important younger scholars working in literary criticism and theory today. He has co-edited Comparative Literature and Global Studies: Histories and Trajectories; Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States; and States of Theory: History and Geography of Critical Narratives.

He has held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University and has been appointed Institute Faculty at the Dartmouth Institute of American Studies, Dartmouth College. His research interests include Utopian fiction and nonfiction, 16th-19th centuries; Literature and Culture of US Empire, 1800-1900; literature, geography and the production of space; nationalism, colonialism and postcoloniality; critical theory, especially Marxism, genre theory, and theories of the political; visual culture, especially cinema.

Sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, the Department of Comparative Literature, the English Department, the Program in Modern Thought and Literature, German Studies, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Building 260, Room 216
Pigott Hall, Main Quad
Stanford University

Antonis Balasopoulos Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus Speaker
Seminars

A New Phase in Japan-U.S. Relations: Building a New World Order after the Economic Crisis

-

This event is co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco and the US-Asia Technology Management Center, Stanford University

The United States ushered in new leadership at the same time as an economic crisis swept over the globe. Responding to today’s crisis is an urgent task, but we simultaneously face the question of what kind of world order to create after the crisis. What is Japan’s core orientation as it looks to the future? Can America resume its role as moral leader once again?

About the Speaker

Yotaro Kobayashi is former Chairman of the Board, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. and serves on the boards of Callaway Golf Company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) and Sony Corporation. He is also the Pacific Asia Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Chairman of the Aspen Institute Japan, and Chairman of International University of Japan.

After receiving his B.A. in economics from Keio University and his M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, he joined Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., in 1958 from where he was assigned to Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. in 1963. He became President and CEO in 1978, and Chairman and CEO in 1992. He served as Chairman of the Board from 1999 till March 2006 to become Chief Corporate Advisor in April the same year, and retired from that position in March 2009.

Mr. Kobayashi was awarded the Medal with Blue Ribbon (Japan) in 1991, the Insignia of Commander First Class of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (Sweden) in 1995, and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (Norway) in 1997.

Philippines Conference Room

Yotaro Kobayashi Former Chief Corporate Advisor and Chairman of the Board Speaker Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
Seminars
Tokyo in a Season of Turmoil

Rekindling the Vision of President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at Reykjavik: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

-

During the Cold War, the United States and the former Soviet Union relied on nuclear deterrence to navigate successfully through those perilous years. In today's world, with the accelerating spread of nuclear material, know--how, and weapons, we are facing an increasing danger that nuclear weapons, the deadliest weapons ever invented, may be acquired by ruthless national leaders or suicidal terrorists. Under these circumstances, relying on thousands of nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.

What will it take to rekindle the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons that President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev brought to their remarkable summit at Reykjavik in 1986? Can a world-wide consensus be forged on a series of practical steps to escape the nuclear deterrence trap?

Panofsky Auditorium
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Menlo Park, CA

Sidney Drell Speaker
Seminars

Book offers new roadmap for tackling transnational threats

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

As fallout from accelerating climate change and the economic meltdown reveals, today's gravest threats are transnational, demanding unprecedented cooperation among competing nations to find lasting solutions. The policies and strategies developed for the balance-of-power rivalries of the 20th century no longer apply in this one, according to the authors of Power & Responsibility, a book launched March 17 at Stanford.

"Transnational threats create security interdependence between the most powerful states and the weaker states," author Stephen J. Stedman said during the panel discussion hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "The United States can't defend itself against any threat without sustained international cooperation from others."

Stedman, a faculty member at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Bruce Jones of New York University and Carlos Pascual from the Brookings Institution, said their book seeks to promote the concept of "responsible sovereignty" to rebuild international order and strengthen international institutions such as the United Nations. In other words, the authors argue, their notion of sovereignty demands responsibility from states in addition to according privilege. Furthermore, nations should be held responsible for the harmful international effects of their domestic policies-whether it's producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide or failing to secure national borders and financial institutions, thus enabling terrorist groups to attack targets thousands of miles away.

The book's publication follows a policy oriented Plan for Action booklet released last November on the heels of the U.S. presidential election. Timed to coincide with the start of the Obama administration, the 360-page book, published by Brookings Institution Press, highlights seven issues that demand transnational solutions: nuclear proliferation, climate change, bio-security, civil violence and regional conflicts, terrorism and economic security. According to Stedman, the book was received positively during recent launches in Europe, Asia and Washington, D.C. and, earlier this month, the authors presented their findings to senior White House officials.

While U.S. power is in decline, Jones said, it is the only nation with the military, diplomatic, economic and political power needed to take a global lead in tackling transnational threats. The world's rising powers-China, India and Brazil-recognize that the alternative to U.S. leadership is "entropy and chaos," he said, and that every state stands to benefit more from the former as long as it is geared to structured cooperation.

"This is not a love fest of great powers," Jones continued. "There are real interests here and there [would] be tough and sustained negotiations." But the alternatives-maintaining the status quo where global decisions are made by the outmoded G-7 group of industrialized nations, or establishing a "league of democracies" that would exclude critical players such as China-are simply unworkable. "We recognize that our model is tough but we think it's the most likely to have impact on the threats that face us," Jones said.

Hero Image
MGI
All News button
1
Subscribe to North America