Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Joseph L. C. Cheng

Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center
616 Serra St., Encina Hall C302-23
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-3368 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Professor
ChengJosephWEB.jpg PhD

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.

The Concept of Risk When Time is a Crucial Factor: How to Understand and How to Communicate? Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Findings

Confucian Humanism as World Governance

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Confucian Humanism as World Governance

Dialogue with FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI, Stanford University 

Tu Weiming, has been instrumental in developing discourses on dialogue among civilizations, Cultural China, reflection on the Enlightenment mentality of the modern West, and multiple modernities.  He is currently studying the modern transformation of Confucian humanism in East Asia and tapping its spiritual resources for human flourishing in the global community.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and a Member of the International Philosophical Society (IIP).     

Francis Fukuyama, has written widely on issues relating to democratization and international political economy.  His most recent book, The Origins of Political Order, was published in April 2011. He is a resident in FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, and a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s ‘The Governance Project’ and the Confucius Institute at Stanford University

 

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Tu Weiming Lifetime Professor in Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Peking University; Research Professor and Senior Fellow of the Asia Center, Harvard University Speaker

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Screening of RFK in the Land of Apartheid

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A screening of RFK IN THE LAND OF APARTHEID.  A high point of the film is Kennedy's meeting with one of the unknown giants of African history - the banned President of the African National Congress, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chief Albert Lutuli - living under house arrest in a remote rural area.  The film travels with Robert Kennedy to Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, where he meets thousands of people and gives voice to Chief Lutuli's silenced call for a free South Africa.  

Following the screening, Professor James Campbell, History Dept., will moderate a
discussion with producer and co-director Larry Shore (Professor, Hunter College, CUNY)
 
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Larry Shore Professor Speaker Hunter College (CUNY)
James Campbell Professor Speaker History Department, Stanford University

Larry Diamond

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

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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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
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Crop yields in a geoengineered climate

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Crop models predict that recent and future climate change may have adverse effects on crop yields. Intentional deflection of sunlight away from the Earth could diminish the amount of climate change in a high-CO2 world. However, it has been suggested that this diminution would come at the cost of threatening the food and water supply for billions of people. Here, we carry out high-CO2, geoengineering and control simulations using two climate models to predict the effects on global crop yields. We find that in our models solar-radiation geoengineering in a high-CO2 climate generally causes crop yields to increase, largely because temperature stresses are diminished while the benefits of CO2 fertilization are retained. Nevertheless, possible yield losses on the local scale as well as known and unknown side effects and risks associated with geoengineering indicate that the most certain way to reduce climate risks to global food security is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

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"In My Lifetime" and post-film discussion with the director

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The Film's Mission

This film is meant to be a wakeup call for humanity, to help develop an understanding of the realities of the nuclear weapon, to explore ways of presenting the answers for “a way beyond” and to facilitate a dialogue moving towards resolution of this Gordian knot of nuclear weapons gripping the world.  The documentary’s characters are the narrative voices, interwoven with highly visual sequences of archival and contemporary footage and animation.  The story is a morality play, telling the struggle waged over the past six and half decades with the last act yet to be determined, of trying to find what is “the way beyond?”

Director's Statement

“In My Lifetime” takes on the complex realities of “the nuclear world”, and searches internationally for an answer to the question is there a Way Beyond?  This documentary is part wake up call, part challenge for people to engage with the issue of ridding the world of the most destructive weapon ever invented.

In February 2008, I began a journey to film and report on the story of the inner workings of the nuclear world.  There has been a re-emergence of the realization that a world with nuclear weapons, including a proliferation of fissile nuclear materials, is a very dangerous place.  Of course this realization has been known since the creation of the atomic bomb.  It continues to be a struggle which has not been resolved.

This is a very complex issue with many voices, speaking from many perspectives, representing the forces and entrenched institutions in the nuclear states, not to speak of the rest of the world’s nations some of them with nuclear power capable of producing their own fissile materials and now there is the danger of so called “non-state actors”, who want to get their hands on the nuclear fissile materials necessary to create nuclear weapons. Today the materials and technology to make nuclear weapons are more readily available than any government who possess them would like one to believe.

At this writing it there are new developments in this parallel nuclear world, with a new emergence of the debate as to what has to change and steps need to be taken to move away from nuclear weapons.  Since over the past year there definitely has been movement towards dealing with the reality, as a result this project has been able to record the changes taking place.

Following the screening, Robert Frye (the film's Director) will discuss the film with the audience.

For more information about the film, please visit the Nuclear World Project website. 

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Robert Frye Director, "In My Lifetime" Commentator
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Japan’s Public Universal Health Insurance System Reform: Lessons for Achieving and Maintaining Universal Health Care Coverage

Japan’s Public Universal Health Insurance System Reform: Lessons for Achieving and Maintaining Universal Health Care Coverage

Corporate Affiliates alumnus' research in China's energy sector

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China possesses vast coal reserves, and coal accounts for 70 percent of the country’s total energy consumption—3 billion tons per year. But China also consumes oil, natural gas, and an increasing amount of renewable energy.

Xuteng HuXuteng Hu, a Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellow Program alumnus (2007–08), manages energy and materials development projects at PetroChina’s Petrochemical Research Institute in Beijing, where he serves as vice president.

Hu received his master’s and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering from Tsinghua University. 

PetroChina, one of China’s largest energy companies, has recently developed its own biojet fuel. The company is also researching other renewable energy technologies, including biofuel made from plant fiber.

During his year at Stanford University, Hu conducted research on the governance of China’s state-owned enterprises, focusing on energy companies like PetroChina, Sinopec, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. He also studied strategies for the development and promotion of different forms of energy, ranging from coal to chemicals and oil to natural gas. Jean C. Oi, a political science professor and director of the Stanford China Program, served as Hu’s research advisor.

Since returning to China three years ago, Hu has managed the research and development of synthetic petroleum-based materials, and the construction of major pilot petrochemical plants. Perhaps most exciting of all, the biojet fuel project he led conducted a successful demonstration flight in October.

Of his time at Stanford, Hu says: “My experiences helped me think about corporate governance structure, energy development, and other issues related closely to my work from different perspectives, such as culture and society. It also enhanced my understanding of cultural and business exchanges between China and the West.”

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A China Southern jet takes off over Dalian apartment buildings, Oct. 2009. Corporate Affiliates alumnus Xuteng Hu has recently led a successful biojet fuel project in Beijing. | Flickr/Dmitry Klimenko
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