Duncan Clark, Visiting Scholar at SPRIE and Chairman/Founder of Beijing-based investment advisory firm BDA China, spoke to a packed room at a seminar titled "Life after Google? The Way Forward for US Internet Firms and Investors in China", hosted by SPRIE, about the appeal and complexities of China's dynamic internet sector. The talk is part of SPRIE's ongoing series of speaker events, seminars and conferences entitled "China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower".

China's internet population will soon be double that of the US. China is home to a thriving market for social networking, games, e-commerce and other applications. While many individual and institutional investors in Chinese internet firms have profited from this growth, US internet firms themselves have struggled to gain a foothold. In fact a number of the most iconic internet firms in the US - including eBay, Yahoo and Google - have either pulled out of China or significantly scaled back their expectations for the market. Why?
Censorship and government restrictions are often pointed to as the principal cause. Is this justified, or does it sometimes serve as a convenient excuse for other factors such as management missteps?

Certainly Google placed blame squarely with the Chinese government, citing the growing burden of censorship and sophisticated attacks on Gmail as principal motivations for its 2010 decision to scale back its China business. In his 45-minute talk, Clark discussed the implications of Google's move, both for the company (and the benefits to its main competitor Baidu) and for a new wave of US internet companies who are evaluating the market (such as Facebook) or who have recently entered the market (such as Groupon).

Clark explored the psyche driving the Chinese government's approach to internet restrictions and the varying degrees of sensitivity associated with online activities such as social networking, email/IM, games and e-commerce. He also discussed the risks faced by Chinese internet founders/CEOs as they balance the need to serve customers and the stock market with serving the requirements and expectations of the Chinese government and the Communist Party.

The talk reviewed in turn the experience of various US internet companies in China and how elusive the right formula for success can be.

Clark concluded with a discussion of the more positive of US individual and institutional investors. While competitive risks remain substantial, backing Chinese management teams to some extent insulates investors from the vagaries of government regulation. Chinese internet firms such as Baidu, Tencent and Taobao have emerged as some of the world's most highly visited and most valuable sites. Clark explored the questions of how sustainable are their positions in China, and whether these firms can demonstrate an ability to innovate and extend their reach beyond China's shores.

Duncan Clark and Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE, are continuing their research into these and other topics as part of SPRIE's China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower project. SPRIE looks forward to the perspectives of upcoming invited speakers as the program keeps apace with the fast growing but unpredictable China internet market.

The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to announce its major international conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” (May 18-19, 2011, Jerusalem).  This conference – co-sponsored and hosted by the Center’s project partner, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – is designed to engage global, profound, and heretofore considered intractible problems of divided societies, as well as today’s crises events of the Arab world in the greater Middle East and North Africa.  With US, European, and NATO command forces engaged in the region, The Europe Center recognizes shared concern across the transatlantic community, and brings its Stanford senior research affiliates as well as international partner scholars to illuminate the immediate as well as long-term points of contention, and prospects for meaningful peace and reconciliation.

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” includes
sessions on the following critical subjects:

• In Search of What Democracy Is and Should Be: Contemporary Challenges to democratic ideas/formations
• Institutional Forms of Contemporary Democracies: Translating Democratic Theory into Practice
• The Challenge of Managing Diversity in Contemporary Democracies
• Civil Societies and Democratic Quality and Efficacy
• Democracy and Development
• Democratic Transitions and Recessions: The International Dimension 

The participants include leading scholars and policy analysts:

• Dan Banik, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
• Bashir Bashir, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
• Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford University
• Naomi Chazan, Hebrew University, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo
• Amir Eshel, Stanford University, The Europe Center, FSI
• Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University FSI
• Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
• Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University
• Michael Karayanni, The Sacher Institute, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
• Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto
• Stephen Krasner, Stanford University FSI
• Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence
• Gabriel Motzkin, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, University of Jerusalem
• Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford University FSI
• Ramzi Suleiman, University of Haifa
• Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford University

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” is co-developed by Michael Karayanni and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and co-sponsored by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  The conference is one of The Europe Center’s international partner projects run within the Center’s larger and multi-year program on “Reconciliation".

This project is conceived to address subjects of contention, and potentially reconciliation, in divided societies.  The multi-year collaborative project is designed to develop, in successive stages, a full range of programming including international workshops, publications, and scholar exchange.  Sponsored work will benefit scholarly, policy-oriented, and cultural relations.  We especially seek to support the work of colleagues from a wide range of fields including the humanities, social sciences, law, business, and education.  

Further information on The Europe Center’s multi-year program on “Reconciliation” may be found here.

Japan's massive earthquake and tsunami three weeks ago and the challenging recovery process continue to make news headlines around the world. It is difficult to separate fact and reasonable speculation about the future from the terror-filled coverage about radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear complex. In an effort to make sense of recent events, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) convened a panel of experts for a discussion about the possible future implications arising from this complex and emotionally charged situation for Japan's energy policy, economy, and politics.

Addressing an audience of one hundred students, faculty, and members of the general public on March 30, Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider expressed the center's deep sympathy for those affected by the natural disasters and its profound admiration for the way in which the people of Japan are dealing with the aftermath. Members of the panel echoed these sentiments throughout the event.

Michio Harada, Deputy Counsel General at the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, cited official government figures indicating that, as of March 28, twenty-eight thousand people were dead or missing and one-hundred-and-eighty thousand people were still in evacuation shelters. Faced with such staggering figures, Japan remains in a rescue and recovery phase, he said, but is receiving a tremendous amount of global support. More than one hundred and thirty countries have provided financial assistance, and eighteen countries and regions have sent rescue teams. Collective public spirit is currently very strong, Deputy Counsel Harada emphasized. Japan's challenge moving forward, he suggested, will be to adopt pragmatic measures to fund reconstruction projects in the areas destroyed or damaged by the natural disasters.

Understanding the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power facility and the information circulating about the potential health risks of radiation exposure is complicated, stressed Siegfried S. Hecker, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He described the intricate design and structure of the reactors and outlined the sequence of events up to the present, explaining the immediate, crucial challenge of continuing to cool the reactors and deal with the leakage of radiation from them. While there are definite and potentially very serious health threats from radiation exposure and contamination, Hecker said, fear and stress about the situation could also negatively affect mental and physical wellbeing. It is too soon to know the long-term implications for energy policy in Japan and other countries, he suggested, emphasizing the significance of learning from this experience in order to improve any future use of nuclear power.

Robert Eberhart, a researcher with the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, proposed that the global supply chain is flexible enough to absorb any manufacturing disruptions in Japan. He noted that in the past twenty years most of Japan's heavy manufacturing has moved overseas, and that the components made there are a comparatively less significant part of the supply chain. In terms of the overall impact on Japan's economy, Eberhart suggested that the net effect on the GDP would be neutral over the next two years, explaining that the imminent loss of business and investment in some areas would be offset by the growth of firms involved in the reconstruction process.

Phillip Lipscy, a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an assistant professor with the Department of Political Science, stated that events and immediate needs during the early stages of reconstruction may have long-term affects on policymaking and the government structure in Japan. For example, the continued use of nuclear energy—a relatively clean and efficient source of power accounting for 30 percent of Japan's total energy consumption—will face public opposition due to rising concerns about safety and pressing energy needs. In addition, while Prime Minister Naoto Kan's prompt response after the natural disasters helped boost popular sentiment for him and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), how they fare in the long term—especially with regard to the DPJ's relationship with the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and reconstruction-related modifications to its key economic policies—remains to be seen, Lipscy said.

Sneider closed the event with a comparison between the events in Japan and the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, pointing to criticism that the Obama and Kan administrations have received for not regulating large corporations closely enough. A prompt resolution to the dangerous—and contentious—situation at the Fukushima nuclear complex is the most immediate concern, and one that will help foretell the long-term political implications for Japan's government, he concluded.

Although there is still a long road ahead in Japan—especially until the accident at Fukushima's nuclear reactor is contained and the actual after-effects of radiation are better understood—the underlying message during the panel discussion was that Japan will indeed recover and that the terrible events of the past weeks have brought people—and even the competing political parties—closer together.