Fei Yan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has been awarded a prize from the China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC) for his paper on political rivalries during China’s Cultural Revolution. The award aims to recognize emerging scholarship and foster intellectual exchange among experts working on China and Inner Asia topics, according to the award website.

Yan was presented the award at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference on March 27. CIAC released the following statement:

“In his paper, Fei Yan offers a new interpretation of the factional rivalries that wracked China's provinces during the early years of the Cultural Revolution. His focus is on the dispute between the so-called ‘radical’ Red Flag faction and the so-called ‘conservative’ East Wind faction that came to a head in Guangzhou in 1967. Making use of previously unavailable archival sources, he offers a meticulous and detailed description of the extent to which this split was based less on deep ideological differences and more on intense power rivalries and disagreements over tactics.”

Yan specializes in Chinese politics and political culture, and comparative social policy within transitional economies and authoritarian settings. He will join the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University as an assistant professor this fall.

Retired Pakistani Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai told an audience of some 50 South Asia and nuclear experts at Stanford that India and Pakistan need a joint strategic vision to attain permanent peace and economic stability on the Subcontinent.

Kidwai, addressing a CISAC seminar on March 30, 2015, said the enmity between India and Pakistan - born from the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 that effectively divided Hindus and Muslims into two separate nations - will never be resolved until people are brought out of abject poverty.

"The obvious is not sinking into our regional calculations," he said. "The obvious is the elephant in the room: sustained socioeconomic progress."

More than 22 percent of Pakistan's 196 million people are living in poverty and 46 percent of its rural population falls below the global poverty line, according ot the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

"Conflict resolution without socioeconomic progress will never work," said Kidwai, who is one of the most decorated generals in Pakistan. "There is no running away from this stark reality. For 68 years we have blustered and blundered our way through solutions, leaving 1.5 billion people condemned to hunger, filth and squalor."

He offered hope, in that there are two relatively new, democratically elected leaders now leading the nuclear-armed neighbors, which have gone to war three times since partition. Narendra Modi became India's 15th prime minister last year; Pakistan elected a new president, Nawaz Sharif, the year before that. They represent two political parties with strong elctroal mandates.

"We are waiting for the two leaderships to grasp, sit together, explore conflict resolution and go for it in a manner that all partners on all sides win," Kidwai said. "It needs vision, statesmanship and guts."

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Kidwai is advisor to Pakistan's National Command Authority and was the inaugural director general of the country's Strategic Plans Division, which he headed for 15 years. He conceived and executed Islamabad's nuclear policy and deterrence doctrines. He also is the architect of Pakistan's civilian nuclear energy and space programs.

Kidwai, who was hosted by CISAC's Siegfried Hecker, told the Stanford audience that he wanted to dispel what he called "two fallacious counter-narratives that have taken root in our neighborhood."

The first, he said, is that Pakistan supports and conducts terrorism inside India. "What would Pakistan attempt to achieve from this strategy?" he said, adding that the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 were not backed by Islamabad. On that day, 10 Pakistani men associated with the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba killed 164 people during four days of attacks throughout the city. India has repeatedly accused Islamabad of supporting the terrorists; Islamabad said non-state actors were responsible for the attacks.

"Terrorism is not a Pakistani invention," he said. "What would Pakistan attempt to achieve from this strategy?" 

The second myth, he said, is that the Pakistani military purposely keeps tensions at a high boil in an effort to boost its defense budget.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said. "The Pakistan Army is all for an equitable, just and ordinary peace with India. We recognize that war is not an option."

Kidwai believes the presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia is a stabilizing force and that any new peace initiatives lay with India. 

India conducted its first "peaceful" nuclear explosion, code-named "Smiling Buddha," in May of 1974; it would then conduct five nuclear tests in May 1998. Seventeen days after the first of those tests, Islamabad announced that it had detonated six nuclear devices, which happened to match the Indian total.

Today, India is believed to have between 90 and 110 nuclear warheads; Pakistan has between 100 to 120, according to the Arms Control Association.

Kidwai said the tried-and-tested concept of Mutually Assured Destruction has maintained a tenuous truce between the two nations. MAD follows the theory of deterrence, where the threat of using nuclear weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons.

He considered the concept of space for limited conventional war highly problematic and explained that Pakistan opted to develop a variety of short-range, low-yield nuclear weapons as a defensive deterrence response to what he called an aggressive Indian doctrine.

Kidwai assured the Stanford audience that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were safe, secure and under complete institutional and professional control. 

"For the last 15 years, Pakistan has taken its nuclear security obligations very seriously," he said. "We have invested heavily in terms of money, manpower, weapons and preparedness."

Kidwai was challenged about the deterrence utility of tactical, or battlefield, nuclear weapons compared to the increased security and safety risks of their potential deployment. Although Kidwai made a convincing case for improved security of Pakistan's nuclear assets during his tenure at the Strategic Plans Division, concerns were nevertheless expressed because of Pakistan's challenging internal security environment.

You can listen to the audio file of his talk here.

Each year the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center offers fellowship opportunities to recent graduates to further their research and engage with scholars at Stanford. Postdoctoral fellows have the opportunity to develop their dissertations for publication, present their research to the Stanford community, and participate in Center activities.

Fellows often go on to pursue teaching positions and advisory roles at top universities and research organizations around the world. Into the future, they remain engaged with the Center and continue to contribute to Shorenstein APARC publications, conferences and related activities.

Shorenstein APARC is pleased to welcome three postdoctoral fellows for the 2015-16 academic year:

Asia Health Policy Fellow

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Saingam’s research interests are public health, substance abuse, drug policy and Southeast Asia. While at Shorenstein APARC, she will research the evolution of substance-abuse control measures and related policy in Thailand.

Saingam seeks to identify potentially effective policy directions suitable for Thailand, and other developing countries in Southeast and East Asia.

“There are a lot of lessons to be learned from substance abuse policy implementations in other countries…coping and dealing with substance abuse is a complex story and cannot respond successfully with only one strategy.”

Saingam completed her doctorate in epidemiology at the Prince of Songkla University in 2012, and has served as a researcher at the University’s epidemiology unit since, as well as a researcher at the Thailand Substance Abuse Academic Network since 2014.

Shorenstein APARC Postdoctoral Fellows

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Chang’s research interests are comparative policy analysis and political institutions in East Asia, mainly South Korea and Japan. While at Shorenstein APARC, Chang will conduct research on how countries respond differently to the same external challenges, and how institutions are interpreted and applied in different ways.

His dissertation, which he seeks to build upon, is titled “The Sources of Japanese Conduct: Asymmetric Security Dependence, Role Conceptions, and the Reactive Behavior in response to U.S. Demands.” It is a qualitative comparative case study of how key U.S. allies in Asia – namely Japan and South Korea – and major powers in Europe - the United Kingdom and France responded to the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.

“East Asia is a treasure island of new theory building because some of the big challenges facing East Asia – finding a new role for Japan, denuclearization of North Korea, unification of the Korean peninsula, democratization of China and reconfiguration of its relations with the world, and development and integration of Southeast Asian countries – are truly new ones…”

Chang completed his doctorate in political science from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2014.

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Ravanilla’s research interests are political economy and governance, comparative politics and Southeast Asia. While at Shorenstein APARC, Ravanilla will research how political selection impacts governance, and evaluate possible routes for incentivizing capable and virtuous citizens to run for public office.

His project titled “Nudging Good Politicians” looks at the case of the Sangguniang Kabataan, a governing body in the Philippines comprised of elected youth leaders. Ravanilla aims to apply his research to develop and scale up programs for politicians, especially those at the onset of their careers, which would include specialized leadership training and merit-based endorsement.

“If we could design a policy that screens-in and incentivizes competent and honest citizens to run for office, would it play a catalytic role in improving the quality of the political class, and ultimately, the quality of government?”

Ravanilla is also a Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) Young Southeast Asia Fellow for 2015-16. He will complete his doctorate in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan in summer 2015.