On May 20-21, 2006, the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) of Stanford University and the China Institute for Science and Technology Policy (CISTP) of Tsinghua University will co-sponsor a workshop in Beijing, China, with the collaboration of Zhongguancun Science Park and the Industrial Technology Research Institute. The English version of the proceedings will be published by SPRIE.

Theme and Topics

The theme is the progress in and challenges to Greater China's innovative capacities. The workshop will include discussions of key drivers of innovative capacity: the inputs, processes, institutions, management strategies and outputs, including evidence of innovative capacities as demonstrated in new products, processes, services or business models.

The workshop will focus on information technology and telecommunications, focusing on development within and linkages among Mainland China and Taiwan, plus Singapore and Silicon Valley. Workshop sessions will include:

Statistical indicators

Corporate R&D: Multinational and domestic firms

University and research institute R&D

Science and technology human resources

Regional innovation

New technologies and business models

Papers invited include case studies of products and of firms, analysis of trends and cross-industry or cross-regional comparisons.

Workshop Format

Attendance at the two-day workshop will be by invitation only. More than twenty papers will be presented and discussed by a group of international scholars; panel participants will include senior industry leaders and government policy makers. The workshop format will facilitate discussions.

Recently, a Russo-Turkish strategic relationship has emerged. Trade in general and energy (gas) supplies in particular play a key role in shaping ties between the two countries. But Moscow and Ankara seem to be on the same page too with regard to major regional issues as well: the Iraq war, Iran's nuclear program, security in the Black Sea-Caspian area, and "frozen conflicts" in the South Caucasus. Despite being a NATO member and an EU candidate country, Turkey appears to be much closer to Russia than to the West on all these issues.

Moreover, with the Iraq situation becoming ever more volatile in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, and the anti-Turkish sentiments on the rise in many European countries, Ankara is deeply dissatisfied with the nature of its relations with Western powers and is, therefore, seeking new strategic allies. In this context, Moscow looks like a natural and valuable partner. Russia, for its part, is also going through a rough patch in its relations with the West and is looking for prospective allies.

Interestingly, the Turkish-Russian rapprochement is accompanied by heated internal debates on Russia and Turkey's international identities and the re-emergence in both countries of Eurasianism -- the ideology that, among other things, promotes historical and cultural affinity between Russia and Turkey.

Igor Torbakov is a historian and analyst who specializes in the political affairs of the former Soviet Union. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was a Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York; and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey and writes regularly on these issues for a variety of publications.

Christine Scheiber is the Microsoft Research Scholar on Corruption on the Rule of Law at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Her current research examines corruption in the extractive industries (in particular hydrocarbons and diamonds) and how international anti-money laundering instruments can help to prevent and combat political corruption and further the restitution of ill-gotten funds. She received her PhD from the London School of Economics. Her dissertation advances a functionalist theory of the design of international institutions with a focus on international institutions that deal with illicit flows of money, small arms, narcotics and conflict diamonds. She pursued her undergraduate studies in Switzerland and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po), Paris, France.

How have intersecting legacies of colonialism and militarization combined with recent forces of globalization to produce new kinds of social identities and movements for political change? How do activists in these social movements contest hegemonic national identities in favor of a multicultural Japan or a global human rights discourse? How do legacies of Japanese colonialism animate current systems of globalization?

The first round table, entitled "Identity Politics and its Social Movements" will bring together a group of scholars examining current identity politics of "ethnic minorities" such as Ainu, Burakumin, Okinawans, and Zainichi (resident Koreans), many of whom are affected by the legacies of colonialism.

The second round table, "Gender, Colonialism, and Militarism in Japan and Okinawa" will focus on groups affected by continuing militarism and globalization such as sex workers, children born of military personnel and those organizing against military occupation and its attendant gendered violence. The invited speakers for this round table are the Okinawan writer, journalist and anti-military activist--Chinin Ushii, Margo Okazawa-Rey, co-founder of the US-East Asian-Puerto Rico Women's Net Work Against US Militarism, and Ueno Chizuko, the renown and highly influential feminist scholar. Japanese Studies Postdoctoral Fellows Michele Mason and Setsu Shigematsu will participate and act as facilitators for this round table.

Symposium Schedule:

9:00 am ~ Opening Comments by Workshop Organizers

9:30 - 11:00 ~ Roundtable One:

Global Human Rights, Identity Politics and Social Movements

Aiuchi, Toshikazu (Otaru University of Commerce)

Befu, Harumi (Stanford University)

Davis, John (Michigan State University)

Mushanokoji, Kinhide (Osaka University of Economics and Law)

Tsutsui, Kiyoteru (facilitator)(Stanford University/Stony Brook University)

15 minute Break

12:30~ Open discussion with all workshop participants facilitated by Kiyo Tsutsui

12:30 - 2:00 ~ Lunch break (buffet lunch)

2:00 - 3:30 ~ Roundtable Two:

Gender, Colonialism and Militarism in Okinawa and Japan

Chinin, Ushii (Okinawan public intellectual, writer and journalist)

Miho Kim (to be confirmed)

Okazawa-Rey, Margo (Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University and

co-founder East Asia-US-Puerto Rico - Women's Network Against Militarism)

Ueno, Chizuko (Tokyo University)

Mason, Michele (Facilitator)(Stanford University)

Shigematsu, Setsu (Facilitator)(Stanford University)

15 minute Break

3:45 - 5:00 ~ Open discussion with all workshop participants facilitated by Michele Mason and Setsu Shigematsu

5:00 pm ~ Closing Comments by workshop organizers

Co-Sponsored by the Stanford Society of Fellows in Japanese Studies and the Center

for East Asian Studies

The United Nations Secretariat--the main part of the UN bureaucracy directly under the Secretary-General--has arguably changed or been challenged more than any other part of the UN system in recent years, with more and more mandates and rising expectations. Though much attention has been given to the reform of the Security Council, and though Washington has made UN 'management reform' a core pillar of its UN policy since the Oil-for-Food scandal, the UN Secretariat has nevertheless proved singularly impervious to even the common sense suggestions for improvement. In many ways, there is a greater gap today than at any time in the past between what the Secretariat does, what it's meant to do, and the capacity it has. Why has improvement been so difficult and what have been the recurrent mistakes of UN reform efforts? With the election of a new Secretary-General due in late 2006, can we think about the UN bureaucracy in a different and more practical way?

Thant Myint-U is a visiting senior fellow at the International Peace Academy. He is also a senior advisor to the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum at the Social Science Research Council and a Fellow of the Cambridge University Centre for History and Economics.

From 2000-2006 he worked in the United Nations Secretariat, first for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and then for the Department of Political Affairs (DPA). From 2004-5 he was Chief of DPA's Policy Planning Unit of the Department of Political and in 2005-6 he was a Senior Political Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. In 2004 he was also a member of the Secretariat of the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

Thant Myint-U has also served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, with UNTAC in Cambodia in 1992-3 and with UNPROFOR and UNMIBH in the former Yugoslavia from 1994-6. In 1994 he was the UN's senior spokesman in Sarajavo.

From 1994-1999 Thant Myint-U was a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, where he researched and taught Asian and British imperial history. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1988, his master's degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1992 and his PhD in history from Cambridge University in 1996.

He is the author of several published and broadcast works, including two books: The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and The River of Lost Footsteps: Remembering Burma's Past (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006 forthcoming).