About the Event: In this seminar, energy and natural resources sector policies of the three former communist countries in Asia - Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan - in close geographic proximity to Russia and China will be considered. There are similarities in the nature of transition from communist regime to democratic societies in these three states, although major differences in social and cultural issues exist. The reliance on energy in neighboring countries Russia and China as well as export of raw materials to these markets have major influence on specific policy agenda. Particular attention is given to energy minerals and trade balance and imbalance thereof. 

About the Speaker: Dr. Undraa Agvaanluvsan currently serves as the president of Mitchell Foundation for Arts and Sciences. She is also an Asia21 fellow of the Asia Society and co-chair of Mongolia chapter of the Women Corporate Directors, a global organization of women serving in public and private corporate boards. During 2021-22, she served on the WCD Global Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. Dr. Undraa Agvaanluvsan is a former Member of Parliament of Mongolia and the chair of the Parliamentary subcommittee on Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to being elected as a legislator, she served as an Ambassador-at-large in charge of nuclear security issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia, where she worked on nuclear energy and fuel cycle, uranium and rareearth minerals development policy. She is a nuclear physicist by training, obtained her PhD at North Carolina State University, USA and diploma in High Energy Physics at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. She conducted research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA and taught energy policy at International Policy Studies Program at Stanford University, where she was a Science fellow and visiting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. She published more than 90 papers, conference proceedings, and articles on neutron and proton induced nuclear reactions, the nuclear level density and radiative strength functions, quantum chaos and the Random Matrix Theory, including its application to the modeling of electric-grid resilience.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

The Henan bank protest, the Evergrande crisis, and the ongoing local government debt issue in China all point to one thing: there’s something wrong with the country’s banking system. Beijing needs to better regulate the numerous small banks that are now intimately intertwined with much of China's economic challenges. 

They’re working on it, but there’s no easy solution.

Adam Y. Liu will tell us the origins of the dilemma, the increasing role of small banks in China and local development, and what tradeoffs China will likely have to make to prevent a run-away banking crisis.

Speaker

Adam Y. Liu is assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His main research interests include Chinese politics and political economy. He is currently working on a book project that explores how central-local politics drove the formation, expansion, and operation of what he calls a "state-owned market" in China's banking sector. The project is based on his dissertation, which won the 2020 BRICS Economic Research Award. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral associate with the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. 

Michael McFaul, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and other members of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions, will speak about and answer questions about the group's two new white papers, "Individual Sanctions Roadmap: Recommendations for Sanctions against the Russian Federation,” and “Strengthening Financial Sanctions against the Russian Federation.”

Additional panelists include:
 

• Dr. Andriy Boytsun, Founder and Editor of the Ukrainian SOE Weekly; Independent Corporate Governance Consultant; Former Member of the Strategic Advisory Group for Supporting Ukrainian Reforms
   
• Jacob Nell, Former Chief Russia Economist and Head of European Economics, Morgan Stanley
   
• Natalia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research, Kyiv School of Economic
   
• Daria Sofina, National Agency on Corruption Prevention, Ukraine

Michael McFaul, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and several other members of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions will speak about and answer questions about the group's new white paper, "Action Plan on Strengthening Sanctions against the Russian Federation." The event will begin with brief presentations from these speakers, followed by comments from other members:
 

• Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics at Sciences Po Paris and former Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.z
• Edward Fishman, former Russia and Europe Lead at the U.S. Department of State Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation and Member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.
• Daniel Fried, former State Department Sanctions Coordinator and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.
• Iryna Mudra, Chief Compliance Officer at the State Savings Bank of Ukraine.
• Natalia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research at the Kyiv School of Economics.
• Dr. Benjamin Schmitt, Project Development Scientist at Harvard University, Senior Fellow for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Rethinking Diplomacy Fellow at Duke University.

To watch the recording of the event, click here.

This event is co-hosted with the East Asia Institute (EAI) in Korea.

Event Time: November 18, 4:00 - 6:00 PM (PST) / November 19, 9:00 - 11:00 PM (Japan and Korea)
Please register for this event at EAI event page.

The ROK-U.S. and U.S.-Japan joint statements have increased expectations for a possible expansion of security and economic cooperation among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. However, heightened U.S.-China strategic competition, as well as persistent challenges in the region such as historical tensions and the North Korea threat, have complicated the strategic calculus of U.S., South Korea and Japan. Under these circumstances, the South Korea, the U.S. and Japan must define their economic and security interests and seek ways to maintain friendly relations among the three countries. This seminar will discuss security and economic cooperation among Korea, the United States and Japan in the era of strategic competition between the U.S. and China.

Panel 1 on security:

Park Joon Woo, former Chairman of the Sejong Institute; former South Korean Ambassador to E.U. and to Singapore

Tomiko Ichikawa, Director General of the Japan Institute of International Affairs

Gen. Vincent Brooks, former USFK Commander

Moderated by Young Sun Ha, Chairman of East Asia Institute; Professor Emeritus, Seoul National University

Panel 2 on economic cooperation:

Young Ja Bae, Professor of Political Science and Diplomacy, Konkuk University, Korea

Andrew Grotto, Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance, FSI, Stanford University

Kimura Fukunari, Professor of Economics, Keio University, Japan

Moderated by Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow, Stanford University