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| Seminars and Talks |
Spring 2003
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4/11/2003, Friday, 8pm Rm21/59, Building 120 [map]
Speaker: ZHENG Wentong (JD Candidate, Stanford Law School; PhD Candidate, Economics)
Topic: Battles for Justice: Constitutional Rights, Political Ideologies, and Civil Societies in America
Abstract:
In this talk, we will pick up where we left out last time and continue our
saga of the American constitutional law. We will center our discussion on
the constitutional rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights (first ten
Amendments) and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
"Constitutional Rights" have played important roles in American society.
Those rights underlie many landmark Supreme Court decisions, such as
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (ending segregation in southern
states), Gideon v. Wainright in 1963 (establishing state governments'
obligation to provide free legal assistance to poor defendants in
certain criminal trials), and Roe v. Wade in 1973 (legalizing abortion).
"Constitutional rights" were also talked about when people burned the
Stars and Stripes in the streets, when the Boy Scouts kicked out
gay members, and when Enron's officers testified before Congress, etc. So
what are those "constitutional rights?" Why are they needed and how should
they be interpreted? Should they be guarded even in times of crises? We
will spend most of our time discussing these issues.
To a large extent, the "battles for justice" along the line of constitutional
rights can be seen as part of a larger debate along the line of political
ideology. Therefore, in the rest of the talk, We will talk about the
political battles among different camps, mainly the conservatives and the
liberals. The roles of mass media, think tanks, and civil organizations in
this "civil war" will also be discussed.
For some fun background reading, I would recommend "Gideon's Trumpet," a
narrative of the incredible events surrounding the aforementioned case of
Gideon v. Wainright. It described how a poor man, who knew in his heart
his rights were guaranteed by the United States Constitution, fought a
uphill battle for those rights, starting with writing his own appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court with a pencil in prison. It's a remarkable story of
David fighting Goliath and is a must read for people who are interested in
law and government.
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4/18/2003, Friday, 8pm, Rm21/59, Building 120 [map]
Speaker: BAI Yanchun (LLM Candidate, Stanford Law School; Partner, King & Wood)
Topic: Listed Companies in China and the Chinese Stock Market
Speaker Bio:
Bai Yanchun, Esq., is a founding partner of King & Wood, one of the premier law firms in China. He is currently an LLM candidate at Stanford Law School. For information on King & Wood, please check out:
http://www.kingandwood.com/htm/overviews.htm, and http://www.legal500.com/as500/firms/fp/asf30337.htm.
You may also view Yanchun's bio at http://www.kingandwood.com/htm/content.asp?id=2.
Mr. Bai personally started to get involved in the Chinese securities in 1992. He has witnessed and participated in the growth of the Chinese securities market. At this talk, Mr. Bai would like the discussion to be informal, and encourages questions from the audience.
Outline:
Mr. Bai will give a brief on the creation and development of Chinese securities market on the whole. The talk focuses on the major problems in the current market, corporate governance, IPOs, shifted center of regulating rational, business opportunities that lies ahead. All the points of view will reflect the sense of practical matters.
Major problems
1) SOEs
2) Majority shareholders/minority shareholders
3) Less liquidity
4) Retreat of state stockholders
5) Investors
6) Weak court to ensure legal protection
Corporate governance
1) Board of directors
2) Supervisory board
3) Shareholders' meeting
4) Related party transactions
5) Insider dealings
6) Incentive mechanism
7) Auditing
IPOs V. stock dividends
1) Procedures
2) Prospect: private enterprises and foreign funded enterprises
3) Competition of underwriting business
4) WTO: fund management/23% securities JV/49% 3 years after entry
Rational for regulation
1) Quota based
2) Disclosure based
3) Chinese characteristics
Business opportunities (research topics)
1) Management of state shareholding in listed companies
2) M & A
3) IPOs of private enterprises and foreign funded enterprises
4) Second board for hitech and high growth firms
5) Fund management-institutional investors
6) Privately placed funds
7) QFII
8) Assignment of non-tradable shares of listed companies
9) Class action law suits
10) Proxy contest
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5/9/2003, Friday, 8pm, Rm21/59, Building 120 [map]
Speaker: TAN Yingjia (MA Candidate, History Department, Stanford University)
Topic: Reconstructing Narrative Histories of Singapore: Lessons from 142 Years of Renaissance Historiography
Speaker Bio:
TAN Yingjia received the Singapore Press Holdings Overseas scholarship
in 1999 and completed a double major in Economics and History at
University of California at Berkeley in May 2002. His thesis on the
Jesuit mission in late-Ming China won the Collin Miller Prize, awarded
to the best study by an undergraduate in the field of Modern European
history. He is currently an MA candidate with the Stanford History
Department, specializing in Early Modern Europe and China. After
graduation, he will return to Singapore to work with the Chinese
language press in July.
Abstract:
On 9 November 2002, a group of intellectuals in Singapore from "The
Tangent", a Chinese-speaking forum, organized a discussion at the
Asian Civilization Museum, titled "Un/Learning Our Past". The three
papers presented at this meeting challenged the standard narrative on
Singapore's history presented in history textbooks and other
government-related media. However, it is extremely difficult to
examine Singapore's history from alternative points of view and
challenge official narratives for several reasons. Ever since
Singapore's independence in 1965, the nation's history towards self-
determination and its challenges after independence cannot be
separated from the history of the government of the Republic of
Singapore, such that one naturally assumes that there is no Singapore
history apart from political history. How can Singapore create
credible alternative interpretations to engage in dialogue with the
official historical narrative? How can Singapore construct history
that decentralizes the role of political figures and incorporate the
various points-of-view of those who participated or witnessed the
nation-building process?
In this talk, the speaker will address this issue by looking at how
the concept of the Italian Renaissance changes in Western
historiography for the past 142 years. From the conception of the
Renaissance studies as a field of cultural history by Swiss historian
Jacob Burckhardt in 1860, the criticism of the elitist nature of
Renaissance studies in the 1960's and 1970's and finally the
reemergence of the Renaissance as a vibrant and diverse field of
historical research in the last two decades, historical scholarship on
the Renaissance has constantly renewed itself by incorporating
criticisms from other schools of thought and appealing to a conception
of the past that changes with time. The study of secondary scholarship
on the Renaissance is not merely an academic exercise where knowledge
is pursued for its own sake. Renaissance historiography provides an
assemblage of methods for one to construct alternative historical
perspectives that takes into account that different groups of people
participated and understood historical events differently.
The speaker will provide a brief introduction of the political
implications of historical narratives in South-east Asian nations
after colonization and an outline of major events in 15th and 16th-
century Italian history--that eventually came to be considered as the
Italian Renaissance.
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6/6/2003, Friday, 8pm, Econ (Landau) 139 [map]
Speaker: KUO, Tai-chun (Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
Topic: 京剧的旋律与辞藻 (Chinese Opera, Its Melody and Rhetoric)
About the presentation and the speaker:
"此曲只应天上有，人间难得几回闻"
("This tune should only exist in Heaven. People on earth have few opportunities to enjoy.")
This is a second presentation of the topic with special emphasize on melody and rhetoric of Beijing Opera.
Professor Kuo will demonstrate her gifted voice and years of on-the-stage
experience. She is an outstanding scholar, an appreciator in different forms
of western arts, and a famous amateur Beijing Opera actress. Melting
Chinese traditional arts into western arts, Professor Kuo will lead us to
enjoy Beijing Opera in a modern mentality.
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6/20/2003, Friday, 8pm, Rm21/59, Building 120 [map]
Speaker: LI, Renqing (Associate Professor, Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Topic: Urban-Rural Inequality: Historical Origins and Recent Developments
Speaker Bio:
Prof. Li has been doing research on rural China for 10 years. He is an expert on a variety of rural issues, including local governance, grass-roots governmental finance, and rural discontent and collective action.
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