By Dr. Carter Tseng

Dr. Carter Tseng is Give2Asia’s Chairman of the China Earthquake Committee. Founded by The Asia Foundation in 2001, Give2Asia provides advised grantmaking and consulting to philanthropists and donors. Read a report on Give2Asia’s work in earthquake-affected areas. For more information on Give2Asia’s work, please contact Gillian Yeoh at gyeoh@give2asia.org or 415.743.3336.

A year has passed since the Sichuan Earthquake and, while much has been accomplished, there is still so much more to be done. Last month I again had the opportunity to visit the earthquake affected area along with several Give2Asia colleagues and donors. As I have been from the start, I was impressed by the resilience and optimism of the people we met. Despite the loss of their homes, jobs and, in some cases, loved ones, they are moving forward and working hard to rebuild their lives.

Most of the 5.5 million people who lost their homes in the earthquake are still living in temporary shelter communities, and many of these people will never be able to return to their original towns and villages because of the damage done by the quake. While the government is providing some subsidies for home reconstruction, many of the victims do not have the means to raise the additional funds needed to rebuild their homes. However, this is just the start to the challenges the survivors face. The economic hardships created by the disaster make it difficult for these families to send their children to school, which will have a long-term impact of the prospects for their children’s futures. Income-generating opportunities are limited in many of the affected communities, resulting in significant migration of young men and women looking for work in other parts of China. The people there need skills training, capital, and leadership training to reinvigorate the area’s economy.
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By Chen Liuting

Chen Liuting is The Asia Foundation’s Executive Program Assistant in China. She can be reached at chenliuting@asiafound.org.cn.

On March 6, 2009, over 30 villagers in Mingyue Village at Anxian of Sichuan – near the epicenter of the devastating 2008 earthquake – gathered at the village committee’s meeting room. They were coming together, almost a year later to join their first participatory planning workshop to discuss how to re-start productive activities in this earthquake-affected community. Representing all of the 485 households in the village, participants included village leaders, women’s organizations representatives, and ordinary villagers. Some of them just finished rebuilding their houses that had collapsed in the earthquake, while the rest were still in the process of rebuilding. However, most of them had one problem in common: rebuilding their homes was costly, most of their money, if not all, was now gone, and they were having difficulty resuming agricultural activities. They all knew it was unlikely they would get government support any time soon to assist them in rebuilding their livelihoods. Anxian was one of the 10 worst hit counties in China, according to the central government; the local government’s initial focus was on reconstructing the country’s major infrastructure facilities in the county.
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By Michael Howe

Michael Howe is Give2Asia’s President & CEO. He can be reached at mhowe@give2asia.org.

Schools and homes collapsed, and 80,000 people were left dead or missing following the May 12, 2008 earthquake in China. In addition to leaving millions of people surviving in shattered communities across Sichuan Province, the quake is now marked as a turning point for Chinese philanthropy.

Prior to the earthquake, philanthropy in China was a concept and activity relegated to the ultra wealthy within the country, and to corporate philanthropy from domestic and international businesses. However, the earthquake changed all of that - beginning with a groundswell of support from tens of millions of Chinese people from all walks of life, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid.

At the end of April, in preparation for the earthquake’s one-year anniversary, I joined trustees, staff and donors of Give2Asia for a visit to China, including a tour of the earthquake-affected areas, followed by a series of discussions in Beijing to consider the future of Chinese philanthropy.
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By Bulbul Gupta and Pan Yi

Bulbul Gupta is The Asia Foundation’s Grants Manager for Programs and Private Philanthropy. Pan Yi is the Program Manager for Disaster Management in China at The Asia Foundation in Beijing. They can be reached at bgupta@asiafound.org and panyi@asiafound.org.cn, respectively.

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake struck central China leaving more than 86,000 people dead and missing and some 15 million homeless. In the year since this disaster, the Chinese government has undertaken the enormous task of rebuilding homes and schools through an innovative twinning approach, allocating rural and urban areas hit by the earthquake to various provinces and cities across China to assist in the reconstruction. The goal is to complete the rebuilding of rural homes and schools by the end of this year.

The progress in reconstruction is a major achievement, but there has been something else of equal significance, and that is progress in the government’s approach to disaster management. It is markedly more open than it was during major natural disasters in the 1990s, in terms of providing information about reconstruction and in terms of coordinating and cooperating with the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and community groups on disaster relief and management. The government plans to mark the one year anniversary of the earthquake, known in China as “5-12,” with events to raise public awareness about disaster preparedness.
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By Zhao Lijian

Mr. Zhao Lijian is The Asia Foundation’s Environment Program Manager in Beijing where he develops and manages projects including a Pearl River Delta initiative focusing on cleaner production in the industrial sector, clean water, and environmental entrepreneurship training. He is a LEAD (Leadership for Environment and Development) Fellow and holds a MSc. degree in Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), Lund University in Sweden. He can be reached at zhaolijian@asiafound.org.

When the lights went off one night late last month at Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium (officially known as the National Stadium) and the Water Cube, it did not signal the end of the country’s glory surrounding all things Olympic. Rather, it signaled a commitment to protect the environment and combat new climate change. This was the first time ever that China participated in the March 28 Earth Hour activities that included switching off lights at landmark structures throughout the city. Besides Beijing, 18 other Chinese cities – including Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Wuhan – joined the effort. Turning the lights out reflects Chinese businesses’ and ordinary citizens’ increasing awareness of environmental issues.
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By J. Stapleton Roy

J. Stapleton Roy is Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute and a former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. He is a member of The Asia Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Below is a link to his analysis for Woodrow Wilson Center’s April 2009 edition of Centerpoint.

The recent confrontation between a U.S. naval vessel and five Chinese ships in international waters south of Hainan Island provides a timely reminder that managing our relationship with China will be one of the major challenges facing the Obama administration…read more.

By Yeling Tan

Yeling Tan is The Asia Foundation’s Consultant in Singapore. She can be reached at ytan@asiafound.org.

Significant global trends are combining to make transparency and disclosure regulation one of the most important and exciting areas in which government and civil society can be working to transform and strengthen local governance structures. Not only are advances in electronic and digital communications enabling people to access information that governments may not want publicized; ideas and norms have fundamentally shifted. It is increasingly expected across societies that “good” governments are transparent and open, and practitioners are also actively recognising that transparency can be a useful regulatory tool to improve performance across a range of governance sectors, from economic issues to environmental, health, and corruption concerns.
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By Chris Plante

Chris Plante is The Asia Foundation’s Director of the Environment Program. He can be reached at cplante@asiafound.org. Recently, he participated in a panel discussion titled “Water Worries: Balancing the Water We Need with the Water We Have” aired on City Visions Radio.

Thinking about World Water Day this Sunday, March 22nd, and the 2009 World Water Day theme of Transboundary Water, “sharing water, sharing opportunities,” I am reminded of “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost’s 1914 poem in which he asks why two neighbors must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. Today, the unwritten rule – that good fences make good neighbors – makes plenty of sense to most of us. Our cities and suburbs, farms and factories, power plants and parks, and roads and rivers share common geography, boundaries, and neighbors.
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The economy was at the top of the agenda at the 14th ASEAN summit this past week in Cha-am, Thailand. Just beforehand, on February 26, 2009, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of ASEAN and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation, laid out some of the issues at the 2009 ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (ABIS) in Bangkok.

In his remarks, he stated: “Others outside are convinced that ASEAN, in cooperation with the Plus Three countries (China, Japan and Korea), will be another pool of growth and a centre of dynamism post-crisis. A new landscape is being developed with multi-centres; no longer dependent on the United States or Western Europe.”
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By Allen Choate

Allen Choate is based in Tokyo as The Asia Foundation’s Vice President for Partners in Asian Development. He can be reached at achoate@asiafound.org.

The Japanese foreign affairs establishment welcomed Secretary Hillary Clinton’s February 16-18 visit to Tokyo with a strong dose of positive pleasure and a tad of uncertainty–even anxiety.

The country is delighted by the fact that Secretary Clinton chose to make Tokyo her very first stop on her inaugural trip as Secretary of State. The visit has also derived considerable comfort from her recent repeated description of the Japan-U.S. alliance as the “cornerstone of U.S. policy in Asia.” Finally, the Japanese public seems very pleasantly surprised by the widely-reported — but still unconfirmed — news that Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University, the father of “smart power” and a knowledgeable observer on Japan-U.S. relations, has been offered the role of U.S. Ambassador to Japan by the Obama administration.
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