Special Seminar with Professor Gi-Wook Shin

Event Description
The Asia-Pacific region has seen extraordinary economic achievements. Japan's post-World War II transformation into an economic powerhouse challenging US dominance by the late 1980s was miraculous. China's rise as the world's second-largest economy is one of the 21st century's most stunning stories. India, now a top-five economy by GDP, is rapidly ascending. Despite its small population, Australia ranked among the top ten GDP nations in 1960 and has remained resilient. While cultivating, attracting, and leveraging talent has been crucial to growth in these countries, their approaches have varied widely, reflecting significant cultural, historical, and institutional differences. In his latest book, Stanford sociologist Gi-Wook Shin examines how these four talent giants sustained growth while navigating demographic crises, brain drain, and geopolitical tensions, offering valuable lessons for policymakers and scholars on the relationship between talent and economic power in the region and beyond. Given the highly contested immigration policies of the U.S. and Europe and the intensifying talent war between the U.S. and China, this talk could not be more timely.

About the Speaker
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology and a senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From 2005-2025, he directed the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and currently leads Stanford’s Korea and Taiwan Programs as well as the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, all of which he founded. His research explores nationalism, development, democratization, and international relations in Korea and Asia. He has authored or edited 27 books, including the recently published The Four Talent Giants (Stanford University Press, 2025). Before Stanford, he taught at Iowa and UCLA. Shin holds a BA from Yonsei University and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington.

This event is jointly hosted by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge.