wscrc_admin, Author at WSCRC

Jun 04 2018

Jing DiPiero Appointed WSCRC Board Director

Ms. Jing DiPiero, Founder and CEO of DPR Consulting, LLC, was appointed board director at WSCRC’s board meeting on May 3, 2018. Ms. DiPiero is chair of WSCRC’s “Healthcare in China” working group.

Jing DiPiero grew up in Beijing, China, received her MBA degree and CPA designation in the United States along with extended experience in finance, hitech and management. She is the founder and CEO of DPR Consulting, LLC, an organization established by industry leaders in healthcare and global business. It introduces, educates and offers comprehensive medical solutions to Chinese patients, medical practitioners and administrators. It also works with Chinese hospitals and local governments in the field of medicine, innovation and health. DPR has partnered with the National Health and Family Planning Commission in medical exchanges that include the oncology conference co-hosted by DPR and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in China. As a believer of medical innovation and scientific advancement, DPR has been working with technology companies in Seattle on application of AR technology in medical education and HIMSS EMR system development.

DPR successfully host another year of the Precision Medicine Conference in China in 2018. This year’s conference was co-hosted by Suzhou Municipal Hospital with over 200 oncologists from Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and many other cities in attendance. President of Jiangsu Providence Medical Association, Ms. Yonghong Wang, Director of Health Commission in Suzhou, Dr. Weiliang Tan, Dr. Jennie Crews, medical director of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), and DPR founder, CEO, Jing DiPiero delivered welcome speeches.

A strong team of oncologists, radiologist and oncology surgeon from SCCA spoke at the conference with leading oncologists from China about solid tumor, cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Mock tumor board and TedX on lung cancer were among the highlights of the two-day conference.

DPR currently with an office in Beijing is in the process of adding 2-4 offices in Southeast coastal cities this year to better service individual patients, hospitals, medical school and companies in the space of Medicine, Health and Innovation in China.

May 25 2018

Cross-border Talent Management and Recruiting: Outlook on China and Asia

On May 17, 2018, the Washington State China Relations Council convened a session of the Corporate Executive Briefing Series with panel discussion, “Cross-Border Talent Management and Recruiting: Outlook on China and Asia.” The panel featured executive search experts William Reffett and Thomas Young of Reffett Associates, and Catherine Pierce and John Hagen of Washington Search Partners.

Reffett Associates and Washington Search Partners, both WSCRC members, shared seasoned insights into effective cross-border executive search and placement. Reffett Associates, founded in 1994, has an impeccable record of successfully placing top executives across industries and around the world. Regarding Reffett’s approach to international executive search, Director of Operations Tom Young explained, “our model is, ‘we don’t try to be the expert, but we find out who the expert is and let them do their thing.’” This model has led Reffett to work closely with partners such as Agilium Worldwide and Chelsea Partners, whose specialties in in placing senior level executives in Asia complement Reffett’s experience in Stateside search.

Catherine Pierce, who spent a significant part of her career working on the ground in Asia, channeled her knowledge and experience into the field of executive search, co-founding Washington Search Partners in 2009. “I do search like I run business. It’s really simple when you look at it like that,” Catherine explained. She and WA Search Partners president John Hagen have a reputation for locating and placing women leaders in key executive positions. Catherine expressed her confidence that no matter how specific the parameters of a client, there is a qualified person for every position.

John Hagen added that a client can expand their network by partnering with a recruiting firm. The partnership also helps avoid the pitfall of exclusively hiring from within one’s own field, which in Hagen’s view puts a company at risk of stymying innovation. William Reffett concurred, noting that, “when you exhaust your personal network, you turn to us.”

Both firms strongly emphasized the significance of building a trust relationship with clients. “Recruiters are a bridge between cultures,” Young remarked, which makes it essential that the firm have a cultivated understanding of cultures on both sides of the border. This allows the firm to preempt the challenges that the new executive will face on the job and in their daily life as a local national, a US expatriate, or a foreign expatriate. Grasping the subtleties of client company culture, cross-cultural relations and candidate needs has translated to high retention rates for executives placed by both Reffett Associates and Washington Search Partners.

Summary Author: Trudy Boothman

May 17 2018

Lifelong Leadership: Assessing President Xi Jinping’s Power Consolidation

On May 14, 2018, WSCRC welcomed Dr. Victor Shih to this year’s fourth installment of the Policy Briefing Series. Shih is an associate professor of political economy at the University of California, San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. Following up on his November 2017 briefing which assessed outcomes of China’s 19th Party Congress, Dr. Shih provided insight into implications of President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power.

In March 2018, China’s state constitution was officially amended, making it illegal for Xi to be voted out of office. “Everything points to Xi serving for life,” Shih explained, and with many of Xi’s Zhejiang “clique” being promoted to the Politburo, Xi will “dominate the Politburo Standing Committee in the near future,” with a few more key promotions.

Though Xi initially lost followers subsequent to the anti-corruption campaigns of his first term, the outcomes of the 19th Party Congress proved that his shrewd strategic planning and positioning were ultimately successful. “Xi has been able to concentrate a lot of power in his hands,” Shih continued. This consolidation of power is demonstrated clearly in the immense restructuring of the central government’s ministerial system into a series of CCP commissions which will assert greater control over every policy area at the central, provincial, and local levels and most of which are helmed by Xi himself.

Xi’s tremendous consolidation of power also carries implications for the current US-China trade dispute. “Because of Xi’s almost limitless power,” Shih elucidated, “he has great latitude to negotiate. To the extent that they do not fundamentally undermine the ‘China Dream,’ Xi will happily make concessions.” In Shih’s view, President Trump’s resent statement regarding the softening of penalties on Chinese tech company ZTE is likely a signal to China that the US is still open to negotiation. Likewise, Shih foresees that Xi will find peaceful and harmless ways to reduce the trade deficit while avoiding concessions on real sticking points such as tech transfer policy, leaving these critical questions unresolved.

Summary Author: Trudy Boothman

May 17 2018

Contemporary Asian Art from Global Perspectives

On May 10, 2018, the Washington State China Relations Council convened the first session of the Chinese Art & Culture series at the Seattle Art Museum. Edward Gui, director of San Francisco-based NanHai Art, presented a seminar on Contemporary Asian Art from Global Perspectives.

Mr. Gui shared observations of trends in China’s contemporary art movement in terms of commerciality, government sponsorship, and global recognition. The institutional changes of the last decades combined with the ambition of contemporary artists in China has created a modern artistic phenomenon, which Mr. Gui is passionate about understanding and promoting.

A brief history of the Chinese contemporary art movement reveals that official government sponsorship marked a significant turning point in the direction of the movement. “Historically contemporary art was counter-cultural, counter-political and considered ‘experimental’ by the government, but the Shanghai Biennale was historic because it marked the government’s official support of the movement,” Gui explained.

Since that time, the Chinese government has contributed to defining the contemporary art culture, and China’s top art academies have received not only increased government attention, but also a deluge of applications from young artistic hopefuls to whom a career in the arts become a viable and respectable option. Collaborations between entrepreneurs, collectors, architects and artists have been another driving force in the creativity displayed in modern museums, art fairs and exhibitions.

Interest in contemporary Chinese art has skyrocketed in the past decades, as evidenced by the establishment of as many as 386 art museums in one year, many of which are located in second-tier and even remote locations. Similarly, specially designated art districts in major cities are attracting foreign tourists as well as nationals. Pre-1990 Beijing could boast not a single professional art gallery, but now more than 300 can be found in the art district alone.

Gui believes that the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition in 1989 Beijing was pivotal in initiating an East-West dialogue that has continued to flourish to the present day. The first Chinese contemporary art auction at Christie’s in 1998 again increased international interest. Since then, contemporary Chinese artists have been featured prominently in many of the world’s most distinguished venues, and Chinese auction houses rank the third and fourth largest in the world in terms of revenue.

Special thanks to NanHai Art and SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas for co-hosting this seminar.

Summary Author: Trudy Boothman

May 01 2018

China’s Uyghur Biodata Collection

On April 25, 2018, WSCRC welcomed Darren Byler as presenter at the Policy Briefing Series. Currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Byler studies emerging forms of art and politics amongst urban migrants in Northwest China. His research into the securitization of the region provided fodder for his presentation at WSCRC, “China’s Uyghur Biodata Collection.”

Byler adeptly traced the emergence of current political and social trends as they parallel the phases of infrastructure buildout beginning with roads and railways it the 20th Century. Television and radio arrived in the early 2000s, followed by the arrival of 3G networks and smart phones in 2010. Byler explained that this period marked the beginning of trends which altered the social, religious and political landscapes of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and led to the securitization being experienced today.

Physical and digital proximity to surrounding Turkic and Islamic cultures contributed to an increased interest in Islamic pious practice, which Byler noted has been heavily conflated with violence and political disturbance. Consequently, security measures have increased drastically in the past decade and pious Islamic practices and symbols have been outlawed. Police presence has intensified with “convenient police stations” being found every 400-500 meters throughout the province’s capital city of Urumqi. Redundant security checks have become a part of daily life with ID and facial scanning, checkpoints on roads, and more recently, the collection of biometric data from 18.8 million Uyghur people.

Byler discussed how security procedures have both created jobs and attracted investment from artificial intelligence companies. Additionally, while Uyghur people are subject to more strenuous screening than other ethnic groups in the region, young Uyghurs are often recruited into the police force. It remains to be seen how the massive amounts of data being collected from security screenings will be utilized and what precedents Xinjiang’s securitization will set for other regions or countries, Byler explained.

Special thanks to Darren Byler for sharing his findings at the Policy Briefing Series.

Summary Author: Trudy Boothman

Jing DiPiero Appointed WSCRC Board Director

Cross-border Talent Management and Recruiting: Outlook on China and Asia

Lifelong Leadership: Assessing President Xi Jinping’s Power Consolidation

Contemporary Asian Art from Global Perspectives

China’s Uyghur Biodata Collection

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