 In case you didn't realize that this is Think Tech. Think Tech Hawaii, I'm Jay Fidel. It's three o'clock and we're doing community matters. And the question before the house is how COVID has affected the annual poll shown lecture and other programs at UH. And we have for this discussion, one of my favorite people at UH, Shirley Daniel. She joins us from home. Thank you, Shirley. Thanks for being here. Aloha Jay, it's my pleasure. It's good to see you. Yeah, great to see you. So let's talk first about the poll shown lecture because that is coming soon. And it's an example, if you will, of an ongoing program at UH that has outreach and is valuable for everybody who watches it in terms of getting a global view. So how did it get started? What has it been like? Well, this is a lecture we normally have every year in person. Of course, this year we've had to modify. We'll talk about that. But the lecture was started in honor of our founder of the Pacific Asian Management Institute, Professor Paul Chung. And Paul started programs that helped to bring together people from Asia and the US, particularly scholars and students and business people to share ideas. This was back in the 1970s when it wasn't very common really for a lot of universities to have a lot of international emphasis. To a certain extent, US schools were very US centric and there wasn't as much focus on, particularly in business schools, on learning about other places because the US at that time really dominated business. But Paul was a visionary and he could see that actually other parts of the world were going to be more important and particularly Asia. And actually this came true in the 1980s. And so we had programs during that time where we were working with business people from all over the Asia Pacific region, particularly. And a lot from Korea, we did a lot with the Korean Banking Institute to help them build their financial services industry. And after Paul passed away, he actually was relatively young when he died, but he passed away in 1985. His widow endowed a lecture in his honor to be a memorial every year to his academic legacy. So we've had this lecture every year usually near the end of August or early September. And we bring in a speaker who knows something about international business or something that's a global interest. And this year we're doing it online. So we're going to have it focusing on China. Well, it's been very interesting. I've seen a few of them, I've filmed some of them. I've always been impressed with A, the quality of the speakers. I mean, this does Paul Chung honor to have speakers of this quality. And you manage it. You've been putting it together for years for the Pacific Asian Management Institute, which is connected with the Schuyler College of Business. And then subjects also. So I remember it was one, she was at a Navy admiral a couple of years ago. And then it was a Korean professor out of the law school. And most recently it was a Coast Guard admiral. In fact, the commandant of the Coast Guard just retired also come last year. So from what I've seen, it's been a remarkable series. It's the kind of thing where if you go and you listen, you want to go again because you know the level of what you're going to get and it opens your eyes to international issues. And Hawaii needs that. The university needs it, the community needs it and Hawaii in general needs it. So to open it up the way you have, it's really a community service show. Well, we really appreciate the involvement of you in ThinkTech to videotape these lectures. And I would encourage people who are interested, you can find those past events on YouTube through the ThinkTech website. And as you mentioned, we had Admiral Tom Fargo speak a couple of years ago. And this is when actually Korea was doing its testing of weapons and things. There was a lot of tension between the US and Korea and he addressed that. Then we had, as you mentioned, another year we had one of our law school professors who works with the United Nations and he's one of the top experts on people that have been disappeared. And he in fact himself had been held captive in North Korea for us and in Korea for some of his political protests against the government. And he was held in prison and tortured. And now we're fortunate that he's at the University of Hawaii. And then as you mentioned last year we had Paul Zucca who gave a tremendous lecture on climate change and how that is going to affect Hawaii. And particularly being with the Coast Guard he had a lot of insights on how our infrastructure or coastal infrastructure is going to be affected and the kind of investments that are gonna be needed in Hawaii in order to cope with climate change. We're already seeing a lot of the effects of that. And he had a lot of interesting insights and discussion about climate change around the world and also how it would affect Hawaii. Yeah, I'm a product of the Coast Guard. Sure, I don't know if you knew that. So I was particularly impressed with Paul Zucca. He's a very friendly man. But with all of them, including Thomas Fargo who is an amazing, amazing man, you hear them speak and you realize how much experience they've had, how much they know, how much they've been up on the shoulder of history or participated in history. A lot of them have participated in history in the Pacific region and it affects us to know about that. I think sometimes we forget that we are, like it or not, the bridge. We are the confluence of social political forces between the United States and Asia. And your speakers in the Paul Chang Memorial lecture really bring that home. So I'm really delighted that you are continuing even in the time of COVID to do this program. As a matter of fact, you should talk about it. Matter of fact, this program in the time of COVID, this one coming up in September, is actually more ambitious. Believe it or not, than the ones you've had in recent years because you have a number of speakers coming all participating on Zoom as a webinar. Yes, well, I've been thinking about this for the last few months, waiting to see if we were gonna be able to have the lecture in person. And when it became clear that we were not gonna be able to get 50 or 80 people in the room together, then I knew that I had to do my best to honor Paul's legacy and make sure that we still had the intellectual legacy represented. And fortunately, with the help of technology, we can still do this. And I was very, very pleased when I contacted you and you said, oh yes, let's see if we can make it work. So yes, this time we wanna focus on US-China relations. And we're lucky I'm going to bring in three different panelists for this particular discussion. And they all have different backgrounds and points of view on the China's rise and the US relationship with China. It's funny, you know, here we are, sometimes we don't realize through Pacific Forum and other we call them think tank foreign policy, think tank organizations in the state, we have an extraordinary amount of talent and wisdom about relations with China and other countries in Asia. And it's a card we should play because we know about this and you have speakers lined up for this program there are other speakers in town, other thought leaders in town who can really help us understand what's going on with China and what's going on with the relationship with China. I mean, China's changing. Some people say that China's going back to its old communist days, you know, communist China, the one we feared so much after Mao took over. And now China who had become a, you know, an economic power worthy of consideration by any business analysis of global economy, economics. And so we should understand that, we should understand how it affects the United States and us in Hawaii. So this is a very valuable program. In fact, I would say this program is world-class and we can teach, we here in Hawaii with speakers like the ones you've lined up, we can teach the world about these things beyond experts elsewhere, simply because of the proximity and the fact that we have, so much talent right here in Honolulu that can opine on really critical questions and look into the future of our relations with China and the rest of Asia. Yes, well, I am very lucky to have the opportunity at the University of Hawaii to get to know a lot of world-class experts from all different areas to be able to ask, you know, twist their arms when I need them to help out. And so in this program we have, I'll just talk in alphabetical order, we have Professor Charles Booth and he's with the Richardson School of Law. Now, Charles is a world-known expert on insolvency law. He gets contracts to look at what's going on in different countries and help different countries to revise their bankruptcy and insolvency laws. The World Bank calls on him after the last financial crisis he was put on a special committee by the World Bank to address non-financial institution insolvencies. But what's really interesting is he spent 16 or more years of his academic career at the University of Hong Kong. And so he specializes on Asia-Pacific law, business law, and he knows a lot of people in the Asia-Pacific region and particularly that have connections with Hong Kong and China. Actually, several years ago he held a conference here on insolvency law and he had experts from Japan and China and all over Asia from both prominent law firms and from academia to talk about what was going on in each of the countries. And I can guarantee you that as we move through this pandemic and try to survive and cope with the trauma to survive and cope with the tremendous changes that have happened, there are going to be a lot of business restructuring, a lot of insolvencies, a lot of stress on the financial system because as businesses are shut down, economies are shut down, then the banking system is going to have bad debts and governments are going to be stressed about how to help these industries stay afloat, what kind of stimulus can be done to revive their economies and this is going to be a worldwide problem. Well, this is his time. Yeah, the Asia approach to this and understanding what's going on in Asia compared to what's going on here is critical. Yeah, I mean, he's been doing this for, she was 20 years or more traveling all over Asia and helping countries reorganize their bankruptcy and insolvency rules. And that's been important, but not nearly so important as it is now because these countries like the US are in a global economic crisis. They're losing businesses, as you say. And one of the elements of surviving a country and an economy is to have reasonable, enlightened bankruptcy laws. Otherwise, you know, you're out in the street is what happens. So you have to be able to rely on, what do you want to call it, humane bankruptcy laws? Well, you know, it goes back to the concept of Schumpeter, the creative destruction, right? Obviously, when you have a crisis like this, it's going to accelerate that type of change and you need mechanisms, legal mechanisms to do that. And what's interesting, it's a little bit of a side note, but I've been working with some colleagues in Europe because after the financial crisis of eight, nine, the European Union developed a new preventive restructuring directive and they're trying to get all of the different nations in the EU to harmonize their bankruptcy and restructuring procedures to help companies go through a restructuring similar to what we have here with Chapter 11, where you don't necessarily have to liquidate the company because you want to be able to save the jobs and you want to be able to save the technology and the supply chains and all of the things that a going concerned business can do if perhaps they can either restructure their debt or perhaps develop some strategic partners or do something from an operational standpoint. So that was going on before this COVID and now we're going to see those kinds of initiatives to help, you know, the bankruptcy laws help firms survive and restructure in ways that will help the economies recover. Yeah, firms and thus economies and thus nations. So what Charlie is doing and talking about extremely valuable and extremely current, who else is speaking? Well, one of my contacts, a friend who's at the University of Colorado at Denver is Ji Chen. He's a professor there of senior lecturer in the finance area but he also leads groups of faculty to China on a regular basis. So if you were a faculty at some school maybe in Kansas or Oklahoma and you would like to learn about China then you could participate in the program where Ji would lead groups throughout China and help you visit businesses, help you visit government organizations and you would learn how China is operating and then you could go back to your university and teach your students more capably because you've actually been there and seen something. And of course a lot of schools are trying to develop relationships, exchanges and things with China because it's such an important part of the world economy. And we have to figure out our relationship with China. I mean, it is changing. Xi Jinping is a new model, if you will and that might be charitable. A leader in China, you know, some people say he's trying to be a dictator and stay for life. But the fact is it speaks of changes, changes in dealing with the Uyghurs, changes in dealing with Hong Kong. We've seen that in great detail recently and in discouraging detail and Taiwan and of course the U.S. which may or may not, you know, he may not be the protagonist in that. It could be Trump is the protagonist but our relationship with China has changed and is changing and should Joe Biden win it will change some more. So we have a sort of a dynamic experience going on in so many levels with China and it's incumbent on all of us to fully understand. So we have to have somebody from China on the panel for sure to, you know, to understand the essence of it and how it is changing. So, and who's the third one? Well, we have Dr. Chris McNally. He's been in Hawaii for a while. He's now at Shawanaut University. He's also affiliated with East West Center and he's a political economist and Chris is one of the most articulate experts on China and he can, he does such a tremendous job of relating the political, the economic and the practical issues that are going on. And particularly if you have the chance to talk to him instead of, you know, always doing the written word you can get some insights from him about what he sees he goes to China frequently and he has good contacts there so he can also say sort of interpret between the official policy and what's actually going on in the cities that are out and, you know, there are some sayings in China, you know, the emperors far away and so you do have a tug of war a lot of times in China between the central policies and what's going on in the different parts of the country because it is a huge country. You know, Chris McNally opened my eyes to China. I remember it was just about 20 years ago and he spoke at the Bank of Hawaii one time the bank invited him was in their executive dining room I'll never forget this one. You know, it's funny how some events, some lectures leave an impression on you for life and that was the case here and he explained to us that China was involved in a new capitalism that was changing. This is about the year 2000. It was changing everything and we had to watch it because it was going to have a huge effect not only on China but on everybody who dealt with China. I was so impressed. You talk about his articulate power. It's extraordinary. He opened my eyes. I have never, I had before that time I'd never really thought about it. After that time I think about it all the time. So he's a great speaker. No kidding Shirley. How can people find out more about this? How can they sign up for it? Well, we're going to be sending out an invitation list. If you're interested then perhaps you can email me at the university or PAMI. So if you just, we have an email PAMI at Hawaii.edu. You can send me an email and say you're interested. The lecture is going to be, we're going to have a webinar format on September 11th and it'll be in the morning, Hawaii time. And for those of you who can't participate in the live webinar afterwards, we'll try to make a edited version that will be available where you can stream it at your convenience afterwards. But if you'd like to be part of the webinar, particularly those of you who are working in China, you want to be able to ask specific questions of the panelists. Please let us know and we'll try to make sure that we invite you to the live interactive webinar. So again, the email you can send is PAMI at Hawaii.edu. Pacific Asian Management Institute, part of the Shatner School. So I'll be talking about organizing this or reorganizing it in the time of COVID and it opens up a whole discussion. We have a few minutes left for that. And that is the discussion about the role that the university and education plays in reimagining our economy, not only for programs like this, although this is a good example, but for programs that raise awareness in the community in general. And what do you want to say? Improve the workforce, make the workforce more current to a reimagined economy, an economy with better different skills, skills that will deal with, you know, how things are going to work after we come out of this COVID experience. So can you talk about that? I'm sure there's been a lot of discussion at the university, by David Laster, by, you know, the provost and by you. Well, I think obviously at the university and all of us in education, we were among the first that had to say, we can't close down our operations, but we will have to adapt them to a new reality. So fortunately with digital technology, we can still communicate. We can still share information. We can still share files. And so when we had spring break last March, of course the university didn't come back face to face. And so for the classes that I was teaching, we had to have that week of spring break to just basically regroup and the university wanted to let students who were traveling know not to come back if they were going home for a spring break, just stay home and we'll let you finish your course in other ways. And so we're still adapting. Some people are quite good at the online education, some faculty, some students, others, they're having a few growing pains. It's not always easy to be at home all the time. And one of the constraints that I can see now in this situation in Hawaii is that we do need to beef up our digital infrastructure. There are a lot of people who don't have a high speed enough internet connection. There are many families that don't have enough devices. So if you've got mom and dad and three kids trying to work at home, you need a fast connection, a strong connection because you're going to be, you know, that's a lot of people pulling on that bandwidth and you need devices for all those people. And I know a lot of times parents have had tried to limit their kids' screen time. And so, you know, they don't want to have a device for each kid. We all know that the technology can become obsolete. But I think with the situation we have now and with what I see going forward, I think investments in this kind of digital infrastructure are going to be very important. And so, you know, maybe we need to come up with new business models to provide that where, like instead of having to buy textbooks in the schools, maybe the kids get a laptop instead or an iPad or some sort of tablet. I know several years ago I did some work with Intel. In fact, one of our Paul Chung speakers several years ago was one of the people on Intel's venture capital arm in India. And they were doing a lot of things where they would have preloaded tablets that they would provide in the developing world. So, you didn't have to have an internet connection to get all the books or things that were loaded on the tablet. So, there are just a lot of things that we can do to help our community increase their skill levels, increase their comfort with technology, improve the service level and productivity in almost every facet of our economy. From tourism to business. And those are the things that I think we need to do. The conversation, even among economists, some university economists and some Bishop Street economists has been, should we let the economy of Hawaii grow organically all by itself and let the market decide what areas of economic activity should prevail or should we try to incentivize certain kinds? And my own view of it, I was an economics major, by the way, in college, which was 200 years ago, by the way. But my own view of it is in the modern world with complex possibilities, you can't let it happen organically because then you have strange results. That the government has to be smart and the government has to incentivize certain industries and certain activities. And I'm thinking, frankly, of San Diego, which wanted to incentivize big pharma and successfully did that over a period of a couple of decades. They changed everything in San Diego and at least before COVID, they were very successful. And I guess they'll be successful afterwards because of the need for therapeutics and vaccines. Of course, that's where the companies are. But in Hawaii, you know, we never did that. We always fell back on this organic thing and hotels were easy money, so let's do hotels. Bottom line is that we are forced now. And I think David Lesser and others at the university, including you, have come around to the notion that university can be, should be a leader in deciding as a matter of policy what areas of economic activity should be incentivized. And then, you know, the legislature hopefully would pick up on that, the governor would pick up on that and find incentives. And then the university can be the one. So that's a kind of you hero question. And a Schradler College of Business question. But then after that, you know, you get to training a workforce, a workforce that is competent and visibly competent so that capital interests on the mainland, you know, or wherever they are, hopefully that some of them are here. We do have money here. We have money in the form of some of the big trusts. We have money in the form of the Employees Retirement System who could invest in these businesses. They would invest in the labor, in the skilled, newly skilled, newly competent labor. You know, it used to be, I'm just lining this up so you can respond Shirley. It used to be that we would say that first you have to have the capital, then you build the labor. But I was saying before, this may not be that time anymore. We may have to have the labor to attract the capital instead of the capital to attract the labor. So what are your thoughts about all of that big jumble question? Well, I think all you have to do is look at the stock market now and you'll see that most of the successful companies are not capital intensive companies. And in Hawaii, our legacy was always a land-based economy, whether it was agriculture or tourism, hotels, very capital intensive and very land-based. And I think that this COVID pandemic for, I hate to say it, but I guess my if you, if you, if life hands you lemons make lemon cello. And so I think it's time for us to look at some information industries. So, you know, not just labor, again, I think it's information and knowledge based industries are going to be the future and we can see it's already here. Now, some of the things that David Lassner talked about in his recent memo were social services and that interested me. Because I, you know, my view of it is we do have some people at the health department in the charitable sector who you could say are social services, but we don't have a level of confidence that really should we should have to meet the demand of social services in the time of COVID. Because people are, you know, hungry. People are discouraged. People don't know how they're going to live and spend their lives and social services become more and more important now. And that's one thing. Another thing I should say the university could emphasize and train up. For example, it wouldn't hurt this community to have a thousand brand new social workers to help people out in their businesses, don't you think? Well, I think I know for sure based on some other work I've done we have a shortage of doctors. We have a shortage of a lot of medical technical people and whether it's mental health, social work, definitely there's a shortage of people who have those skills that could help. And I think, frankly, we have a lot of people who have been working in the tourism industry that have good personalities for that. They're friendly, they're caring. They just didn't choose that because perhaps the easier to visualize job might have been in tourism. Right. It was always in my years of practicing law people went into tourism because it was easy and the money would fall right out of the tourist pocket. It was not challenging. Now we are challenged and I really suggest that the university could do some tremendous outreach here and the question I would put to you is which step goes first? The left foot, the right foot how does the university do that? Because the university could yield such enormous value to this community. It could wake the community up such as when I was woken up by Chris McNally back when to new possibilities. It could train these kids to have great careers and good paying jobs. It could attract capital however much you need. It could rebuild the state actually we absolutely have to do that and it could make a life for us all of us. So what step first? Left foot? Right foot? At this point there is no better investment than we can make into training skills, technology and even basic education and thinking. So if people cannot go to work, if the hotels are closed or if the restaurants aren't operating, we should make it very easy for people to take classes at the university. And when I say easy we may need scholarships. I've always felt like instead of just giving someone an unemployment check because they can't go to the regular job maybe part of that employment check condition is that you're doing something that will upgrade your skills when you do go back to work or allow you to take some courses that will help you reposition yourself so I guess I'm definitely not a Republican but on the other hand I do think that perhaps there are ways to use this time to help people think about hey what could I do if I can't go back to this job what would be some of the possibilities and I think the university could help a little bit by advertising certain types of jobs or certain programs you know perhaps ramping up some introductory or non-credit things. You can't make people do a job they hate but you could give them a taste and you might find they actually like it. Yeah and furthermore although some training requires you to be in the room subject to distancing and masks and what have you other training lots of other training can be on Zoom just like this now today and like at the PANI program in September so the university is getting more depth at Zoom and other programs like that and I suggest that maybe a good part of this could be accomplished by Zoom for less money an easier entry by the people in the community and I hope that happens surely and I think the Paul Chung lecture is a good example of taking world class information, teaching people locally, making them more aware, more confident. Thank you so much Shirley, thank you for coming on, thank you for putting together the Paul Chung memorial lecture for all these years and doing it again this year. Shirley Daniel, she's with the Scheidler College of Business and she is a force at Minoa thank you so much. Thank you Jay, look forward to seeing you on September 11th. Yes ma'am.