Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

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Ties That Bind
government officials in Washington, embassies and consulates in China, foreign governments,
human rights and other non-governmental organizations to keep international attention focused
on specific political prisoners and secure their release. In 2004 Kamm received the MacArthur
Foundation prize for his work. In February 2005, Dui Hua was granted special consultative
status by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It is to date the only independent
overseas organization focused on questions of human rights in China to have received
such status.
Operating on yet another level, the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation has for more than 25
years provided a non-governmental bridge to China that has supported its transition toward the
rule of law from what has historically been an administratively controlled society. The Foundation
opened its Hong Hong office in 1979, and its Beijing office is technically treated by the government
there as a branch of Hong Kong. Its principal focus is on administrative law, legal aid
and non-governmental organization (NGO) development, with funding from the U.S. Department
of Labor, the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, corporations
and the Chinese government itself.
The Foundation currently works in China on labor rights, under a U.S. Department of Labor
contract, and works with the Ministry of Justice on a range of legal programs, including a legal
aid project that allows citizens to sue the government. Working with the China State Council’s
Office of Legal Affairs, it has developed an administrative training program to support bringing
Chinese law into compliance with its World Trade Organization obligations. Programs of this
kind are important to investors, because they contribute to legal predictability and help to make
China’s system less arbitrary. China is also the largest recipient of the Foundation’s Books for
Asia program, under which 600 Chinese universities receive 300,000 new university textbooks
donated by publishers each year; China’s Ministry of Education covers local costs and ocean
freight to Shanghai.
The Asian Art Museum Builds a Cultural Bridge
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco hosts the world’s largest
collection on Chinese Art outside China, second only to the
National Palace Museum in Taipei. Nine thousand of its 16,000
objects are Chinese, principally jades, porcelains and bronzes.
San Francisco voters approved a bond measure in 1960 to
build a museum facility to house the renowned Asian art collection
of Chicago millionaire Avery Brundage. The Brundage wing
of the M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum opened in San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park in 1966.
In 1975 the museum presented the first major international exhibition
to travel outside of China since the end of World War