Author: Hugh White
Peter Drysdale knows more than anyone about how to get things moving in the Asia-Pacific, so I pay a lot of attention to his views on the Rudd’s Asia-Pacific Community idea, and especially his critique of the sceptical views I have expressed about it. However I do not think we are as far apart as he suggests on the question of the right starting point for institution-building. Our differences are over how close we are to having reached those starting points, and over whether Rudd’s initiative brings us any closer.
First, I agree with Peter that the place to start building new institutions in Asia is not with a complex set of agreements on values, but with a much more austere set of rules – “the simplest rules of engagement for dialogue”, as Peter says in his post. Peter reads my call for a common set of principles as referring to a common set of values, but on the contrary I mean just the opposite. Read more…
Author: Kent Anderson
A report submitted to Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda this week from 80 members of his Liberal Democratic Party proposing a drastic increase in the number of immigrants allowed into Japan. The report recommends immigration to a level of 10 per cent of the population. As the population is now roughly 128 million people, this would be roughly 13 million people or about 11 million more foreigners than there are in Japan today (yes, a population around half that of Australia’s moving to Japan)
The first issue I ask about (see ABC Radio) is Japan’s homogeneity, multiculturalism, and xenophobia. As Tessa Morris-Suzuki has most convincingly taught us, Japan is not purely homogeneous. Yet, by any standards it is probably the most homogeneous country in the world by ethnicity, religion, social-economic class, media and educational socialisation, history (and had a long period as a closed-country — the sakoku period). The introduction of a large number of people not within that mainstream will without a doubt result in friction. I assert this without commenting normatively on whether that is a good thing or bad thing. The virtue or otherwise of homogeneity is a matter for another day.
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Author: Peter Drysdale
Processes, not principles: the base for regional architecture.
The big issue which PM Rudd has put on the table for the future of regional cooperation in Asia and the Pacific is the issue of how to build a political and security framework beyond the framework of economic cooperation that the existing architecture however incompletely helps to secure.
At last here is the beginning of a serious intellectual discussion of what the necessary elements of this might be for a region whose defining characteristic is pluralism – pluralism of political systems of intuitions, religions, and of course stages of economic development (see the debate over at Lowy here, here and Elek here). Thirty years ago the economists, concerned about securing politically the growing economic integration within a pluralist East Asia and Pacific economy, struggled with the same issues from this perspective.
The earlier debate about economic cooperation arrangements can usefully inform the current debate about constructing a stronger political and security architecture to reinforce what we have on the economic front. See Hadi Soesastro’s excellent post here.
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Author: Andrew MacIntyre
Kevin Rudd’s visit to Indonesia generated little media interest in Australia. Much more attention was focused on the more contentious Japan leg of his trip, reflecting the bilateral difficulties that have emerged between his and Yasuo Fukuda’s governments. This is a reversal of the pattern of much of the last 10 years, where Japan visits usually had a routine quality and Indonesia visits were usually related to drama of some sort. There had been little excitement or energy in the Japan-Australia relationship whereas the Indonesia-Australia relationship was driven by a seemingly never-ending series of disasters and worries.
This is about more than the micro-causes of what catches the interest of the mass media or even early diplomatic stumbles on Japan as the young Rudd government has sought to find its feet. At a deeper level this reflects changes in Asia, in particular the quiet transformation of Indonesia and the crystallisation of the geopolitical consequences of the long-term changes in China’s and Japan’s developmental trajectories.
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Author: Peter Drysdale
What will a McCain or Obama Presidency mean for Japan?
Weston Konishi of the US Council of Foreign Relations and Hitachi International Affairs Fellow in Japan provides the latest interpretation, and it’s a compulsory study for Australian government strategists, however much it’s based on a convenient perception more than complicated reality.
Konishi reckons that the McCain team is dominated by advisors well disposed to Japan and the Obama team by a core of China experts despite its recruitment of Republican Gordon Flake (an old Japan and Korea hand). There are shades of Japanese thinking about the advent of the Rudd government in Australia here.
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Author: Hugh White
Changes in the structure of power in Asia and the Pacific require the construction of a new Concert of Asian powers and that however difficult to set up, it has the best prospect of ensuring Asian security. Union, a la Europe is remote; American primacy is unlikely to remain; a balance of power system is unstable; but shared leadership in a concert among America and the Asian powers provides an alternative.
But it is a long-shot. To see just how hard it would be to build a concert of Asia in the Asian century, it helps to look at what the US, China and Japan would each have to accept to do it. Read more…
Author: Christopher Findlay
The WTO’s contribution to services reform is through its principles not its processes. Its processes exaggerate the anxieties which are impeding its own progress. We call for more effort to change services policy from opaque to transparent and to bring home the benefits of domestic reform.
The argument is set out below in and edited extract from my paper with Philippa Dee called Services: A ‘Deal-Maker’ in the Doha Round?, Chapter 3 in Monitoring Trade Policy: A New Agenda for Reviving the Doha Round [pdf] which includes contributions from Patrick Messerlin, Alan Deardorff, Robert Stern, Bruce Blonigen and John Whalley.
[In the mean time, the Mortimer review and its issues paper are well worth checking out for services trade. The review is due to report on 31 August]
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Author: Aaron Batten
The recommendations of the recently completed Growth Commission funded by the World Bank and led by Nobel laureate Michael Spence have been the subject of considerable debate – and by some authors ridicule. But for all its limitations, the Commission did make some important commentary in particular on the development challenges facing small States such as those in the Pacific and how progress might be made.
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Author: Christopher Findlay
APEC Education Ministers met in Lima Peru this week. (text is here)
Projects which compare systems and policies in the teaching of maths and science, career and technical education, languages, and ICT applications were all endorsed. Ministers talked about ‘disaster risk reduction education’ and about how education systems can contribute to ‘equity and social inclusion’.
Ministers acknowledged the value of more efforts to facilitate international educational exchanges among APEC economies.
This means working towards increased reciprocal exchanges of talented students, graduates and researchers by strengthening the existing relationships. The exchanges will aim to develop skills in foreign languages, intercultural training, provide internship opportunities and strengthen professional competencies.
but otherwise they had little to say about the rising integration of the education sector across the region, and its implications, for example, for the question of who wins the ‘talent wars’ in these regulated markets.
This is a hot topic at tertiary level. Bill Tierney and I talk about a new wave of internationalisation in the tertiary sector and its opportunities (full text below). There are big challenges for institutions and economies, and so opportunities for regional cooperation.
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Author: Shiro Armstrong
Rudd’s first day in Indonesia involved an interpreting mishap which highlighted a sensitive issue:
According to the interpreter, Dr Yudhoyono said he looked forward to Australia lifting its travel alert for Indonesia, prompting a pointed response from Mr Rudd.
A spokesman for Dr Yudhoyono later told Australian journalists the president had not said that. [full article at the Age]
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Author: Peter Drysdale
North Korea has promised to reopen its investigation into Japanese abducted by state agents and cooperate in handing over four hijackers holed up in Pyongyang since 1970 after they commandeered a Japan Air Lines plane on a domestic flight.
Akitaka Saiki, director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, reported back to Tokyo yesteday on the outcome of two days of bilateral talks in Beijing between delegations of the two countries. Saiki headed the Japanese side.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura immediately announced that Japan would partially lift its economic sanctions against North Korea.
In an upbeat comment, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said yesterday: ‘North Korea has shown a willingness for discussion. We can say we are at the entrance to the negotiation process.’
These developments in bilateral negotiations between Japan and the DPRK are important to progress with the Six Party Talks about which US Ambassador Christopher Hill has been increasingly upbeat recently.
Pyongyang’s stance on the abduction issue is clearly aimed at spurring the United States to lift its designation of North Korea as a state that sponsors terrorism
See this Japan Times report for more.
Author: Peter Drysdale
PM Kevin Rudd set out his views on the relationship with Japan in a widely read Op Ed in the vernacular Asahi Shimbun and reproduced in the English language Asahi Evening News yesterday.
What sort of international order do we need in the 21st century? How do we build it?
he asked. His answer:
These are the two main questions that the nations of the world face in 2008. We have to think now about how we respond to these questions. And we have to think about how we work toward realizing the answers. For Australia, Japan is a crucial partner in that process.’ (full article here)
Compare Hugh White’s urgings on the same issues yesterday.
Author: Shiro Armstrong
Prime Minister Fukuda announced recently:
It goes without saying that Japan, the world’s largest food importer, must achieve greater agricultural production and increase our food self-sufficiency rate.
Full Cabinet email magazine here (hat tip: Adam Johns)
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Author: Peter Drysdale
Hugh White argues in today’s Australian that:
The problems in Australia-Japan relations therefore go much deeper than petty scraps over travel plans or populist posturing over whales. Behind these lies a difference over the shape of the new Asia which could not be more serious, both for Japan and Australia.
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Author: Bruce Chapman
My not so serious take on the 2020 Summit is in this quarter’s Agenda Magazine:
My guess is that 100 per cent of participants in the 2020 Summit, including myself, didn’t really know what to make of it beforehand. My guess is that 70 per cent of participants in the 2020 Summit, including myself, didn’t know what to make of it during the summit weekend. My guess is that a large minority of participants in the 2020 Summit, including myself, still don’t really know what to make of it.
Beforehand
When the summit was announced, the first issue concerned how best to get yourself invited. I knew that as a slightly post-middle-aged pink male I did not have the best demographics, so I would have to try some cunning tricks. Read more…
