Author: Andrew MacIntyre, ANU

Authors: Mathew Joseph and Karan Singh, ICRIER

The sharp fall in US domestic consumption after the financial crisis has to be offset by a rise in net exports. For the US economy to recover then, the dollar must depreciate against the Chinese yuan. This devaluation is proving to be difficult, as the Chinese are resisting a yuan appreciation through massive intervention in the currency markets. The disastrous effects on the Japanese economy of the G7-managed appreciation of the yen in the mid-eighties have made the Chinese wary of a sharp appreciation in the yuan.

But while much focus is put on the US dollar’s depreciation against the yuan, what about the US dollar’s depreciation against the rupee?
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Author: Andrew Kipnis, ANU

A household survey I undertook in China in 2005 and 2006 revealed that all of the families surveyed wanted their child to attend university.The sample included a representative number of students from wealthy and relatively impoverished families and of students with above- and below-average academic records. Most of the people I spoke to were shocked that I could even ask such a question. ‘Of course’, or ‘Doesn’t everybody want that?’ were common replies.

The educational desire revealed by this survey is an important social fact about contemporary China. It influences household and national economic priorities, strategies for political legitimation, birth rates, ethnic relations between Han and non-Han groups, gender and family relations and much more. Read more…

Author: Jerome Cohen, NYU

The most formidable challenge to China’s establishment of a credible ‘rule of law’ is neither the quality of its legislation nor the professional competence of its judges, prosecutors, lawyers and police. Laws and the skills of those who apply them have both witnessed substantial progress in the People’s Republic during the past three decades.

The real challenge to the administration of justice in China is, rather, the undue intrusion of politics and, even more broadly, of ‘guanxi’, the network of interpersonal relations of mutual protection, benefit and dependency that is one of the enduring hallmarks of Chinese society. Read more…

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

When the Hosokawa government — with Ozawa Ichiro, then secretary-general of one of the leading parties of the eight-party coalition backing the government — passed electoral reform in 1994, one of the arguments made then and ever since by Japanese politicians (and American political scientists) was that the new mixed single-member district/proportional representation electoral system would produce a British-style two-party system that would complement the British-style administrative and political reforms desired by Ozawa and other politicians.

In other words, the Japanese political system should favor the existence of a second large party to challenge the DPJ, if not the LDP then an LDP-like successor party. Read more…

Author: Takashi Terada, Waseda University

The visits of Japanese Foreign Minister’s overseas visits don’t usually elicit much attention from the media and public unless they are off to the United States, Japan’s only ally. This is partly because travel abroad is routine duty for the foreign minister and critical decisions on foreign policy are made by prime ministers. Foreign Minister, Katsuya Okada’s recent visit to Australia appears an exception since the Japanese media gave extensive coverage to the trip. This was for two main reasons.

First, Okada himself is known for his commitment to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation as his lifework, and he put this issue on the top the agenda for his visit to Australia. Read more…

Author: John W. Lewis and Robert Carlin, Stanford University

It is routine in US foreign policy for a pot not boiling over to be moved to the back burner. But precisely because the North Korean issue is not boiling, it might offer an all-too-rare chance to make progress with Pyongyang. Over the past several months, the North has signalled publicly and privately that it is in engagement mode. In Washington, arguments abound about whether or not this is a stall tactic or a trick, but we will never know if we do not move ahead with serious and sustained probing of the North’s position. So long as our government sticks to an all-or-nothing approach in terms of Pyongyang, the opportunity to advance vital US security interests in northeast Asia could be lost.

Underlying Washington’s current position are two beliefs, so firmly held that they approach dogma. Read more…

Author: Kam Wing Chan, University of Washington

Yes it’s true – hukou (household registration) reform is again back in vogue in China’s ‘post-crisis’ conversations. Premier Wen Jiabao has been talking about it and, unusually the catch phrase has also been placed in the first ‘Central Document’ of 2010. Following the lead of these two sources, hundreds of newspaper articles and commentaries have opined on it in the last few weeks. On March 1, 13 big-city newspapers from 11 provinces in China also made a rare joint appeal for accelerating reform of the hukou system in a co-signed editorial. In sum, the issue is firmly in the spotlight, and hopes have been raised for some real hukou reform.

The hukou system is a big deal in the People’s Republic.  For the past 52 years, the system has served to segregate the rural and the urban populations, initially in geographical terms, but more fundamentally, in social, economic and political terms. Read more…

Author: Christopher Findlay, Adelaide University

Balanced, inclusive, sustainable and knowledge-based – these are the dimensions of growth which APEC is talking about. Put their first letters together and you get BISK.

This agenda comes out of a number of forces for change, including the response to the global financial crisis, the concerns which have been raised about the distribution of the benefits of growth within economies (and between them), the intersection of these developments with the climate change debate, and the twittering rate of technological change in the digital world. Read more…

Author: James Boyers, ANU

On January 29, Republican Scott Brown won a United States Senate special election held in Massachusetts to fill the senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy. The victory occurred in the context of a slowly recovering national economy, continuing high unemployment and discontent over the passage and content of healthcare reform legislation. The extraordinary result followed an excellent campaign by Brown and a poor campaign by the democratic party candidate, Martha Coakley.

Scott Brown’s campaign was defined by three issues: lower taxes to encourage job growth and reinvigorate the economy, a pledge to be the 41st vote against healthcare reform (Senate voting rules require a ‘supermajority’ of 60 votes on a bill to defeat filibustering), and opposition to the trial of accused terrorists in civilian courts. Read more…

Author: Ann Henderson-Sellers, Macquarie University

On February 18th 2010, Yvo de Boer announced his July departure from his position as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Mr de Boer has been the leader of the UNFCCC Secretariat since 2006, managing the organisational underpinnings of the efforts to bring together the world’s nations to forge an agreement to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

That his position was one of great stress was painfully demonstrated, in December 2007, when he left the final session of the 13th Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC (COP 13) in Bali in tears, following negative comments about the Secretariat’s handling of arrangements.   Read more…

Author: John Hemmings, RUSI

One thing is apparent: the great love affair between Europe and China is over.

Here in London and throughout the other major capitals of Europe, Copenhagen was the final straw for European policy-makers who advocated engagement with China, with their ideal of building China into the global order on ice. As Francois Gotement of the European Council on Foreign Relations notes, before Copenhagen, European thinkers still believed that they could use soft power to influence China on a host of issues that Europe believed were mutual to both. After Copenhagen, European attitudes have hardened and governments are reconsidering their approach to China. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale

The global financial crisis has brought with it big changes in the international economic system. The response to the crisis has seen the emergence of the G20 as the main locus of international economic governance and a cession of authority from America and the old industrial powers (the G7 economies) to the emerging powers in Asia and elsewhere. The role of the US dollar as the world’s primary international currency is also under question, as the growth of US deficits that are necessary to sustain that role has begun to corrode confidence in the value of the dollar.

As the big new kid on the block, China plays into everyone’s thinking about what to do next. Read more…