Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
On Saturday, Yosano Kaoru, onetime contender for the LDP presidency and the Aso cabinet’s second finance minister, met with LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and filed notice that he will leave the party from next week. Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yosano’s ally who was forced to resign as a deputy secretary-general last month over criticism of Tanigaki, is expected to follow Yosano out of the party soon.
Both are said to be considering joining up with Hiranuma Takeo, the postal rebel who refused to rejoin the LDP with other erstwhile rebels in 2006. Read more…
Author: Yang Yao, Peking University
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 marked a new era of globalisation. Unlike previous eras, the surge of free trade and openness is characterised by an all encompassing division of labour, extending even into traditionally non-tradable services. The global system requires each country to position itself in the international value chain.
The most phenomenal feature of this global era is the economic ascent of China. Although China’s per-capita income is only one twelfth of the United States’, the rise of China is already sending shock waves throughout the world. Read more…
Author: Renu Kohli, New Delhi
Policy reform is invariably contextual; as is the announcement by the government of India during this year’s Budget, about setting up the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC). The council will ‘strengthen and institutionalise the mechanism for maintaining financial stability’, monitor ‘…macro-prudential supervision of the economy…functioning of large financial conglomerates, and…inter-regulatory coordination issues’. In other words, the new entity will be assigned tasks that have largely been the domain of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The recent financial crisis has sparked off an interesting debate in which India has been cited as a remarkable success. Read more…
Author: David Brewster, ANU
Russia’s recent nuclear deal with India places it in a leading position in the international gold rush to supply India’s huge nuclear power needs.
The deal, signed during Russian Prime Minister Putin’s visit to New Delhi last month, involves (according to which report you read) the supply by Russia of as many as 16-20 nuclear reactors to India. Russia is already building two nuclear reactors in southern India. To underline the relationship, Putin’s visit also included the announcement of a USD1.5 billion deal for the supply of 29 MiG-29K fighter aircrafts for use on India’s new Russian-supplied aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya. Read more…
Author: Suiwah Leung, ANU
As the Productivity Commission in Australia deliberates the pros and cons of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) for Australia, Vietnam is entering into active talks with the EU. These follow the failure of the earlier trade discussions, often referred to as the EU-ASEAN FTA talks.
During this same period, Vietnam joined the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) at its first meeting in March. Read more…
Author: Yukinobu Kitamura, Hitotsubashi University
An ageing population, coupled with a declining birth rate, is an unprecedented challenge for Japanese policymakers. The issues created by this situation can be readily identified in the administration of Japan’s pension system.
It is widely recognised that record management for Japanese pensions has been, moderately speaking, incomplete, and more strictly speaking, defective. Read more…
Author: Vivienne Bath, University of Sydney
On Monday March 29, Liu Xin, the judge presiding over the trial of Stern Hu and his 3 colleagues in the First Intermediate Shanghai People’s Court, announced the verdict of the court. All defendants were found guilty on the charges of bribery and of stealing business secrets. The cumulative sentences (after deduction of concessions for some of the defendants for pleading guilty) ranged from 7 years to 14 years. Stern Hu himself received a sentence of 10 years – 7 years for the business secrets charge (Article 219 of the Criminal Law) and 5 years for the bribery charge (Article 163), less 2 years for admitting his guilt, plus hefty fines on both charges.
Stephen Smith, the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, described the sentences as ‘harsh’ and the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, criticised China’s lack of transparency in its handling of the case. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
China’s sheer scale, its geography and, of course, its history made it a significant power in world affairs before its remarkable economic rise over the last three decades (see our Quarterly). China has suddenly transformed itself from being a ‘small’ economy to being a ‘big’ economy, in terms of its impact on world trade and output, world prices, its role in international capital flows and financial markets, its impact on the global commons (including the environment and climate) and its stake in managing the international economic and political system.
This week’s essay, by Satoshi Amako, a noted Japanese scholar of contemporary Chinese politics, observes that the dominant concerns of Chinese political leaders are domestic, focused on China’s economic and social transformation. Read more…
Author: Satoshi Amako, Waseda University
Many have argued that, in the context of China’s rapid growth upon the world stage, East Asian integration will naturally beget ‘regional hegemonism.’ But this understanding does not adequately capture the dynamic economic, social, and political reality in China or the region of East Asia.
The year 2000 marked a significant point of transition for China, as it shifted from a developing nation, to a responsible major power with potential for serious impact on international politics. In November 2003, Zheng Bijian proposed China’s ‘peaceful rise theory’ at the Boao Asia Forum, stressing the need for China to advocate power transition while developing its own peaceful international influence. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
China’s economic rise presages a fundamental change in the global economic and political system. China’s partners in the world economy are already benefiting, and stand to benefit more over the coming decades, from the economic impact of growth on a scale unprecedented in human history.
Both the scale and the character of China’s economic and social development mean that there will be powerful feedback effects as the rest of the world adjusts to China’s presence in all aspects of global economic and political life. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
Both Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have been prominently associated with an agreement to build an additional 16 nuclear power reactors in India together with proposals that address fabricating nuclear fuel rods and re-processing plutonium from irradiated fuel rods. This is despite, in recent times, both men finding it rather hard to stay on the same page.
This deal capitalises on the Bush administration’s herculean undertaking to wind the clock back and position India as though it had declared and demonstrated its nuclear weapon status before January 1968 and joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) on the same basis as the US, USSR/Russia, UK, France and China. Read more…
Author: Eui-Gak Hwang, Korea University and ICSEAD
Amid unconfirmed reports that China, North Korea’s chief ally, is preparing a contingency plan on the basis that the isolated North may collapse, Yonhap News reported [Korean] that Park Nam-ki, former head of Planning and Finance of the DPRK Workers Party, was executed last week as a scapegoat for the failed North Korean currency re-evaluation last October. The currency re-valuation (each 100 old North Korean won was exchanged for 1 unit of new currency) was aimed at recouping money hoarded by those families who have relatives abroad or access to foreign currency, and had a serious impact on the daily living standards of many people.
What is the overall significance of these two events, and how does economic fragility interact with military might? Read more…
Author: John Powers, ANU
During a visit to Tibet in 2003, I saw pilgrims from eastern parts of the region approach a vendor in Lhasa whose sign proclaimed that he was selling photos of the Panchen Lama, the second most influential reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama. A pilgrim picked one up and then contemptuously tossed it on the ground, saying, ‘It’s the fake one.’
This incident highlights the crisis of legitimacy facing the PRC’s designated Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu. Read more…
Author: Rajiv Sikri, ISAS
We now find ourselves in a transitional period of strategic uncertainty. As the fulcrum of global politics and economics leans towards Asia, a shift in the balance of power is inevitable. The 21st century may well be the ‘Asian’ century, but is there is a concomitant shared sense of destiny and purpose amongst Asian countries? Can greater economic integration and interlocking interests enhance security and ensure stability?
Against this background is the ongoing debate on community building in Asia, including Prime Minister Hatoyama’s proposal for an ‘East Asian Community’. Read more…
Author: Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University
Last year saw two spectacular own goals. Missile and nuclear tests were a weird way to greet a new US president ready to reach out to old foes. The predictable outcome was condemnation by the UN Security Council, plus sanctions on arms exports that are biting.
Domestic policy is just as disastrous. December’s currency ‘reform’ beggars belief. Did Kim Jong-il really not grasp that redenomination would not cure inflation, but worsen it? Read more…
