Author: Stephen Robert Nagy, CUHK
The current disaster in Japan has provided an opportunity for Japan and China to further invest in their mutual international cooperation outside the security sphere such as the Six-Party Talks. It has done this in at least three ways.
First, China’s quick response in the wake of Japan’s largest recorded earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor crisis has demonstrated again that China and Japan can work together effectively and for their mutual benefit. Read more…
Author: Ross Buckley, UNSW
There are curious aspects of the proposal by the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) to take over the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). However, Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan’s decision to block it is not one of them.
The relevant legislative test is whether this takeover is in the national interest. Read more…
Author: Vlado Vivoda, Griffith University
The nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has raised questions about the future of nuclear power in Asia. Prior to the disaster, Asia was described as the nuclear powerhouse of the future.
With increasing competition for oil and gas among Asian states and the negative impact of carbon pollution, nuclear power has been referred to as a matter of survival for the region, both in terms of energy and environmental security. Read more…
Author: Max Corden, University of Melbourne
People critical of global imbalances often blame the surplus countries and their currency manipulation. This column introduces a Policy Insight that argues that the basic problem has been the inefficiency of the world’s financial sector, which led to unfruitful investment in the US rather than productive investment in emerging economies.
The global imbalances are widely seen as a problem, especially by the US government and US economists. Read more…
Author: John Delury and Chung-in Moon, Yonsei University
Last year’s sinking of the Cheonan, the revelation of a new uranium enrichment program at Yongbyon, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island brought North Korea back to the center of worldwide attention as a rogue regime.
Although the Obama Administration shows signs of interest in dialogue, Seoul appears bent on more sanctions, military exercises, and contingency planning, premised on the belief that a North Korean collapse may be nearing. Read more…
Authors: Bijun Wang and Yiping Huang, ANU and Peking University
China is an important overseas direct investor. But this is a recent development: before 2004, the size of Chinese overseas direct investment (ODI) was trivial. From 2004, ODI grew significantly, alongside a dramatic expansion of China’s current account surplus. Total ODI increased from US$2.85 billion in 2003 to US$56.53 billion in 2009, registering an average growth rate of 55 per cent a year. During the same period, its share in global ODI flow also rose from 0.45 to 5.1 per cent.
In 2009, China was not only the largest developing country investor but also the fifth largest investor in the world, following the US, France, Japan and Germany. Read more…
Author: Sunil Dasgupta, UMBC and Brookings Institution
What do you do when your biggest trading partner is also the country whose unprecedented rise, overseen by an opaque political system, makes you nervous?
India is not the only Asian state faced with this dilemma about China, but it is one of the countries expected to be a part of the solution. As Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s inimitable minister-mentor, has said: ‘India alone can look China in the eye.’ Read more…
Author: Theodore H. Moran, Georgetown University and Peterson Institute
Foreign direct investment is helping to propel China to become an export superpower, ‘displacing Japan as the predominant economic power in East Asia,’ as economist Ernest Preeg argues, making the country the ‘economic hegemon’ in the region.
So are multinationals trading technology, and competitiveness, for sales in China? Read more…
Author: Veronica Taylor, ANU
Visual images of regulatory failure in Asia are a staple of mainstream media in the west: contaminated food killing children; humanitarian disasters magnified by ramshackle construction; industrial landscapes thick with sulphurous smoke; corrupt officials facilitating transactions from traffic fines to people smuggling.
In policy literature these acute social, economic and environmental issues are attributed to deficient national and local governance and a lack of regulatory capacity. Read more…
Author: Morten B. Pedersen, UNSW@ADFA
International regulation of human rights poses a difficult challenge. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Burma, which has topped the international human rights agenda for over two decades, with little to show for it.
This is, in part, a problem of limited international influence, which is bound to remain in short supply. Yet, it has been compounded by a failure of imagination. While we might not be able to end human rights violations in Burma, we could almost certainly do better. Read more…
Author: Bill Kaye-Blake, NZIER
Statistics New Zealand recently announced that New Zealand posted 0.2 per cent growth in the fourth quarter of 2010, narrowly avoiding a double-dip recession.
Forecasts for 2011 are scarcely better: the IMF has lowered its forecast growth for the year to 1 per cent, while the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) is forecasting only 0.3 per cent growth. Read more…
Author: Robert Edwin Kelly, PNU
Whenever it comes, Korean unification will be more expensive per capita, more destabilising and more prone to outside intervention than that of Germany.
Examining the similarities between these two states, North Korea and East Germany have (or, of course in the case of East Germany, had) all the problems of the 20th century’s ‘real existing socialism’, controlled by a corrupt ‘red bourgeoisie’ for whom regime ideology justifies oligarchy and luxury. Read more…
Author: Christian Jack, Peking University
As China re-emerges, Australia will increasingly face tough decisions concerning its core strategic and economic interests.
ANU Professor Hugh White’s recent essay, ‘Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing’, published in The Quarterly Essay, has touched off a vociferous debate about Australia’s strategic future in the Asia Pacific. Read more…
Authors: Donald R. Rothwell and Hitoshi Nasu, ANU College of Law, Australian National University
While the United Nations Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1973 on 17 March 2011 may well go down in UN history as one of the more momentous occasions, not only for the UN but also the contemporary development of international law, for the time being the international community is fixated on the military implementation of the Resolution in Libya.
Despite the relative speed with which the Security Council first acted on 26 February, when it unanimously adopted Resolution 1970 (which imposed sanctions against the Libyan regime in the face of a mounting humanitarian crisis, and then followed it up with Resolution 1973 only 19 days later), it was clear that no detailed consideration had been given as to how the military enforcement of the Security Council’s mandate would be carried out. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
China has published defence white papers every even year since 2000. The sixth in this series appeared at the end of March 2011: ‘China’s National Defence in 2010.’
The format is basically the same as in past years, and a great deal of the language on particular issues remains the same or very similar. The 2010 paper has been streamlined (10 sub-headings versus 15 plus appendices in the past) and the odd issue has been placed in a different context. Read more…
