Author: Rudiger Frank, University of Vienna

On January 29, 2010, the Foreign Trade Bank of the DPRK issued document No. DC033 10-004 to diplomatic missions and international organisations in North Korea. The use of foreign currency was to be stopped, payments were to be made in the form of non-cash cheques, and the official exchange rate of the euro to the North Korean won was changed from 188.2 North Korean won to 140 North Korean won, effective January 2, 2010. Making a payment even for everyday purchases has become quite burdensome for foreigners. Obviously, locals are not supposed to deal in foreign currency, only the domestic currency.

In the preceding weeks, North Korea had made international headlines with what appeared to be a concerted economic policy initiative. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU

On January 27, the Chinese State Council announced the establishment of China’s National Energy Commission under the leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao and the vice-Premier and his heir-apparent, Li Keqiang.  This announcement came as a much-anticipated move by Beijing to coordinate and devise a comprehensive national energy policy.

The members of this commission certainly reflect that grand ambition. They are an all-star cast of the most important and influential ministers from the State Council such as that of the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

Within a week of the formation of the first Bolshevik government, Leon Trotsky, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, went to the foreign ministry and forced the staff to open safes containing secret treaties that the Tsarist government had made with the Allied powers over the course of World War I, treaties that for the most part concerned how the Allies would divide up the territorial spoils of war.

‘Abolition of secret diplomacy,’ wrote Trotsky, ‘is the first essential of an honorable, popular, and really democratic foreign policy.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University

The past month saw both Chairman and Premier Kim doing something almost unheard of in Pyongyang. Apparently they both said sorry, although some reports got the two muddled up.

On February 1, Rodong Sinmun, daily paper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), reported Kim Jong-il as lamenting his failure to fulfil his late father Kim Il-sung’s pledge, to which he had also alluded shortly before on January 9, that all North Koreans would eat rice and meat soup (everyday fare for even the poorest South Korean, be it noted). Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hal Hill, ANU

When Prime Minister Rudd talks with President Yudhoyono this week, they will be able to reflect on what a fickle, mean and unpredictable business politics is.

Four months ago, the mood in Indonesia was extremely positive: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (universally known as SBY) had been installed for a historic second term. He had chosen Dr Boediono, the country’s most respected technocrat, as his vice president. His Democrat Party had emerged as a major force in the DPR, the country’s parliament. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Ross McLeod, ANU

The visit of Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) to Australia, five months into his second five-year term, provides an opportune moment to take stock of Indonesia’s progress over the last few years. Like Australia, Indonesia has performed remarkably well in the face of the global financial crisis. Its annual economic growth rate fell from about 6 to 4 per cent, but has already accelerated again to well above 5 per cent. Inflation is only about 3 per cent, and the currency is strong. The budget deficit is small and well under control, as is public debt.

A number of factors have contributed to this good performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU

The 2009 arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu was a watershed event in the Sino-Australian relationship. Beijing’s unexpected intervention in the name of national security demonstrates not only how grave were perceptions of its disadvantage in the iron ore trade but also the murkiness of its laws regarding state secrets and the operation of the market. Determined intrusion from Beijing, especially by the Chinese intelligence services, could only happen with the blessing of top echelons of China’s political process.

But what could have made the Chinese government take such dramatic action at such a highly sensitive time in the iron ore negotiations and given the broader global ramifications that an intervention like this would inevitably have? Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International

On February 18th, President Obama personally welcomed His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the White House, drawing the predictable ire of the Chinese leadership. As if in response, on March 1st, Beijing named its hand-picked Panchen Lama to its top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. In 2013, it is speculated the young lama will be elevated to the prominent political position of vice-chairmanship of the National People’s Congress. With Beijing gradually moving towards engineering a similar schism in the revered institution of the Dalai Lama by way of issuing regulations that purport to manage the reincarnation of living lamas, an altogether more purposeful negotiating approach by the Dalai Lama vis-à-vis Beijing is imperative.

Foremost in this regard is the need for His Holiness to match rhetoric with action as he goes about securing an enhanced autonomy arrangement for the Tibetan people. Read the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

On Wednesday, Ubukata Yukio, the deputy secretary-general, Tanaka Makiko, Koizumi Junichiro’s controversial foreign minister who joined the DPJ last year, and other DPJ Diet members proposed to Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro that the party establish a new policy research arm to replace the policy research council that closed shop when the DPJ took power in September.

Once again showing that whatever the DPJ-led government’s shortcomings, it is entirely serious about centralising policy-making in the cabinet and neutering the ruling party, both Hatoyama and Ozawa were quick to reject the proposal. Read the rest of this entry »