Author: Jonathan Bonnitcha, ANU and University of Oxford

Over the past three decades countries have signed a great number of international investment treaties (IITs). There are now close to three thousand such treaties worldwide. While most IITs are bilateral there are some multilateral IITs, such as the Energy Charter Treaty to which Australia and fifty other states are signatories. Common IIT provisions are also contained in investment chapters within some trade agreements, within NAFTA and the US-Australia FTA for example.

Many IITs include dispute settlement provisions that allow foreign investors to bring claims against host states before international arbitral tribunals, relying on the rights contained in the relevant treaty. If successful, the investor-claimant is entitled to a monetary award of damages. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

While the United States is unquestionably a Pacific power, it lacks a comprehensive Asia strategy. In fact, the US approach to Asia has focused primarily on Northeast Asia – Japan, China and South and North Korea. Appropriately, significant focus has also been given to India in the last five years.

But since the end of the Vietnam War, American focus on Southeast Asia has been episodic and crisis driven. While the US has a substantial reservoir of strength in the region, US policy has failed to connect the dots and develop them into a rational and well articulated strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Kazuhito Yamashita, RIETI

Japanese agriculture is in a free-falling decline. In the years between 1960 and 2005, the share of agricultural output in GDP dropped from 9 per cent to 1 per cent, the food self-sufficiency ratio from 79 per cent to 41 per cent, and agricultural land, indispensable for food security, from 6.09 million hectares to 4.63 million hectares.

Meanwhile, the ratio of part-time farm households, which derive more than half their income from non-farm employment, increased from 32.1 per cent to 61.7 per cent. The percentage of farmers over 65 years old also jumped from 10 per cent to 60 per cent. 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 »

Authors: Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University

Lagging employment recovery and continuing high levels of unemployment have marked the macroeconomic scenario in the United States. So it is natural that the United States, which chaired the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, would use its privileged position as the host to invite the US secretary of labour, a well-known union activist, to convene a meeting of the employment and labour ministers on the jobs situation prior to the next G20 heads of state meeting in Canada.

The macroeconomic aspects of the labour situation are indeed a proper focus of such a meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Xiao Geng, Brookings Institution

Recent debate has focused on how to increase US exports and savings and increase Chinese imports and consumption in order to correct the trade imbalance between the US and China. In America in particular, focus has been placed on Chinese exchange rate policy. American leaders would like the RMB to appreciate significantly and quickly. They hope that this would lead to an increase in US exports and employment.

Yet Chinese leaders regard pressures to appreciate and protectionist measures from the US as unfair, and as detrimental to China’s development. They place emphasis upon structural and institutional reform in order to increase Chinese consumption and to bring about more efficient domestic investment. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Sadiq Ahmed, PRI

Despite solid development performance since independence, Bangladesh’s per capita income remains low by global standards. Nevertheless, there have been encouraging signs; poverty has come down from over 70 per cent in the early 1970s to around 40 per cent in 2005.

However, a look at the spatial distribution of development progress shows significant disparity between leading and lagging regions of Bangladesh. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Shankaran Nambiar, MIER

China has come to occupy a prominent position on Malaysia’s trade agenda over the past few years and is now Malaysia’s fourth largest trading partner. China currently accounts for about 11 per cent of Malaysia’s global trade, lagging behind the likes of the US, Japan and Singapore.

This was not always the case. Between 1995 and 1999, only about three per cent of Malaysia’s exports moved towards China. Today, about ten per cent of Malaysia’s exports are destined for China. Only about two per cent of imports came from China in 1995, but more recently they have shot up to close to 13 per cent. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Razeen Sally, ECIPE

2009 was a crisis year for international trade, which suffered its steepest decline since the 1930s. Protectionism returned, reversing an almost three-decade trend of trade liberalisation.

But, contrary to expectations, it has not returned with a vengeance, rather creeping to the surface in subtle ways. Time, therefore, to take stock of trade policy after the crisis, and consider its outlook at the beginning of this century’s second decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Luke Hurst, ANU

There has been a change in ideological sentiment on China’s involvement in Africa. The paradigm shift has been led by Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo’s bestseller, Dead Aid, which gave voice to the possibility of a development model defined by diligent business practices as opposed to the traditional Western model which is driven by foreign aid. If managed prudently the Sino- African relationship could prove to be an empowering change for several African governments and provide the foundation for the continent to take its place as a partner in the global economy.

For China, Africa is an excellent complement to its resource and market-seeking global agenda. Since 2000 China-Africa trade has grown at an average annual rate of 33.5 per cent. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Frank Tudor, Australia-China Business Council

Australia’s relationship with China, both commercially and politically, is entering 2010 on positive terms. With Wang Wang and Funi recently working miracles for the South Australian tourism market, coupled with a sense of real political will in Canberra and Beijing to resume FTA negotiations and high level visits, many issues, such as the defence policy white paper, feel like distant memories. Now that it has come to trial there is also expectation of fair resolution of the Stern Hu affair.

Many factors help define the contemporary bilateral Australia-China relationship. As neighbours, Australia and China have a vested interest in maintaining peace and delivering prosperity across the region through mutually beneficial trade and investment. The key differences relate to China’s increasing scale of urbanisation and the prominent and unrivalled role of the State in maintaining the unity of Chinese civilisation. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Sun Tianfu

In December 2009 Chen Guowei, Supervisor on the Enterprise Supervision Board of the State Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), spawned a major debate  about reformation of the salt monopoly in China. He stated at a Salt Reform meeting that reform of China’s salt monopoly system needs to be sped up in order to break the state’s monopoly, even though the China Salt Industry Corporation is strongly opposed to this market reform. Chen then went on to directly attack China Salt’s monopoly over the production and circulation of salt.

Chen had proposed reformation of the salt monopoly as early as 2004. In 2005, he presided over a reform of the industry in Guangdong, which was eventually frustrated due to the proliferation of private salt. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajendra Abhyankar, The Asia Foundation

Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ three-day visit to New Delhi last month not only bolstered India’s role in promoting security and stability in Afghanistan and the region, but also boosted bilateral defence cooperation and trade. His visit helps pave the way for President Barack Obama, who is expected to visit India this summer, and helps answer an important question the two countries have asked each other since India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last year – Do we take a ‘strategic pause’ to heal some rising negativity brewing in the relationship, or do we look for the ‘next big idea’ to keep up the momentum?

In a clear push for closer bilateral military cooperation in the face of what Secretary Gates called the ‘greatest common challenge of terrorism,’ Gates’ visit highlighted the potential influence the defence sector can have on future bilateral relations. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Claude Barfield, AEI

Recently, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Philip Levy and I published an International Economic Outlook, entitled ‘Tales of the South Pacific: President Obama and the Transpacific Partnership.’ In this analysis, we made the case for the Obama administration to move with dispatch in asserting U.S. leadership in the construction of a new Asian economic architecture that would be broad and inclusive. And we argued that the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) agreement was an ideal vehicle through which to achieve this goal.

Since then, bolder moves by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have increased the urgency for the Obama administration to advance a strategic vision of the U.S. role in a nascent Asian economic architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Pravakar Sahoo, IEG and Nisha Taneja, ICRIER

China has been taking an increasingly active interest in South Asian countries over the past few years, seeking to rally friendship and support in order to surpass India’s dominance in the region. When the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was formed in 1985, they expected leadership from India, but India has yet to assume this role. Now China, India’s main political rival, is entering its neighbouring markets more aggressively through both trade and investment.

China has been the fastest growing economy in the region for the last decade and has surpassed India in terms of growth, world trade share, price competitiveness in product manufacturing and winning oil deals. Read the rest of this entry »