Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
In October 2000 a select bipartisan group of Washington’s Asia hands issued a provocative policy blueprint known as the Armitage-Nye report which aimed to integrate Japan as a more equal and active security partner in the Asia Pacific and internationally.
Author: Amy King, Oxford University
The Sino–Japanese relationship is paradoxical.
The two countries enjoy major trade and investment ties but also suffer persistent, damaging political rifts. The negative side of the relationship is familiar. Read more…
Author: Stephen M. Harner, Forbes.com
In a world experiencing dramatic, epochal changes, few regions are changing more dramatically than East Asia.
The past two decades have seen an historic reversal of fortunes between the region’s two dominant economies and societies, China and Japan, the consequences of which are changing global politics.
Author: Susumu Yabuki, Yokohama City University
Many people think that current US–China relations are comparable to US–Soviet relations during the Cold War. This is completely mistaken.
It is often said that the US and China are rivals — even potential combatants — in areas near Okinawa and the South China Sea. Some Japanese military strategists go as far as asserting that Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
Building a stable international order in Asia and the Pacific, in which a major international conflict remains unthinkable, requires a number of elements.
Understandably much of the focus on thinking about avoiding the unthinkable, to date, has been on the how to manage the rise of China’s power and its impact on America. Read more…
Author: Yoshihide Soeya, Keio University
Many thought after the end of the Cold War that the time of traditional balance-of-power games was over.
Japan, too, attempted to re-establish its international presence by responding to the new trend of multilateral cooperation, and sought to help build a new international order in Asia and the world. Read more…
Author: Norifumi Namatame, ANU
After North Korea tested its Taepodong I missile in 1998 over Japanese airspace, Japan made the decision to develop its ballistic missile defence (BMD) system in cooperation with the US.
The system comprises a mid-course phase (upper-tier) Standard Missile 3 Bloc IA system loaded onto four Aegis ships, and a 16-unit terminal phase (lower-tier) Patriot PAC-3 defence system, which has been deployed to four sites on Japanese soil. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
The Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer has an op-ed in the IHT in which he argues that despite widespread pessimism among Japanese regarding their country’s future, things may not be so bad. He suggests that the DPJ may well be learning to get along with business elites and bureaucrats, Japan and the US may be rebuilding their relationship after a remarkably bad year for the alliance, and, finally, the Japanese people have not taken to the streets in opposition to their government.
The first two arguments are more or less acceptable, although there is little to praise in how the Kan government prevaricated and ultimately failed to lead on the issue. Read more…
Author: Yoichi Funabashi, Asahi Shimbun
This month the Asia-Pacific region takes center stage in global diplomacy.
A Group of 20 summit meeting is being held in Seoul, followed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit meeting in Yokohama.
U.S. President Barack Obama is also scheduled to visit India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan in November.
A number of pressing issues will need to be tackled at those forums. Delegates must figure out whether a new international order can be created that would move from the framework established after World War II in which the Group of Seven advanced economies managed the world economy, to one that includes newly emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, ADFA@UNSW
Japan’s new DPJ government initially set out to rebalance Japan’s relations between the United States and Asia by emphasising a more independent Asia-oriented diplomacy with an East Asian Community as the centrepiece.
Japanese rhetoric about the alliance has also changed: There was more talk of an ‘equal’ alliance and a security stance ‘equidistant’ between the United States and China. Read more…
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
In the inflamed commentary that has followed the Chinese skipper’s collision with Japanese coast guard vessels in the East China Sea, there has perhaps been no more flawed a characterisation than portrayal of the incident exclusively through the lens of territoriality. In fact, considering the location of the clash — in coastal waters abutting the disputed Senkaku Islands — and the prior existence of mutually agreed disciplines (Sino-Japanese Fisheries Agreement of 1997) that seek to functionally quarantine Senkaku-related bilateral fisheries disputes from the charged accompanying issue of territorial title, portrayals of the incident have ranged from the naïve to the disingenuous.
This failure of analysis has not been limited exclusively to Western observers. Read more…
Author: Christopher Pokarier, Waseda University
China’s tough stance towards Japan over its detention of the captain of a fishing vessel is a serious tactical miscalculation. It speaks of worrying hubris in Beijing, and shows a poor understanding of internal Japanese politics.
The initial dispute arose following the collision of a Chinese fishing vessel with two Japan Coast Guard vessels near the disputed Senkaku Islands on September 7th. Read more…
Author: David Envall, ANU
‘To lose one decade may be a misfortune…’ ran a recent article in The Economist, the unstated quip being that the next one was lost due to carelessness. Another ‘lost decade’ would further justify such dark humour and would also present the Asian region with a significant security challenge.
Japan’s economic decline is well established. That country’s stock market, which was just below 40,000 points in 1989, finished 2009 at just over 10,500. Read more…
Author: Amy King, Oxford
In its 50th year, the US-Japan Security Treaty has come under scrutiny in Washington and Tokyo.
Calls by former Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama for a more equal place for Japan within the alliance, and the Hatoyama government’s fumbling over the Futenma base relocation, have caused tension in the bilateral relationship. At the same time, Hatoyama increased the rhetoric about building a more cooperative relationship with China, and is leading the charge for a stronger ‘East Asian Community’, which potentially excludes the United States. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
In the wake of its defeat the Kan government has made it patently clear that the Hatoyama government’s ‘ratification’ of the 2006 realignment plan was nothing of the sort — it is now saying that it will be impossible to complete negotiations before Okinawan gubernatorial election in November. The government once again is considering alternatives to the V-shaped runways to be built at Henoko bay, and is reluctant to impose a solution on the Okinawan people.
But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, American domestic politics is emerging as a new constraint on implementing the 2006 agreement. Both houses of Congress have voted to cut funding for the construction on Guam that is necessary to prepare the island to receive the 8,000 Marines and their dependants that according to the plan will move from Okinawa to Guam in 2014. Read more…