Authors: Takashi Oka and Llewelyn Hughes

There are two narratives about Ichiro Ozawa, the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). One is that he is a wizard at elections. This reputation was enhanced by his masterminding of the DPJ’s 2009 electoral strategy that helped bring about the first real change of government through the ballot box in sixty years.

The second is that, rather than being a politician of firm convictions, Ozawa is a machine politician animated by the desire to secure and retain power for its own sake. Investigations into alleged corruption fuel this narrative. Read more…

Author: Cai Fang, CASS

At the beginning of 2009 the global financial crisis struck hard at the real economy of China. While the whole country suffered, not all regions suffered equally. Looking at two industrial cities on which the crisis had a very different impact helps to explain the reasons for the uneven effect of the crisis, and highlights opportunities for policy reform.

The city of Dongguan in Guangdong province provides a telling example of the severe shock experienced by migrant workers in the wake of the crisis. Dongguan is located in the Pearl River Delta Region which has a high concentration of export-oriented labor-intensive enterprises and migrant workers. As early as the second half of 2008 due to a sharp drop in export orders some enterprises in Dongguan, shut down while others substantially reduced production. As a result, a large proportion of migrant workers in the city lost their jobs. An official source indicated 20 million migrants returned home earlier than expected because of the fall in demand for exports. Read more…

Author: Razeen Sally, ECIPE

The EU views China with a combination of awe, ignorance, fear, confusion and ambition. It is awed by China’s rise. It is largely ignorant of China. Real knowledge of China, and Asia more generally, is pathetic in Brussels, as it is in all European capitals with the partial exception of London. European sophisticates constantly disparage American insularity, but knowledge of Asia is far superior inside the Beltway, and in think tanks and universities in the United States, than it is anywhere in Europe. Ignorance mixed with arrogance is not an American preserve; it is found in abundance on the Old Continent, as any visit to a Parisian intellectual salon will reveal.

Then there is fear of China, especially when relations with it are viewed in militaristic, zero-sum terms. Perhaps that reflects an atavistic French world-view. And confusion reigns, for the EU, being a non-nation-state hybrid, has no foreign policy towards China and is often undermined by the foreign policies of its big three member-states (UK, France and Germany). Last, despite these drawbacks, the EU’s ambition is to be a privileged interlocutor and at the top table with China. That reflects the EU’s self-image as a ‘power’ in the world. Read more…

Authors: Ma Xin, Li Jifeng and Zhang Yaxiong

At the Copenhagen climate summit, there are some misunderstandings and differences of opinion on China’s commitment to cut the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 per cent by 2020 compared with the 2005 level. Detractors argue that China’s efforts in emission cuts are not ambitious enough, and even believe that China’s target does not transcend the BAU (Business As Usual) scenario.

First, we should have a comprehensive understanding of the BAU scenario in international talks on climate change. Generally, the BAU scenario means adhering to an established economic and social development path without any policy adjustment. Specifically, the BAU scenario in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions refers to the amount of GHGs discharged in order to maintain the current economic and social development momentum. Read more…

Author: Max Corden, University of Melbourne

Plenty of people have argued against fiscal stimuli. ‘Don’t call the ambulance!’, they say. Usually these have been political conservatives, but in the United States, strong opposition has also come from some influential economists. In some cases similar arguments were made against fiscal stimulus during the Great Depression.

There are the seven main arguments against fiscal stimuli, which I shall examine below. Read more…

Author: Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard

The climate change conference in Copenhagen is supposed to negotiate the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. But negotiations have been blocked by a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. The United States is at loggerheads with the developing world, especially China – now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) –and India. Fortunately, there might be a way to break through this roadblock.

On the one hand, the leaders of India and China are clear: They won’t cut emissions until after the United States and other developed countries have cut theirs first. Read more…

Author: Xue Chen, SIIS

Although some in the media try to interpret the length of President Obama’s stay in China on his inaugural trip to Asia as a sign of the strength of US-China bilateral ties, the public opinion polls within China reveal a somewhat different perspective.

Global Times, China’s leading news website in English, found in an online poll that 86 per cent of the 8,100 respondents said they either ‘do not anticipate’ or ‘do not care much’ about the coming visit of the US President. Read more…

Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attendance at the APEC leaders’ meeting in Singapore this weekend shouldn’t be treated with a yawn – the meetings are part of a complex game in which our ideas, as co-chair with South Korea of the G7/G20 process in 2010, will count.

Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation could evolve significantly in the next few years. The unique region has the world’s four largest economies: China, India, Japan and the United States. China and India, the world’s most populous countries, are currently its most dynamic economies. Japan, with Australia’s help, has pushed for regional trade and financial institutions to attract the two increasingly important emerging giants into co-operating on regional projects, rather than pursuing rivalries. Read more…

Author: Bill Tow, ANU

Embarking on his first trip to Asia as President, Barack Obama returns to a region where he spent a portion of his childhood and where his popularity remains high despite his worsening political standing at home.

Obama confronts a landmark decision on intensifying the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, America’s unemployment rate, and the likely defeat of his health care package in the U.S. Senate. One might conclude that his nine-day Asian tour constitutes a sentimental journey back to the early days of his presidency when it seemed his own country and most of the world was at his feet. Nothing could be more deceptive. Read more…

Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto

APEC leaders’ agenda at their Singapore meeting on November 14-15 should include expanding membership to India when the ten-year moratorium expires in 2010.

A positive decision would have at least two significant implications. The APEC region is home to the world’s four largest economies (China, India, Japan and the United States) and it makes no strategic sense to exclude one of the four – especially when India is already a member of the East Asia Summit and the G20. Read more…

Author: Takashi Shirashi, GRIPS and IDE-JETRO

Since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power with Yukio Hatoyama as prime minister, its foreign policy — above all its positions on the Japan-U.S. alliance and the East Asian community building — has come under a spate of criticism at home and abroad.

Critics argue that it is contradictory to call for the building of an East Asian community while pledging to maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance as the cornerstone of Japan’s foreign policy. Read more…

Author: Kirill Nourzhanov, ANU

Premiers are hired and fired all the time in the Kyrgyz Republic. On 21 October, following the resignation of the entire cabinet, Daniyar Usenov became the country’s seventeenth prime minister in its eighteen years of independence. In the past, incompetence, corruption scandals, suspected power ambitions, or merely the President’s whim served as pretexts for government reshuffles. This time the situation appears to be more complex and fraught.

The cabinet’s resignation came after weeks of rumours and media leaks about President Kurmanbek Bakiev’s plans to overhaul the entire executive branch of government. Read more…

Author: Mohammed Saqib, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi

India is currently the world’s fourth largest economy in terms of real GDP (PPP) and the tenth largest economy in terms of nominal GDP. Over the last decade, the country has emerged as a leading actor on the international stage. The outsourcing of services to India has over the past decade redefined the international business environment, and major Indian companies are now moving abroad on a scale never before witnessed.

In a situation where the world requires innovative companies to address the serious global challenges faced by humanity, including high resource consumption, pollution, population growth, demographic and geopolitical changes, India, with its rapidly changing business environment, may indeed prove to be one of the most important countries. Read more…

Author: Chalongphob Sussangkarn, TDRI

East Asian economies should push ahead with Financial Cooperation measures initiated in response to the 1997/98 crisis, as well as other cooperation measures in direct response to the current sub-prime crisis. These measures will facilitate the ability of countries in the region to shore up their economies in the short-term, their growth path to be less dependent on exports as the main growth engine in the medium term, and strengthen the region’s economic and financial resiliency and protect itself from future crises in the medium to long term.

It is now clear that the indirect impacts of the sub-prime crisis on the region through the trade channel will be very severe. Read more…

Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU

Australia is not the only country on the receiving end of China’s new-found diplomatic ‘forthrightness’. India too has recently received a sizzling serve from the Beijing end of the court.

As pointed out in South Asia Masala, the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is also claimed by China, is the current immovable object in the Sino-Indian relationship. However, on this occasion that tricky problem has been exacerbated by a planned visit of the Dalai Lama to the disputed state and to Tawang, birth-place of the revered Sixth Dalai Lama, which lies within the borders claimed by India. Read more…