Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU
East Asia’s pursuit of policy strategies of openness to trade and investment have resulted in its being economically one of the world’s most internationally-integrated regions — both intraregionally and towards the rest of the world.
Author: Andy Yee, Hong Kong
Geopolitical tensions continue to simmer in the South China Sea after the Obama administration’s declaration last year of a US ‘return to Asia’ stirred up regional dynamics.
Now, non-claimant states India and Japan are entering into the fray. Read more…
Author: Corey Wallace, University of Auckland
Public debate surrounding Japan’s proposed entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) remains as heated and confused as ever.
The rhetoric is far-ranging: while some maintain that Japan risks being permanently left behind economically should it fail to negotiate entry into the TPP, others suggest that Japan’s government is agreeing to effectively cede sovereignty and sacrifice its agricultural sector for the sake of diplomatic cordiality. No one really knows what the TPP will mean for Japan, but little recognition is given to this fact. Read more…
Author: Jithin S. George, National Maritime Foundation
Japan received bids from Boeing, Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems to replace its outdated F-4 fighter jets on 27 September 2011, as part of a plan to buy 40–50 fighter jets in a deal worth more than US$6 billion.
Japan intends to add the new aircraft to its fleet by 2016. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
The Japanese government’s new policy reform plan, Basic Policy and Action Plan for the Revitalisation of Our Country’s Food and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, (published 25 October) does little to promote agricultural trade liberalisation.
While containing a number of reform proposals designed to expand the scale of farming and facilitate agricultural land transfers, the plan fails to address the most important issue of all: reducing direct income subsidies to small-scale farms. Read more…
Author: Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide
Commentators on these pages have been pondering the implications of the Fukushima explosion on Japan’s energy policy and its strategy for international purchases.
Samuels suggests an extensive re-examination of energy policy in Japan and a possible shift toward renewable energy. Read more…
Author: Jane Golley, ANU
Australia’s opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who, if the polls are to be believed would win a handsome victory and become Australia’s next prime minister if an election were held today, has advanced some views that have baffled and disturbed the Australian policy and business community (including senior members of his own front bench) over the past week or two.
Among them, on foreign economic policy, he appears to be backing away from Australia’s key economic relationship with China in favour of ramping up the relationship with Japan. Read more…
Author: Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard University
All of a sudden, the Chinese renminbi is being touted as the next big international currency.
It has begun to internationalise along a number of dimensions in the last year or two: an RMB-denominated bond market has grown rapidly in Hong Kong, as well as a market in RMB-denominated bank deposits. Read more…
Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU
Australia at last is taking up the challenge of comprehensively thinking through its new strategic circumstance in Asia, and taking Asia seriously.
On 28 September, Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a timely and important speech to launch a new White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century. Read more…
Author: Micah Burch, University of Sydney
Much was made (in tax treaty circles, at least) three years ago when the OECD included in its model tax treaty a provision requiring arbitration.
The controversial provision (Article 25(5) of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (2003)) requires states to arbitrate tax disputes arising under the treaty if they remain unresolved after two years of negotiation between the competent authorities. While arbitration is a generally accepted facet of international commercial dispute resolution worldwide, dispute resolution under bilateral tax treaties is relatively undeveloped. Read more…
Author: Gilbert Rozman, Princeton University
In much of the world the Six-Party Talks represent a futile attempt to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and deter it from a path of belligerence.
But in China the talks offer hope for a new regional security arrangement. While observers took keen interest in China’s resistance to condemn the North’s two attacks on South Korea in 2010, few paid attention to Chinese rhetoric on the Korean peninsula, apart from expressing surprise at Xi Jinping’s revival of Chinese support for the North in the ‘glorious’ Korean War. Read more…
Author: Masaya Sakuragawa, Keio University
Japan is a large country driven by export-orientated economic growth, but, surprisingly, the yen is not used broadly in trade invoicing among Japanese exporters.
Given most of Japanese trade is invoiced in US dollars, the recent appreciation of the yen to above 80 yen per dollar is a serious problem for the Japanese economy, and threatens exports and GDP growth. Read more…
Author: Michael Cucek, MIT
As Yoshihiko Noda, Japan’s sixth prime minister in five years, settles into office, much speculation surrounds the various internal party appointments taking place inside the troubled ruling Democratic Party of Japan.
In particular, the purported return to influence of Ichiro Ozawa, via Noda’s appointment to prominent positions of numerous Ozawa allies, is attracting much attention. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
One of the big questions hanging over the newly formed Noda administration is whether the prime minister will be able to restore harmony within the ruling DPJ after the internal party discord that characterised the Kan administration.
Noda appeared to take a step in the direction of party unity by making a number of DPJ executive and cabinet appointments from among close supporters of party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa. Read more…
Author: Mikitaka Masuyama, GRIPS, Tokyo
The political life expectancy of Japanese prime ministers is notoriously short. Whether or not Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is an exception depends not on his ideology or policy orientation but whether he can find a compromise between the ruling party and the opposition.
Japan’s experience has seen the same party being returned to government for decades, typically without the government establishing leadership in undertaking important reforms that are long overdue. Read more…