The European Union’s trade and investment policy in Asia: new challenges and opportunities in a changing global environment – or: following individual roadmaps

Asia is Europe’s largest trading partner and EU-Asia trade relations have undergone a rapid change since the global financial crisis. On a global scale, the new multilateral trade agreements such as the now stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving European Unions’ (EU) major trading partners such as Japan, Singapore and Vietnam also have the potential to change the trade equations. In this paper, we evaluate the new EU trade policy which has been designed to ensure that the EU benefits from the changing global trade scenario and also look at the steps which have been taken by the EU to promote trade relations with its major trading partners in Asia in the predicted ‘Asian century’. We look into the Free Trade Agreements, which are being negotiated with its Asian partners and seek to understand the reasons which have resulted in delays in their signing and negotiations. We evaluate new policies pushed forward by its Asian partners such as the One Belt One Road policy by China and Japan’s policy of securing a large number of trading agreements in the America. Moving ahead, we also shed light on the indirect factors that may influence the success of EU trade negotiations in Asia such as the EU policy on granting China market economy status and the commencement of the ‘Brexit’ process. Lastly, we try to present a list of immediate priorities for EU in Asia, which will ensure that it secures a toehold in trade with the region. All in all, it is shown that the EU has not one and the same approach for all Asian countries but it negotiates flexibly and individually country by country. Because of this “country by country approach” the EU is also not ready to enter into general EU-ASEAN trade negotiations again.     

国际金融危机对中国开放型经济的影响及中国的和平发展

2008年由美国次贷危机引发的全球金融危机使中国的外向型经济受到严峻考验。然而在危机中,中国开创了以开放促改革和发展的独特的经济增长道路,使对外经济关系上了一个新台阶,抓住了机遇,实现了新的发展。后金融危机时代中国面临着国内外经济环境的重大变化,开放型经济发展的难度增大。30年的改革开放,中国始终走的是和平发展的道路。今后,中国寻求的仍然是在竞争与合作中同世界共赢。     

加快黑龙江省对俄林业合作的思考

近年,黑龙江省对俄木材贸易发展迅速,占全国对俄木材贸易总量的1/3以上。从贸易数量上看,黑龙江省对俄木材贸易取得较大发展。但从贸易质量上看,总体质量不高,主要是进口俄原木。但2006年以来俄罗斯不断提高原木出口关税来限制原木出口,使黑龙江省对俄木材贸易与合作受到很大影响。2008年金融危机进一步影响了黑龙江省对俄木材贸易的发展。黑龙江省对俄罗斯林业资源合作优势明显,潜力巨大,也存在一些亟待解决的问题。     

美国金融危机对中国对外贸易出口企业的影响分析

一、美国金融危机产生的背景及原因 当前的美国金融危机是经济过度虚拟化和自由化后果的集中反映。20世纪80年代开始，美国进行大规模的产业结构调整，把大量的实体制造业转移到拉美和东南亚，而把美国本土打造成贸易、航运和金融等服务业中心；同时，在里根及其继任者的极力推动下，以私有化、市场化和自由化为目标的“华盛顿共识”在拉美和西方国家迅速推行。随着信息技术的迅速进步、金融自由化程度的提高，以及经济全球化的发展，虚拟资本的流动速度越来越快。     

European‐Atlantic Security Institutions: Current state and future prospects

Since the turn of the millennium, scholars and pundits have been musing over the decline of the West. The disappointing US military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, together with the subprime mortgage crisis, seem to be evidence of an abrupt end to America's ‘unipolar’ moment. In Europe, the sovereign debt crisis has amplified Europe's long-term structural economic problems and laid bare the fragile institutional foundation on which the Economic and Monetary Union was built. At the same time, the BRICs and other emerging economies have been growing at unprecedented rates. Those same analysts see a ‘decoupling’ in the world economy: the developing economies pulling the world out of recession, while the advanced industrial economies are unable to solve their domestic difficulties. So to them, the events of the past five years signify the beginning of the end of Western influence, eventually leading to a more complete rebalancing of the world economy's current ‘Western’ system of governance. This article argues instead that the West still has a significant edge when it comes to most critical factors that determine long-term economic growth potential, including technology, innovative capacity, research and development, investment climate and education. Furthermore, the transatlantic economy is less vulnerable than the rest of the world to outside economic shocks and might eventually prove more capable of reform than many expect. The current malaise in the transatlantic community might therefore prove once again to be more cyclical than structural. Relying on linear projections, many are ‘crying wolf’ again, too loud and too soon.     

中国与朝鲜经贸关系转型中的困境及对策

新世纪以来,中朝经贸关系保持快速发展态势。其中的重要转变是从过去以战略安全为主导的经贸关系逐步转向以市场为主导的经贸关系,这一转变预示朝鲜正处于向市场经济转型的初始阶段。而在中朝经贸关系持续发展过程中,中国和朝鲜各自存在的问题影响、甚至阻碍着双边经贸关系的进一步发展,为了超越障碍、抓住朝鲜亟须外部支持之时机,中国有必要从重新确定双边经贸关系战略地位等方面入手,积极推动中朝经贸关系深入发展。     

Present at the Destruction? The Liberal Order in the Trump Era

Abstract

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 sent shock waves across political classes globally and prompted debates about whether his ‘America first’ agenda threatened the liberal international order. During his first year in office, Trump seemed determined to undermine the hallmarks of the liberal international order: democracy, liberal economics and international cooperation. So, are we witnessing the emergence of a “post-liberal” and “post-American” era? Four sources of evidence help frame – if not answer – the question: history, the crisis of liberal democracy, Trump’s world view, and the power of civil society (globally and nationally) to constrain any US President. They yield three main judgements. First, continuity often trumps change in US foreign policy. Second, the liberal international order may have been more fragile pre-Trump than was widely realised. Third, American power must be put at the service of its own democracy if the US is to become the example to the world it used to be.     

Stateness problems or regime unification? Explaining obstacles to democratization in Burma/Myanmar

The fact that Myanmar is not democratic is too often taken as a given in international policy discourse without analysis as to why it has not democratized or what conditions might allow for democratization. Plausible theories to explain Burma's authoritarian politics include poor levels of economic development, colonial history, regional geopolitical factors, problems of state formation and the unification of the military. Determining which theories have the most explanatory power is important because different understandings of Burma's authoritarianism steer one toward some remedies and away from others. In this paper, I argue that problems of state formation – ‘stateness’ in one strand of the democratization literature – and ‘regime unification’ theories stand the best chance of explaining the lack of democracy in Myanmar. I examine the logic and evidence for each theory and conclude that while both explain some of the status quo, ‘stateness’ had more explanatory power before 1988 but in post-1988 Myanmar, ‘regime unification’ explains more.     

Evidence of securitisation in the economic sector of security in Europe? Russia’s economic blackmail of Ukraine and the EU’s conditional bailout of Cyprus

Although the Copenhagen school’s securitisation theory and their sectoral analysis are integral parts of European security studies, the school’s economic sector of security has almost been completely ignored. In this article I examine why this is, and whether it makes sense to retain this sector. In the process I flesh out the logic of securitisation in the economic sector. I suggest that one reason why the economic sector of security has been neglected is that real life examples fitting the Copenhagen school’s logic of security as the exception have – in this sector – remained outstanding. Research in other sectors of security has shown however that securitisation does not need to include extraordinary countermeasures; instead it can play out below the level of the exception. Using alternative formulations developed in securitisation studies that relax the threshold for the success of securitisation, I attempt to locate evidence of economic securitisation by looking at two empirical cases. 1) Russia’s economic blackmail of Ukraine at the start of that country’s ongoing crisis. 2) The EU’s conditional bailout of Cyprus during the Eurozone crisis which necessitated capital controls. On the basis of the empirical evidence gathered I conclude by arguing the case for the economic sector of security.     

Two dimensions of democracy and the economy

Does democracy influence economic policymaking and outcomes? Our study investigates the implications of Dahl's two dimensions of democracy (‘polyarchy’): contestation/competition and inclusion/participation. We hypothesize that increases in democratic competition inspire policy incrementalism, thus lowering growth volatility and generating fewer deep crises. Meanwhile, increases in substantive democratic inclusion – genuine political voice, or democratic participation in the presence of a minimum of contestation – should increase the political weight of relatively poor voters, who have a differentially strong aversion to deep growth crises. A statistical analysis of 149 countries for 1961–98 finds greater democracy associated with fewer years of sharply negative growth (‘crisis’), with both democratic contestation and substantive inclusion contributing to this outcome. Our conclusions question the wisdom of designing economic policy institutions that are intentionally insulated from the democratic process.     

Pseudo-communication and the return of the sophist: Thank you for smoking,at first sight

Abstract

The present era is one of pseudo-communication and overwhelming relativism, where, at best, the ability to persuade one's opponents or a potential audience of the ‘rightness’ (as opposed to the communicable ‘truth’) of one's position, is all important. A closer look at the recent film, Thank you for smoking, shows it to be a stalking horse for precisely this kind of pseudo-communication and relativism, and an all the more successful one in light of its rhetorical sophistication and entertainment value. However, this is no reason to give up on the old-fashioned notion of communication (or ‘truth’), even if one has to reject the illusion – so long entertained by Western philosophy – of unambiguously clear communication of the ‘truth’ in any univocal or absolute sense. Through an analysis of the film in question an attempt is made here to demonstrate that it is a supremely persuasive piece of sophistry in the sense that Plato gave to the term, but that today (given what one has learned from the post-structuralist thinkers), instead of rejecting it on this basis, one should appropriate its lessons in rhetoric and turn it against itself, showing how a complex notion of communication and ‘truth’ of a certain kind may be uncovered in its interstitial rhetorical spaces. This is of particular importance to South Africa, given the fact that ‘persuasive communication’ forms part of curricula in communication studies. The paper aims to show how short sighted the unqualified emphasis on ‘persuasion’ is, especially in South Africa.     

东亚与美国经贸关系演变与新的发展出路

本文从贸易地位、出口商品结构、贸易结合度梳理了东亚与美国经贸关系的演变。结果显示,源于国际分工模式的改变,中美经贸关系逐年紧密,东亚其余经济体与美国经贸紧密度逐年下降,而对东亚区域内部的依赖远超过对美国的依赖。金融危机带来的全球经济格局和结构的重大调整使东亚出口急剧萎缩,而后危机时期发达国家"无就业复苏"和重振制造业的动向,更使东亚须通过内部经济循环寻求新的发展出路。     

经济全球化中的澳大利亚经济发展趋势

在经济全球化进程中,澳大利亚经济经历了亚洲金融危机的冲击,保持了经济持续稳步的增长。21世纪初,尽管世界经济可能趋向于低速增长,但澳大利亚经济将能保持在年增长率3.5%左右,出口增长率约6%,可望保持在接近90年代的发展水平。     

Crisis ideology and the articulation of fascism in interwar Japan: the 1938 Thought-War Symposium

In early 1938, the newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) held a closed-door Thought-War Symposium (Shisōsen kōshūkai) in Tokyo with over 100 bureaucrats, military officers, media executives and academics in attendance. While the ostensible purpose of the symposium was to discuss propaganda following Japan's full-scale invasion of China in July of 1937, the presentations had very little to do with the practical coordination of information. Rather, the symposium participants brought their specific areas of expertise to bear on elaborating the curious term ‘thought war’ (shisōsen), a term that had only recently been used with any regularity but which had become invested with critical urgency following the invasion of China.

In the conventional literature, the term ‘thought war’ is understood as marking a new modality of state propaganda as Japan moved towards a total war system. However, this reading overlooks the ideological investments in thought war discourse, as well as how ‘thought war’ inherited a multivalent sense of crisis that had crystallized around thought and culture earlier in the 1930s. In this article, I explore how the 1938 symposium reveals a combined sense of historical crisis and an urgent call for the total overhaul of Japanese state and society, a combination which, I argue, underwrote the development of fascism in Japan. I trace how three earlier discourses of crisis – the ‘Manchurian Problem’, the ‘thought problem’ and the ‘movement to clarify the kokutai’ – converged within thought war discourse, thus investing it with fascist urgency.     

全球化背景下的中越双边贸易

中越关系正常化以来,两国经贸合作持续快速发展,尤其在近年国际金融风暴的吹袭下,两国贸易逆市而上,充分展示了双方合作的广阔前景。在当前世界经济复杂多变的背景中,坚持优势互补、互利双赢原则,排除非经济因素干扰,进一步密切中越经贸合作关系,并妥当解决贸易失衡等问题,不断提升合作质量,对中越两国经济复苏和可持续增长均具有现实的推动意义。     

The long march: the lessons of China's economic transition

It is widely known that Chinese transition to market economy was influenced by the newly industrialized Asian countries—Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—but it is not as much evident that Chinese reform was also influenced by the economic reforms of Hungary. Hungary started market-oriented reforms in the late 1960s by introducing market-orientated measures in agriculture, in manufacturing, in retail trade, and in finances, which made Hungarian economy more flexible and efficient than other European socialist countries. It could be shown that the first market-oriented reform measures applied in China during the 1980s and 1990s have large similarities to the Hungarian reform introduced earlier. In that respect, we can say that Chinese economic reform has adapted lots of elements of the early Hungarian economic reform. At the same time, Hungarian reforms have died away, but after the “lost decade of the 1980s,” there was an extremely rapid transition to market economy, which—in spite of the seemingly successful beginning—could not contribute to a long-term and healthy economic development. Meanwhile in China, economic reform was rather successful, resulting in an unprecedented economic development at the end of the twentieth century. Authors of the present article analyse similarities of the Hungarian and Chinese reforms and try to explain the causes of the Hungarian failure and the Chinese success. “Let China Sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world.” The saying is attributed to Napoleon and he seems to have been right. Now that China has reversed the process of globalization and has become the winner, we should resignedly accept that China is wide awake. The country's economy has followed a rapid growth path thus China's economic dominance is felt in the entire Far East; moreover, the country with the highest population in the world the country is taking steps to emerge as a world power. The dragon is awake, and she is not going to take a great leap forward but instead it is now on the long march. In lieu of her specific tools, China is about to win: she is already one of the winners, if not the only winner of globalization.     

进一步加强中印在国际金融危机之下的经贸合作

2008年始发于美国的国际金融危机给世界经济造成了普遍影响并使之遭受严重衰退,尤其在＂后危机时代＂加增了其复苏的困难,但世界最大的两个发展中国家中国和印度却在危机中一直表现出色,不仅率先恢复了自身经济的活力与增长,而且继续保持了地区及全球＂经济增长引擎＂的地位,这充分凸显出两国进一步加强经贸合作的必要性和重要性。     

Region,System, and Order: The Mughal Empire in Islamicate Asia

This article introduces early modern Islamicate Asia (～1500–1750) as an international system. Three theoretical insights emerge from an analysis of the international relations of the Mughal Empire, the system's largest polity/economy. First, hierarchies are not necessarily peaceful because the system's structural attributes—polarity, the presence/absence of regions, and the pattern of interunit relations—remain important causal factors. Second, asymmetric material capabilities do not imply unequal relationships because the initiation of state-making policies that others emulate enhances the structural power of the initiator. Finally, systemic stability is reinforced when the interaction of trade, finance, and military power affirm the system's economic and security orders. These findings have implications for the expansion of Europe, for the study of world history, and for the emerging world order.     

基于金融危机视角的东南亚外贸经济发展研究

一、引言 2008年9月15日,美国第四大投资银行"雷曼兄弟"申请破产保护,引发股市暴跌并波及全球.随后,由次贷危机所引发的美国金融危机开始向全球扩散,引起全球金融动荡乃至全面的经济衰退.     

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING: (RE)CONSIDERING THE EXCELLENCE OF ACTIVISM IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest changes organisations in South Africa experienced through the country's democratisation is the introduction of ‘legitimate’ activism in organisational settings. Organisational communication literature – specifically as manifest in the excellence theory – compounded this through views on the potentially positive impact activism could have on organisations by ‘pushing’ them beyond equilibrium to a state of dynamic equilibrium – mediated through strategic and effectual communication. This view, however, is somewhat fouled by occurrences such as those at Marikana, and concomitant strikes in the country's platinum industry, which have held the economy ‘captive’ in various ways. Organisations – especially the mining industry – need to ask ‘How much activism is too much activism?’ and organisational communication practitioners need to introspectively consider whether this theoretical contribution should not perhaps have come with greater guidance in terms of the chary (if not restrained) implementation of this potentially positive, yet almost insidiously dangerous, communicative feature. this article aims to explore activism in the mining industry of South Africa, specifically from the vantage points of industry heads, as it concerns the changed communicative landscape in this industry post-marikana. to this end, the article will report on seven qualitative, semi- structured interviews – along with existing literature on the topic – as it offers up six considerations in applying the aspect of excellence and ‘positive activism’ within organisations in South Africa's mining industry.