China-Japan Relations in the Post-Koizumi Era: a Brightening Half-decade?

The tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001–2006) was vexing for China-Japan relations. As such, the five years since Koizumi left office, particularly the change in Japan's ruling party, were initially expected, and sometimes perceived, to realize a half-decade of recovery and reconciliation in Sino-Japanese ties. While tensions did decrease, “icebergs” blocking improvement in relations have not completely thawed, and may harden again. Competition for political and economic influences and interests in the same region, concern over one another's future security posture and relations with Taiwan, territorial disputes, misunderstanding about the other's historical sensitivities and feelings of distrust, occasionally manipulated by nationalists, still pervade the relationship. Therefore, though there is mutual desire, indeed a necessity, for cooperation on many issues affecting both countries, this typically couples with a disconcerting or anxious feeling towards the other's intentions that results in competitiveness. There are deep roots to this need/fear complex.     

The Atlantic economy after German unification: Cooperation or the rise of ‘Fortress Europe’

With the end of the cold war and the weakening of the security bond between Europe and the United States, economic relations assume increasing importance. As Europe's dominant economic power, Germany has a central role in the management of the trans‐Atlantic economy. This analysis of economic relations between Germany and the United States shows that whilst investment flows between the two economies suggest common interests and mutual dependence, the structure of German and American trade reveals a strong potential for conflict. Moreover, the experience of the 1980s suggests that economic ties between Germany and the United States are not sufficiently intense to guarantee unconditional cooperation in the management of the Atlantic economy. Divergence in macroeconomic policy has inevitably led to tensions over trade, exchange rates and interest rates. Unless this tendency is checked, the result will be the emergence of ‘Fortress Europe’ with a heightened potential for conflict with the United States.     

TAIWAN'S GROWING SECURITY VULNERABILITY: FROM CHEN SHUI-BIAN TO MA YING-JIU

Taiwan-China relations have experienced a remarkable détente since KMT candidate and cross-strait moderate Ma Ying-Jiu was elected president on Formosa in 2008. Yet despite the rapprochement and its concomitant reduction of military tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the island's security position vis-à-vis China has been in steady decline since the early 2000s. Ma's expectation that closer economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing will result in greater international space for Taiwan have so far not yet been realised. On the contrary, deeper connections with the mainland seem to but accelerate the growth of Taiwan's security vulnerability.     

Inequality,Wealth and Thailand’s Politics

ABSTRACT

Acemoglu and associates argue that resistance to democratisation will be stronger where inequality is high. Piketty shows that shifts at the upper end of the distribution may be historically more significant than overall measures of inequality. In Thailand, the high level of income inequality has eased slightly since 2000, but there is a “1% problem” as peak incomes are growing faster than the average. Newly available data show that inequality of wealth is very high. At the top of the wealth pyramid, family holdings of commercial capital are growing. A significant proportion of top entrepreneurs have emerged within the past generation. A second tier of the wealth elite has developed over the past generation from rising property values, financial investments and professional incomes. Although their individual wealth is much less than the corporate elite, their numbers are much greater. The existence of the prospering “1%” and the emergence of the second-tier wealthy may corroborate Acemoglu’s proposition, but there are tensions within the wealth elite which may favour democracy.     

India's “Look East” Policy

A combination of economic, strategic, and domestic considerations has led India to pay greater attention to its eastern neighbours since the 1990s. India's steadily growing ties with East and Southeast Asian countries have become an increasingly important element of India's foreign policy. India is working with these countries bilaterally as well as through regional frameworks like the EAS, ASEM, and ASEAN, and sub-regional organizations like BIMSTEC and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. The main driver remains economic, and India has many ongoing and planned FTAs with the countries of this region. Of late, defence and security ties too have grown. However, India's relations with China remain tense and troubled, with persisting differences over the border, Tibet, and China's patronage of India's South Asian neighbours, particularly Pakistan. Asia's major players will have to overcome internal rivalries and consciously evolve a cooperative paradigm for Asian security and cooperation to enable Asia to play a leading global role.     

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Crises of 2004, 2010, and 2012: A Study of Japanese-Chinese Crisis Management

The diplomatic situation between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has become increasingly precarious over the past decade. Weak diplomatic ties and lack of trust between the two nations has made a clash not only more likely, but also unlikely to be effectively contained. This article compares the events and management of three diplomatic crises concerning the islands, including the deportation of Chinese activists who landed on the islands in 2004, the detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain who collided with a Japan Coast Guard vessel in 2010, and the 2012 nationalization of three of the islands by the Japanese central government. These case studies reveal the lack of reliable high-level communication mechanisms between Tokyo and Beijing, diminishing back-channel diplomacy and the asymmetrical influence of each respective Foreign Ministry as just a few of the structural barriers to effective Sino-Japanese crisis management.     

A New Era in Taiwan Politics and its Implications

Taiwan faces an uncertain future after the electoral victory of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the January 2016 elections. The election results, which reflected growing pro-independence sentiments amongst a younger generation of Taiwanese, have set Taiwan on a collision course with China, which is increasingly impatient for reunification to occur. The new US president, Donald Trump, has also added to the tensions by openly questioning the “One China” policy. Another Taiwan Strait crisis today would be fraught with immense risks due to China's dramatic economic and military rise which has altered the regional power balance. Given the increasingly tense China-US strategic rivalry, the US is also not likely to sit idly by should China attack Taiwan. However, the key player in resolving the Taiwan problem is China. For various reasons, it is in fact in China's interest to be patient with the current situation, and maintain the status quo for the immediate and medium-term future, while it constructs a new strategy that could win over the people of Taiwan, since true reunification can only occur if the people on Taiwan willingly accept it.     

Sino-Japanese Relations Adrift in a Changing World

The Sino-Japanese dispute over the arrest of the Chinese fishing trawler captain is the most serious bilateral incident since 1952. Japan took an action viewed by Beijing as provocative and China overreacted. Feeling humiliated, Japan has sought allies to check on China. But China is not isolated. When it seeks to recover from its diplomatic setbacks in 2010, Beijing looks elsewhere because it has little trust in the DPJ government. As the world's second and third largest economies, China and Japan should improve relations. Without improved ties, they will find it even harder to manage emotionally charged disputes next time around. China and Japan are rivals but they are not yet enemies. The Chinese and Japanese governments need to exercise leadership, which includes making compromises when and where they become necessary. Since they have weakened capacity to deal with bilateral disputes, they should avoid them in the first place.     

The Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship as History

This article aims to analyze why negotiations for the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship were extended for a longer period than expected. Treaty negotiations were protracted largely due to a backlash against the Normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972. Moreover Japan’s diplomacy against China was entwined with political factional strife in the Liberal Democratic Party. Premier Takeo Fukuda’s diplomatic guidance was solid and steady. He created an agreement within the party over time by rejecting an early political settlement that Premier Kakuei Tanaka did in 1972. He also addressed the territorial issue calmly, and steadily advanced negotiations for the treaty. As a result, the Fukuda administration successfully achieved the Japan-China Treaty. Conclusion of the Treaty by Fukuda, who had strong ties with the pro-Taiwan camp, brought an end to the conflict over policy towards China within the LDP.     

South Africa and Japan: maintaining a difficult friendship

Japan's economic and political relationship with South Africa has been characterised historically by ambiguity. Throughout the twentieth century, economic ties were underpinned by mercantilist and strategic considerations. During apartheid, this placed Japan in an uneasy position as it sought to balance a relationship of expediency with wider foreign policy objectives in the rest of Africa and beyond. The demise of apartheid created the space for new forms of engagement centred on the pursuit of cognate goals. This has seen the intensification and deepening of economic ties in particular. Yet relations, especially at the political and diplomatic levels, have also been more complex than anticipated, and in recent years, the rise in Africa of other players from Asia and the Global South has had a bearing on South Africa–Japan ties. In this paper, it is argued that two related dynamics pivoting on policy elites’ changing conceptions (or self-view) of the nature of the state they are running and its place in the wider world order help explain the post-apartheid evolution of the South Africa–Japan relationship. First, there has been an apparent shift in South African foreign policy elites’ self-view, mediated by a changing systemic context. The development and manifestation over time of a stronger Global South self-conception in South African foreign policy, fashioned in juxtaposition to what have been considered in the past key Global North relationships, had direct consequences for South Africa–Japan ties. Second, meso- and micro-level dynamics – the role of the general operations in the diplomatic (i.e. bureaucratic) arena, and the personalities and shifting political preferences of individual executive leaders – had major impacts on how South Africa engaged with Japan in the past two decades.     

This land is my land: the Ethio-Sudan boundary and the need to rectify arbitrary colonial boundaries

Ethiopia and Sudan share a common boundary of over 1600 km which was drawn through a series of treaties between Ethiopia and the colonial powers of Britain and Italy. To date, this boundary has not been clearly demarcated. In 2007, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, the current ruling government, entered into a secret agreement with the Sudan to make adjustments on the border. This paper identifies the major factors that have frustrated efforts to address the Ethio-Sudan boundary problem and also proposes solutions on how Ethiopia and Sudan could resolve their differences. The analysis reveals that political, social and cultural factors; the decision to adopt the western concept of the boundary; and the failure to recognise the historic and cultural constructs have contributed to the frustration of negotiations on the border. The paper proposes that Ethiopia and Sudan embrace the African Union Border Program, which encourages mutual cooperation, regional integration and the building of communities with strong economic and cultural ties.     

Australia and Scotland: the Evolution of a Long‐Distance Relationship1

Scotland's impact across the world undoubtedly stretched to the Antipodes particularly, but not only, in the colonial era. Under the “canopy of Empire”, Australia and Scotland were linked by migration, trade, capital movements and by cultural ties. But these were all two‐way ties. They did not simply colour the “Australian civilisation”. Rather there was a vital and shifting reciprocation between Scotland and Australia. The relationship between them has mainly been determined by their different economic trajectories. Today financial and skilled human capital move each way between the two countries with heightened velocity and efficiency. These flows, along with continuing cultural connections, enmesh two fully developed modern economies.     

East Asian Economic Growth and its Implications for Regional Security

Rapid economic growth in East Asia is changing the nature of international relations in the region. In the economic sphere, mercantilist policies of promoting exports and limiting imports contributed to economic tensions between rapidly growing economies in the region and the region's major trading partner, the United States. These tensions over bilateral trade issues began between Japan and United States, moved on next to South Korea and Taiwan, and have now moved from there to China. In the security field, economic growth in China is leading to a major shift in the balance of power in the region. China's steadily increasing GDP is being accompanied by a comparable rise in its military expenditures despite the fact that China faces no obvious external threats at the present time. China's long term desire to be able to defend against any outside power probably means that this increase in defense expenditures will continue for the next decade or two. North Korea continues to be a threat to stability in the region but only because of its capacity to do enormous damage in one last suicidal attack. The one area where China's rising military expenditures could lead to major confrontation on terms very different from those that would occur today is Taiwan.     

Debating Economic Democracy in South Korea: The Costs of Commensurability

ABSTRACT:

In the 2012 Korean presidential election, both liberal and conservative parties fought their campaigns on the slogan of “economic democratization,” marking a strong departure from past presidential elections and the growth-first policies of the then-incumbent conservative administration. Both parties pledged to tackle growing social polarization and the concentration of economic power by reforming the corporate governance of Korea's large, family-led conglomerates (chaebol), to the degree that chaebol reform itself became synonymous with economic democratization. This focus led to a series of heated exchanges among liberal-left reformers about the vision of economic democratization being promoted, with one camp favoring the creation of a “fair market” through the restructuring of the chaebol and another promoting the protection of the chaebol’s management rights over their affiliates as a desirable strategy for the creation of a Korean welfare state. This essay examines the long-standing tensions between these two liberal-left perspectives and argues that the capital-centric and market-based visions these camps promoted risk confining intellectual debate over the meaning of economic democracy within boundaries that serve dominant political interests.     

Sino-Mongolian relations and Mongolia's non-traditional security

The following article examines the effect China has on Mongolia's non-traditional security. Using the Copenhagen School's approach to non-traditional security, the article argues that Mongolia's economic dependence on China coupled with weak political security have allowed China to develop structural power over Mongolia's domestic institutions. This structural power also negatively affects Mongolia's societal and environmental security. Chinese structural power, therefore, has a net negative effect on Mongolia's domestic non-traditional security, despite Chinese policies that seek to maintain good relations with Mongolia. This suggests that China is not in complete control of its relations with Mongolia and that its use of economic ties to drive relations with Mongolia contains elements that ultimately undermine its position and Mongolia's security.     

抗日战争时期日本强掳劳工民间诉讼的困境与突破

2007年4月27日,日本最高法院做出＂根据中日联合声明中国国民的请求权已经被放弃＂的判决,使得二战受难者在日民间战争赔偿诉讼陷入僵局。此种境遇下＂和解＂成为战后遗留问题工作者寻求突破的无奈选择。安野和解正是在此背景下达成。虽然和解取得了如企业承认强掳劳工的历史事实、表示谢罪、经济赔偿等一些成果,但受日本政府态度的影响,和解只能存在于受难者与企业间,就必然使得和解带有不彻底性,这也恰恰成为和解饱受争议的根源。彻底解决这一问题的方法在于以诉讼推动战争赔偿立法,以实现日本政府与企业两个层面上承认强掳华工法律责任基础上的全面解决,诉讼的根本目标及意义也在于此。     

Local Governments in Japan and Roles Played in Sino-Japanese Relations

The potential roles played by local governments in Japan regarding Sino-Japanese relations are often neglected. Drawing upon a few representative case studies by highlighting the interaction between local and international politics, the article aims at analyzing the possible impacts of Japan’s local governments on Sino-Japanese relations in the future. First, it reviews the theoretical framework of sub-national or paradiplomacy and the relevant literature on Japan’s local governments in such framework. Second, through showing how their local leaders attempted to pursue local or personal interests by taking Sino-Japanese relations as hostage, it uses four local governments in Japan that have peculiar interaction with China as case studies. Finally, it previews some patterns as derived from the cases, in order to draw some implications for both Tokyo and Beijing.     

中缅关系的转折:1954年——以外交部解密档案为视角

1954年,中缅两国总理互访,不仅确立了两国关系的指导原则--和平共处五项原则,而且双方围绕共同关心的问题进行了充分的沟通,增进了了解,减少了疑虑.1954年的双边往来开启了两国高层直接接触、交流的大门,打破了建交初期双边关系冷淡的局面,两国关系取得突破性的发展.此后,中缅关系迅速发展,迎来了"胞波"友好时期.这种状况主要是由于1954年中国结束"打扫干净屋子再请客"的外交方针,在周边推行睦邻友好外交,而中国政策的这一转变也得到了缅甸的积极回应.     

Yellow sea economic zone: Vision or reality?

This article provides a brief review of Sino-South Korean economic relations in the 1980s, and discusses domestic and international factors that are likely to influence economic relations between the two countries in the 1990s. Two possible scenarios are discussed for future Sino-South Korean economic relations: increasing trade and economic interaction within limited political relations; active economic cooperation across the Yellow Sea with normalized relations. Anticipating expanding economic ties between China and South Korea, the article discusses potential areas for cooperation such as trade and industrial relations, tourism and services, infrastructure development and transportation linkages, and institutional support.     

Beyond Countering Iran: A Political Economy of Azerbaijan-Israel Relations

In recent years, Azerbaijan–Israel relations have come to the foreground of politics in the Middle East and Caucasus region. Ties between Baku and Tel Aviv have been directly interlinked with their relations with Iran. The nature of the Azerbaijan–Israel partnership must be analysed in order to comprehend the balance of powers and energy security in the region. Even though there have been a number of works analysing the relationship by focusing on its role in regional military security, there is a gap in the discourse in terms of understanding the economic drivers of relations and the implications of the ties for regional energy security. Particular attention will be given to discussing Azerbaijan’s emerging role as a major energy producer that has already made a profound impact on the region as an ‘alternative’ to Iran in the aftermath of the recently imposed sanctions on Tehran's energy exports. It will be argued that the Azerbaijan–Israel relationship is built on solid economic grounds and it would be reasonable to expect the strength of the ties to be further intensified in the future. The article will also demonstrate that new developments in the energy security of the wider Middle Eastern region will affect the evolution of Azerbaijan–Israel ties and their rivalry with Iran in the next decade.