Reflections on the Kyoto conference on global warming

The Third Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was held in Kyoto in December 1997. It ended successfully with the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, which lays down internationally binding provisions for handling the problem of global warming in the twenty‐first century, but the negotiation process was extraordinarily difficult, due to the complex nature of the issue of global warming, and to the fact that the national interests of every nation were closely involved. As Japan's ambassador for global environmental affairs, Toshiaki Tanabe was chief negotiator for Japan, and gives here an insider's view of how that successful outcome was reached. The requirement for Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent is a heavy burden, he says, and poses a serious challenge.     

日本IT立国战略的推进与成效分析

"IT立国"战略是日本"科技立国"战略在推动具体产业发展方面的集中体现。在多重压力促动下,日本大力推进以信息基础设施建设、信息技术应用和信息化社会建设为核心的IT立国战略,并不断发展和完善该战略框架。在实施IT立国战略过程中,日本注重从顶层设计、基础设施、社会应用、人才建设等多方面大力推进,并在信息基础设施、信息技术水平、信息社会建设和国际竞争力等方面取得了明显成效。借鉴日本的经验,中国在发展信息技术及相关产业时,应当形成循序渐进的战略体系,实现创新单元之间的分工与配合,并注重将信息技术发展战略与其他战略,特别是标准国际化战略结合起来。     

论朴趾源的实学思想

朴趾源是朝鲜李朝后期实学派文人的代表,他的实学思想在其文学观、商业意识、农业改革及宇宙观方面都有体现。同时,朴趾源作为朝鲜"北学派"的代表,主张学习中国先进的科技和文化,并提出了一系列的改革措施,如发展工商业、改革农业等,其实学思想具有重要的历史价值和社会意义。     

俄罗斯油气资源依附型经济论析

尽管1999年后俄罗斯的经济增长是内需而非投资主导的,但俄仍然是出口矿产资源、进口机器等工业制成品和食品的单一经济模式的发展中国家,其经济增长受出口大宗商品的国际市场价格和汇率变化的影响较大。无论从名义GDP还是从实际GDP来看,油气产业对俄罗斯经济增长的贡献率都很大。俄罗斯制造业的竞争力依然很低。因此,俄罗斯经济是一种油气资源依附型经济。俄罗斯政府对国内市场的天然气价格实施管制,在一定程度上减轻了"荷兰病"的进一步发展。来自油气产业的税收大幅增加使俄财政收入由赤字转为盈余。俄政府为此设立了稳定基金,在抑制通货膨胀的同时偿还了外债。从2008年起,俄在引入油气收支或油气外收支等概念基础上开始实施新的预算编制和执行制度。稳定基金因此转化为储备基金和下一代基金。俄经济的长远发展取决于如何减轻"荷兰病"的影响以及通货膨胀的压力。     

Reflections on the NGO forum on women '95

Abstract

The approximately 30,000 participants in the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women ‘95 did more than simply give voice and attention to often invisible and silenced women's issues. They journeyed to the forum from over 185 countries to Huairou, a resort town forty kilometers outside of Beijing, the People's Republic of China, to network, exchange information, and devise innovative and determined implementation of solutions to the world's most pressing problems. The NGO forum inspired commitment to action in many forms: renewing and forging solidarity on issues and strategies, lobbying government delegates during the overlapping (4–15 September 1995) official U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and sustaining and expanding day-to-day work in communities after participants returned home.     

Notes on contributors

Deregulation, technological change, and the integration of markets increase the competitive pressures on forms of national and sectoral governance. The heart of the issue is whether the continental, consensus‐oriented model of capitalism is gravitating towards the Anglo‐Saxon, market‐oriented model. This essay examines the heuristic value of this convergence thesis, using the German financial sector and its relations to industry and government as a case in point. It will be argued that while the institutional restructuring that is taking place within Germany reflects characteristics of Anglo‐Saxon capitalism, institutional hurdles, such as federal structures and the veto power of certain societal lobbies, have thus far prevented such a convergence throughout the entire system.     

Notes on contributors

The pre-unification European and foreign policy of the ‘old’ Federal Republic was marked by four principal traits: an emphatically Western orientation, a strong commitment to multilateralism underpinned by close bilateral relations with France and the US, its civilian character, and Euro-centrism. Although it took place in radically different circumstances and under radically different conditions to the first, the second German unification nonetheless gave rise to fears among the political leaders of many other states in Western, Central and Eastern Europe – and among the proponents of some international relations theories – that it would herald sweeping changes in Germany's foreign policy orientation and profoundly destabilise inter-state relations in Europe. The contributions to this volume show that, in the decade following the second unification, there has been more continuity than change in German European and foreign policy. The most important change concerns attitudes and behaviour in respect of the use of military force. Under the pressure of its Western allies and events in the Balkans which have forced it to choose between opposition to war and opposition to genocide, Germany has shed much of its earlier inhibitions concerning the use of military force and become much more like a ‘normal’ big power in Europe. However, because this trend has been explicitly encouraged and welcomed by Germany's allies and partners and because it has taken place exclusively within the multilateral frameworks of NATO and the EU, it does not presage the return of a political ‘Frankenstein monster’ or the revival of the pre-Second World War patterns of European inter-state rivalry. The second German unification will assuredly not turn out to be a re-run of the first.