Trump and Abe are Natural Allies
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In an op-ed for The Diplomat, Stanford assistant professor Phillip Y. Lipscy says the Trump presidency offers Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an opportunity to realize his vision of a more prominent Japan, yet the depth of the bilateral relationship and ability to deliver hinge on how much the two leaders can compromise on economic and security interests.
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The Diplomat
Implications of China’s growing economic presence in Latin America
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On Feb. 1, Harold Trinkunas, associate director of research and senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), gave a talk on China’s growing economic engagement in Latin America – its true scope and scale – and its implications.
Trinkunas endeavored to answer three questions: (1) What is China’s policy in Latin America?; (2) What is the actual scope of China’s trade, investments and lending in the region?; and, (3) Is the situation producing a “win-win” situation for both China and Latin America, or a “win-lose” situation?
According to Trinkunas, China’s own need for commodities in the early 2000s drew the country towards pursuing relations with countries in Latin America; and the cornerstone of China’s relationship with Latin America rests on trade, investments and loans. China’s engagement on all three dimensions have grown significantly. The region’s total trade with China, for example, grew from practically nothing in 1980 to 13 percent in 2014. China’s percentage of total stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region has also grown substantially from practically zero to $109 billion in 2015. China’s policy banks have also scaled up their lending to the region, even outpacing aggregate lending by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank combined, which have traditionally been the source of multilateral bank loans to Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Yet, despite such significant increases in economic activity in the region, Trinkunas clarified how, while China is an important trading partner for a concentrated group of countries (such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay), the United States has remained the dominant trading partner in the region. The flow of China’s FDI has been concentrated in two countries – Ecuador and Venezuela – with limited investments in other countries. And almost all of its lending has also been concentrated in four countries: Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil, with Venezuela receiving, by far, the most loans. Thus, while China’s economic presence has grown exponentially since the early 2000s, it is still not a dominant economic partner except with respect to a handful of countries.
Trinkunas concluded that this growing economic relationship between China and Latin America has mostly led to a “win-win” situation for China and its partners in the region. China’s appetite for commodities provided the engine for growth in South America from the early 2000s to 2012, enabling its middle class population to double from 90 million to nearly 180 million people. Latin America has also benefited from China’s infrastructure investments and construction expertise, which it sorely needs, while China has been able to usefully redeploy its surplus capacity. In addition, China’s growing economic presence in the region affords Latin American countries greater latitude to pursue alternative sources of capital and trade apart from that of the United States and other OECD countries. In addition, despite fears to the contrary, Trinkunas finds that China’s economic inducements, while attractive to the countries in the region, do not necessarily translate into actual political or geopolitical influence. Latin American countries’ position on geopolitics, as reflected in their U.N. votes, for example, has not necessarily reflected increased support for China. And China’s own impact on the economic policymaking of its biggest Latin American loan recipient – Venezuela – has been nebulous at best. China’s influence is limited, furthermore, by the fact that most Latin American countries are not beholden to Chinese capital but can and do access other sources of finance.
Yet, there are legitimate concerns regarding China’s growing economic presence in the region, which Trinkunas also explained. China’s emphasis on extracting primary commodities, for example, represents an economic step backward for the region, which is pushing to further industrialize. China also comes under scrutiny for allegedly engaging in unfair competition in the manufacturing sector and for investing in countries with poor governance records. Trinkunas is skeptical, however, when it comes to viewing China’s influence over the region as overall negative.
In closing, Trinkunas noted that recent withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was an unfortunate turn of events that went against a policy recommendation he had put forth in his report. This is because the TPP could have served an important, dual purpose for the United States – to maintain its trade interests in the region and to negotiate regulatory requirements that could enhance good governance in Latin America. Nevertheless, both Trinkunas and Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Fellow Thomas Fingar, who provided commentary at the end, agreed that there has been nothing in China’s own policy deliberations or pronouncements that suggest that its intention has been to interfere with U.S. interests or to seek political influence in the region.
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Harold Trinkunas, CISAC associate director for research and senior research scholar, and Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC fellow, discuss China's role in Latin America at a colloquium on Feb. 1, 2017.
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Ian Johnson, longtime foreign correspondent, to receive Shorenstein Journalism Award
- Read more about Ian Johnson, longtime foreign correspondent, to receive Shorenstein Journalism Award
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Ian Johnson, a veteran journalist with a focus on Chinese society, religion and history, is the 2016 recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award, given annually by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, is conferred to a journalist who produces outstanding reporting on Asia and has contributed to greater understanding of the complexities of Asia. He will deliver a keynote speech and participate in a panel discussion on May 1, 2017, at Stanford.
“Ian Johnson is one of those rare writers who has not only watched China’s evolution over the long haul, but who is also deeply steeped in the culture and politic of both Europe and the United States as well,” said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society of New York’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and jury member for the award. “This cross-cultural grounding has imbued his work on China with a humanistic core that, because it is always implicit rather than explicit, is all the more persuasive.”
Ian Buruma, the Paul W. Williams Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College and jury member for the award, added further praise, “Ian Johnson is one of the finest journalists in the English language. He writes about China with extraordinary insight, deep historical knowledge and a critical spirit tempered by rare human sympathy. His work on China is further enriched by wider interests, such as the problems of Islamist extremism in the West, specifically Germany, where he lives when he is not writing from China.”
The Shorenstein award, now in its 15th year, originally in partnership with the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, was created to honor American journalists who through their writing have helped Americans better understand Asia. In 2011, the award was broadened to encompass Asian journalists who pave the way for press freedom, and have aided in the growth of mutual understanding across the Pacific. Recent recipients of the award include Yoichi Funabashi, former editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun; Jacob Schlesinger of the Wall Street Journal; and Aung Zaw, founder of the Irrawaddy, a Burmese publication.
Johnson has spent over half of the past 30 years in the Greater China region, first as a student in Beijing from 1984-85, and then in Taipei from 1986-88. He later worked as a newspaper correspondent in China, from 1994-96 with Baltimore's The Sun, and then from 1997-2001 with the Wall Street Journal, covering macroeconomics, China’s social issues and World Trade Organization accession.
Johnson returned to China in 2009, where he now lives and writes for the New York Times and freelances for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and National Geographic. He also teaches and leads a fellowship program at the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies.
Johnson has also worked in Germany, serving as the Wall Street Journal’s Germany bureau chief and senior writer. Early on in his career, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification, and later returned to head coverage on areas including the introduction of the euro and Islamist terrorism.
Johnson has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won in 2001 for his coverage of the Chinese government’s suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and its implications of that campaign for the future. He is also the author of two books, Wild Grass (Pantheon, 2004) which examines China’s civil society and grassroots protest, and A Mosque in Munich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). His next book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion after Mao (Pantheon, April 2017) explores the resurgence of religion and value systems in China.
Additional details about the panel discussion and the award are listed below.
About the Panel Discussion and Award Ceremony
A keynote speech will be delivered by Shorenstein Journalism Award winner Ian Johnson, followed by a panel discussion with Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society of New York’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, and Xueguang Zhou, professor of sociology at Stanford; moderated by Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC.
May 1, 2017, from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (PDT)
Bechtel Conference Center, Encina Hall, 616 Serra Street, Stanford, CA 94305
The keynote speech and panel discussion are open to the public. The award ceremony will take place in the evening for a private audience.
To RSVP for the panel discussion, please visit this page.
About the Shorenstein Journalism Award
The Shorenstein Journalism Award honors a journalist not only for excellence in their field of reporting on Asia, but also for their promotion of a free, vibrant media and for the future of relations between Asia and the United States. Originally created to identify American and Western journalists for their work in and on Asia, the award now also recognizes Asian journalists who have contributed significantly to the development of independent media in Asia. The award is presented annually and includes a prize of $10,000.
The award is named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and the press - the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Past recipients of the award include: Yoichi Funabashi, formerly of the Asahi Shimbun (2015); Jacob Schlesinger of the Wall Street Journal (2014), Aung Zaw of the Irrawaddy (2013), Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times (2012), Caixin Media of China (2011), Barbara Crossette of the New York Times (2010), Seth Mydans of the New York Times (2009), Ian Buruma (2008), John Pomfret of the Washington Post (2007), Melinda Liu of Newsweek (2006), Nayan Chanda of the Far Eastern Economic Review (2005), Don Oberdofer of the Washington Post (2004), Orville Schell (2003), and Stanley Karnow (2002).
A jury selects the award winner. The 2016 jury comprised of:
Ian Buruma, the Paul W. Williams Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College, is a noted Asia expert who frequently contributes to publications including the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker. He is a recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award and the international Erasmus Prize (both in 2008).
Nayan Chanda is the director of publications and the editor of YaleGlobal Online Magazine at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. For nearly thirty years, Chanda was at the Hong Kong-based magazine, Far Eastern Economic Review. He writes the ‘Bound Together’ column in India’s Business World and is the author of Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warrior Shaped Globalization. Chanda received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2005.
Susan Chira is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues and former deputy executive editor and foreign editor at the New York Times. Chira has extensive experience in Asia, including serving as Japan correspondent for the Times in the 1980s. During her tenure as foreign editor, the Times won the Pulitzer Prize four times for international reporting on Afghanistan, Russia, Africa and China.
Donald K. Emmerson is a well-respected Indonesia scholar and director of Shorenstein APARC’s Southeast Asia Program and a research fellow for the National Asia Research Program. Frequently cited in international media, Emmerson also contributes to leading publications, such as Asia Times and International Business Times.
Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society of New York’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and former jury member for the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Schell has written extensively on China and was awarded the 1997 George Peabody Award for producing the groundbreaking documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2003.
Daniel C. Sneider is the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, writing on Asian security issues, wartime historical memory and U.S policy in Asia. He also frequently contributes to publications such as Foreign Policy, Asia Policy and Slate. Sneider had three decades of experience as a foreign correspondent serving in India, Japan and Russia for the Christian Science Monitor and as the national and foreign editor of the San Jose Mercury News and a syndicated columnist on foreign affairs for Knight-Ridder.
For more information about the award, please visit this page.
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Trump and Abe are natural allies
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In an op-ed for The Diplomat, Stanford assistant professor Phillip Y. Lipscy says the Trump presidency offers Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an opportunity to realize his vision of a more prominent Japan, yet the depth of the bilateral relationship and ability to deliver hinge on how much the two leaders can compromise on economic and security interests.
Read the piece here.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walk together at the White House on Feb. 10, 2017.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Shorenstein APARC selects two postdoctoral fellows for 2017-18 academic year
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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in pursuit of training the next generation of scholars on contemporary Asia, has selected two postdoctoral fellows for the 2017-18 academic year. The fellows will begin their year of academic study and research at Stanford this fall.
Shorenstein APARC has for more than a decade sponsored numerous junior scholars who come to the university to work closely with Stanford faculty, develop their dissertations for publication, participate in workshops and seminars, and present their research to the broader community.
The 2017-18 cohort includes two Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows; they carry a broad range of interests from labor migration policy in China to regional institutions in East Asia. Their bios and research plans are listed below:
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The Trump Administration and the Japan-U.S. Alliance
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In Japan's increasingly complex security environment, the Japan-U.S. Alliance is indispensable not only to the security of Japan, but also to the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region. The Honorable Satoshi Morimoto, former Defense Minister of Japan, will talk about Japan’s security policy and the importance of the Japan-U.S. Alliance under the Trump Administration.
This seminar will be moderated by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Director, U.S.-Asia Security Initiative
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This event is co-sponsored by the Japan Program, U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and the Consulate-General of Japan, San Francisco
The Honorable Satoshi Morimoto
<i>Former Minister of Defense,</i> Japan
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Opportunity for marine fisheries reform in China
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China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, launched in March 2016, provides a sound policy platform for the protection of marine ecosystems and the restoration of capture fisheries within China’s exclusive economic zone. What distinguishes China among many other countries striving for marine fisheries reform is its size—accounting for almost one-fifth of global catch volume—and the unique cultural context of its economic and resource management. In this paper, we trace the history of Chinese government priorities, policies, and outcomes related to marine fisheries since the 1978 Economic Reform, and examine how the current leadership’s agenda for “ecological civilization” could successfully transform marine resource management in the coming years. We show how China, like many other countries, has experienced a decline in the average trophic level of its capture fisheries during the past few decades, and how its policy design, implementation, and enforcement have influenced the status of its wild fish stocks. To reverse the trend in declining fish stocks, the government is introducing a series of new programs for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, with greater traceability and accountability in marine resource management and area controls on coastal development. As impressive as these new plans are on paper, we conclude that serious institutional reforms will be needed to achieve a true paradigm shift in marine fisheries management in China. In particular, we recommend new institutions for science-based fisheries management, secure fishing access, policy consistency across provinces, educational programs for fisheries managers, and increasing public access to scientific data.
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Abe-Putin summit holds prospect of resolution on island dispute
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A hot springs summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin next week hopes to solve the 70-year-old dispute over an isolated string of islands that Russian and Japanese nationalists both claim as their own, according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
Read the commentary piece in Foreign Policy here.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit on Sept. 4, 2016, Hangzhou, China.
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Abe and Putin May Finally End World War II Next Week
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A hot springs summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin might solve the 70-year dispute over an isolated string of islands that Russian and Japanese nationalists both claim as their own.
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Foreign Policy "Dispatch"