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Prime Minister Abe's economic policy, called Abenomics, places policies to open up Japan as a key component.  The government argues that reducing the barriers for international trade and capital flows will revitalize the Japanese economy and restore the growth in Japan.  At the core of the opening up policy are efforts to establish free trade agreements (FTAs) with major trading partners.  Japan joined the negotiation for TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which includes the U.S., Japan's second largest trading partner, in July this year.  Japan has also started negotiation for RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), which includes China, Japan's largest trading partner.  Will these efforts really succeed in making the Japanese economy more open?  Do they lead to the recovery of Japan from two decades of stagnation?  Experts from both sides of the Pacific discuss these issues.

 

Participants:

Glen S.

Fukushima is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a prominent public policy think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.  From 1990 to 2012, Mr. Fukushima was based in Tokyo as a senior executive with one European and four American multinational corporations: Vice President, AT&T Japan Ltd.; President, Arthur D. Little Japan; President & CEO, Cadence Design Systems Japan; President & CEO, NCR Japan; and President & CEO, Airbus Japan.  Before embarking on his business career in 1990, he was based in Washington, D.C. as Director for Japanese Affairs (1985-1988) and Deputy Assistant United States Trade Representative for Japan and China (1988-1990) at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Executive Office of the President.  Mr. Fukushima served two terms as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, 1998-1999, and Vice President, 1993-1997.  A native of California, Mr. Fukushima was educated at Deep Springs College, Stanford University, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He has studied and worked in Japan for over 25 years, including at Keio University, a daily newspaper, an international law firm, and as a Fulbright Fellow and a Japan Foundation Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo.

 

Hideichi Okada joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from September, 2013 until March, 2014 as Sasakawa Peace Fellow with the Japan Studies Program (JSP).  His research interests encompass energy policies and trade policies in the context of possible cooperation between Japan and the U.S. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Okada will be working to launch New Dialogue Program for future cooperation on various areas between Japan and the U.S., and other Asia Pacific countries.  Okada served as Vice Minister for International Affairs, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) from 2010 to 2012, where he promoted international trade and investment, and expanded industrial cooperation with various countries. He also served as Director General of Trade Policy Bureau (2008-2010) and Director General of Commerce and Information Policy Bureau of METI (2007-2008). He worked for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as his executive assistant, where he dealt with policies on economy, industry, energy, science and technology, and environment, and with public relations (2001-2006). He was a professor at GRIPS (2006-2007) and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and IR/PS, University of California, San Diego in 2007.  Okada was born in Tokyo in 1951. He received LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School (1981) and graduated from the University of Tokyo with a LL.B. (1976). Currently, he is Senior Advisor, NTT Data Institute of Management and Consulting.

 

Phillip Lipscy is a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. His fields of research include Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, international and comparative political economy, international security, and regional cooperation in East and Southeast Asia.  Lipscy is an expert on bargaining over unbalanced representation in international organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. His existing work addresses a wide range of topics such as the use of secrecy in international policy making, the effect of domestic politics on trade, and Japanese responses to the Asian Financial Crisis. His most recent research examines the political and economic factors that facilitate energy-efficient policymaking.  Lipscy obtained his PhD in political science at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University.  Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Institute for Global and International Studies at George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo.

 

Takeo Hoshi is the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, and professor of finance (by courtesy), Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining S/APARC, he was Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in International Economic Relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Hoshi also serves on the Board of Directors at Union BanCal Corporation. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research (TCER). His main research interests include the study of the financial aspects of the Japanese economy, especially corporate finance, banking, and monetary policy. He received numerous awards for his publications including Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001), co-authored with Anil Kashyap (Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago), and his other publications include, “Japanese Government Debt and Sustainability of Fiscal Policy” (with Takero Doi and Tatsuyoshi Okimoto), Journal of the Japanese and International Economies,2011; “Corporate Restructuring in Japan during the Lost Decade” (with Satoshi Koibuchi and Ulrike Schaede), Japan’s Bubble, Deflation, and Long-term Stagnation, MIT Press, 2011 (Koichi Hamada, Anil K Kashyap, and David E. Weinstein, eds.) He has been the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies since 1999. Hoshi received his BA in social sciences from the University of Tokyo in 1983, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.

The digital Information Technology (IT) revolution currently underway is profoundly reshaping economic activity, influencing politics, and transforming societies around the world. It is also forcing a reconceptualization of the global and local; many of the technologies, platforms, and fundamental disruptions are global in nature, but national or local contexts critically influence the uses and effects of IT.

Digital media— broadly conceived as digital platforms for information creation, transmission, and consumption—is a core driver of the IT revolution. Information is the very essence of civilization itself, and the advent of digital media fundamentally transforms our relationship to information. We have already seen: 1)  the Internet maturing as a platform for posting, disseminating, and consuming information, such as online news startups, video such as Youtube, microblogs to evade censorship, and a global marketplace for selling software, advertising and even personal information; 2) the diffusion of mobile communications, making information available across  geographic and socio-economic boundaries, and 3) the widespread adoption of social networking services that represent exploration into the next stage of relationships between people, groups, firms, and other entities.

Digital media is also at the crux of the “global meets local” dynamic, since digital media is by nature global, but differences in economic, political, and social conditions across countries lead to wide variation in its impact. For example, digital media is argued to have been a catalyst in the Arab Spring demonstrations that led to regime shifts in Tunesia, Egypt, and then Syria, but digital media in itself may not lead directly to a regime shift in China— due to government success in sophisticated censorship and physical network design.

The Asia-Pacific provides a fascinating array of countries for examination of the political, economic, and socio-cultural effects of digital media on the modern world. Economies range from developing to advanced. Governments include varied democracies as well as one party regimes. The press enjoys relative freedom in some countries, undergoes limited constraints in others, and is tightly controlled in a few. Populations range from dense to sparse, and from diverse to relatively homogenous.

The panels were divided to discuss four major themes:

Digital Media versus Traditional Media
Around the world, digital media is disrupting traditional media such as newspapers and television. Traditional business models are undermined, new entrants proliferate, and experimentation abounds with no end-game in sight. Questions for countries with well-established traditional media include: what are the patterns for the emergence of new players? To what degree do they threaten the traditional? In countries with less diffused traditional media, what are the opportunities enjoyed by digital media? 

Beyond business models, the social and political functions of digital media may differ from those of traditional media—particularly where traditional media is subject to close governmental control. Who are the new entrants, and what new functions do they provide?  Have traditional media failed as sources of information? What shifts have occurred in how people get information, and how does this differ across countries?

Digital Media and Political Change in Asia
Digital media opens up vast new information flows that can influence political change. From the perspective of grass-roots movements and civil society, digital media provides new tools to congregate, coordinate, and demonstrate. Governments that strongly control civil society, such as China and Vietnam, were alert to the role digital media played in the Arab Spring. What is the potential for digital media in civil society and democratization? In democratic countries such as Japan, South Korea, or India, how is digital media transforming civil society? For example, Japan’s peaceful anti-nuclear demonstrations, coordinated through digital media, displayed an entirely new pattern.

From the perspective of governments, digital media presents not only challenges, but new opportunities to monitor, gather information, and respond to the public. In strong state countries, control of information flows to the people, and gathering of information about people are the cornerstones of state control. How are these states adapting their attempts at controlling media in the face of pervasive digital media? In democratic systems, deciding what information to channel to which voters at what point in election cycles is a critical part of any electoral strategy. How are governments and parties using digital media to reach their constituencies, and what is their effectiveness?

Social Change and Economic Transformation
As a core part of the IT revolution, digital media has opened up new domains of innovation that transforms industries and economies. For advanced countries, it raises serious questions about how best to profit from digital platforms whose underlying technology is increasingly controlled by American multinational firms. For developing countries, the question is how to best take advantage of the world-class computing resources, global markets, and extensive reach enabled by the technological platforms underlying digital media. Instruments such as smartphones and the digital content conveyed on those devices are altering interpersonal relations and even the struggle against poverty in societies such as India.

The advent of social network services is also altering how we conceive of social connections. How do these networks affect groups such as the Korean or Filipino diasporas, and what are the implications for identity, “imagined communities,” and group identification. In what ways is the cohesiveness of groups enhanced by connections such as Facebook or Twitter, and in what ways are groups fragmented along interest cleavages, with people exposed to only ideas and groups of their choice. How does digital media impact social change and how does that impact lead to economic transformation in both developed and developing countries?

Digital Media and International Relations
The growth of digital media produces a powerful and sometimes troubling impact on international relations in the Asia-Pacific region. It can provide greater cultural understanding and regional integration but also aggravate tensions.  Cultural phenomenon such as the wildly popular Korean pop star Psy (of “Gangnam Style” fame) arise from the availability of digital media allowing a video to ‘go viral’ on a global scale in weeks. Conversely, tensions over territorial and historical issues in Northeast and Southeast Asia gain credence and momentum from discussion on digital media platforms, often pushing governments to act in ways detrimental to peace and stability. How does digital media influence international relations in the region? Is it a force for positive change or a source of instability? Finally, the rules governing critical parts of the physical infrastructure upon which digital media depend, such as governance of the Internet are increasingly contested in the international domain.

The fifth Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue focused on these issues surrounding the impact of digital media. The Dialogue brought together scholars, policy experts, and practitioners from the media, from Stanford University and from throughout Asia. Selected participants will start each session of the Dialogue with stimulating, brief presentations. Participants from around the region engaged in off-the-record discussion and exchange of views. The final report from the Dialogue will be published on this page as soon as it has been completed.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) established the Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue in 2009 to facilitate conversation about current Asia-Pacific issues with far-reaching global implications. Scholars from Stanford University and various Asian countries start each session of the two-day event with stimulating, brief presentations, which are followed by engaging, off-the-record discussion. Each Dialogue closes with a public symposium and reception, and a final report is published on the Shorenstein APARC website.

Previous Dialogues have brought together a diverse range of experts and opinion leaders from Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Australia, and the United States. Participants have explored issues such as the global environmental and economic impacts of energy usage in Asia and the United States; the question of building an East Asian regional organization; and addressing the dramatic demographic shift that is taking place in Asia.

The annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko.

The structure of the Chinese economy changed dramatically between 2005 and 2009.  It changed from an export-investment leading economy to a domestic-demand leading economy.  Before 2004 China was a huge factory because of its cheap and abundant labor.  After 2010 it has become a huge market because of the rapid increase of their income level.

Not only the rapid growth of China’s GDP, but the rapid increase of the number of middle-class-income people in China whose GDP per capita surpass 10 thousand USD gave Japanese companies many business chances since 2010. Even under the worst political condition between Japan and China after Senkaku territorial dispute most of Japanese companies keep increasing their investment in China because Chinese local governments are so eager to invite the investment of Japanese companies. If Japan and China can realize the normalization of Sino-Japan relations, their win-win relationship should be accelerated.

The Xi Jinping’s administration started officially in March. Chinese ordinary people’s complaint against the Chinese government seems very strong mainly because the former administration put off the resolution of many important problems including the corruption of governmental officials, environmental deterioration, economic inequality. Xi Jinping’s administration should work on these difficult problems. In such a situation it is important for China to normalize Sino-Japan relations to enhance the economic stability.

 

Kiyoyuki Seguchi is the Research Director of the Canon Institute for the Global Studies. His research focuses on the Chinese economy and relations between the United States, China and Japan. He worked for the Bank of Japan from 1982 to 2009. He was the Chief Representative of the Representative Office of BOJ in Beijing from 2006 to 2008, the international visiting fellow at RAND Corporation (Los Angeles, CA) from 2004 to 2005. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tokyo.