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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.

This seminar is part of the "Europe and the Global Economy" series.

Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese investment in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show an explosion in the interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both through greenfield investment and through mergers and acquisitions. This surge occurred concomitantly to the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the general economic downturn in many countries of the European Union (EU). This paper asks how the European crisis contributed to the surge of Chinese FDI in Europe. In particular, did this surge occur as a result of an explicit strategy formulated by governments in EU Member States in order to dig their countries out of the crisis? The main argument is that the crisis has provided Chinese investors with two types of bargains: economic bargains due to depressed prices and a greater number of assets for sale, and political bargains due to the lessened political resistance to deals that may have been objectionable in flusher times.

Sophie Meunier is Research Scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Co-Director of the EU Program at Princeton. She is the author of Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations (Princeton University Press, 2005)  and co-author of The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (with Philip Gordon, Brookings Institution Press, 2001), winner of the 2002 France-Ameriques book award. She is also the editor of several books on Europe and globalization. Her current work deals with the politics of hosting Chinese investment in Europe. Meunier contributes regularly to the French and American media. She is Chevalier des Palmes Academiques.

Co-sponsored by the the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

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.