In this twelfth session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and other leading experts will discuss current developments in the Korean Peninsula and North Korea policy, the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and KORUS FTA, and a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in association with Korea National Diplomatic Academy, a top South Korean think tank.

Mr. Hoshi's talk will focus on the current status of the Abe Administration on the domestic side, as well as developments in foreign policy and national security. On the domestic side, he will discuss issues such as evaluating Abe's "Three Arrows" of economic policy, an analysis of the core political leaders within the "Abe Team," and the consumption tax hike. For foreign policy and national security, he will discuss topics such as the right of collective self-defense, constitutional amendment, Abe's visit to Yasukuni Shrine, and Japan-China and Japan-Korea relations.

Hiroshi Hoshi,columnist and senior political writer for Asahi Shimbun, was born in 1955, graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo.  He then joined the Asahi Shimbun in 1979 and was assigned to the political section in 1985. He covered Kantei (prime minister’s office), Liberal Democratic Party, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and others.  He was in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent and then worked at the political desk before he became a senior political writer in 2000, and was assigned as a columnist in 2013.

He appears as a commentator in the TV program from 2002 and has also taught in the graduate school of the University of Tokyo as a project professor for two years from April 2004.  His publications include “Jiminto to Sengo” (Liberal Democratic Party and Post-War Years) from Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, “Terebi Seiji” (TV Politics) from Asahi Sensho, and “Abe Seiken no Nihon” (Japan under Abe Administration) from Asahi Shinsho.

The period from the arrest of the “gang of four” in October 1976 to the final step in the removal of Hua Guofeng in mid-1981 saw CCP rural policy go through a number of phases. The initial emphasis on a moderate version of the Dazhai model gave way to “traditional policies” (luoshi zhengce) by mid-1978; these policies were supplemented in 1979 by “responsibility systems,” the most radical of which, household contracting (baochan daohu), became a sharply divisive issue in 1980, but still not the main aspect of agricultural policy. The tide was moving strongly toward household contracting by mid-1981, but had not yet achieved unambiguous endorsement as the Party policy.

A number of inadequate approaches have dominated the literature, notably 1) a power/policy struggle between Hua Guofeng's neo-Maoists and Deng Xiaoping's reform coalition; 2) the power of the peasants; and 3) the leading role of provincial reformers. The first has no validity, the second and third must be viewed through more complex lenses. The talk will explicate the key factors and present an alternative explanation of the success of rural reform.

Frederick C. Teiwes is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney. He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is the author of various books on Chinese elite politics including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 1993), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984), and Politics at Mao's Court (1990). Some of his most important work has been jointly authored with Warren Sun including The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization: Mao, Deng Zihui, and the "High Tide" of 1955 (1993), The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1971 (1996), China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Emergence of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959 (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (2007).