Financial reform is one of the key priorities identified at the Third Plenum in November while state-owned enterprises got little mention.  But will financial reform possibly lead to a fundamental reform of state-owned companies?

Nicholas R. Lardy, Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow, joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in March 2003. Previously, he was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program from 1995 until 2003. Before Brookings, he served at the University of Washington, where he was the director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies from 1991 to 1995. From 1997 through the spring of 2000, he was also the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Trade and Finance at the Yale University School of Management. He is an expert on Asia, especially the Chinese economy.

Lardy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the editorial boards of the China Quarterly, Journal of Asian Business,China Review, and China Economic Review. He received his BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1975, both in economics.

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.

Ambassador Bosworth looks back on a career spanning five decades and foreign service assignments in Panama, Madrid, Paris, Tunis, Manila, Seoul and Washington.  Drawing on his involvement in issues ranging from control of the Panama Canal to the Arab oil embargo, North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the Asian financial crisis, the end of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, and how to deal with the opportunities and challenges of the rise of China, Bosworth tries to identify some basic principles and guidelines for the conduct of American foreign policy and relates stories about his personal experiences with leaders foreign and domestic.

Stephen W. Bosworth is a Senior Fellow at The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  He is also the Chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).  From 2001-2013, he served as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he now serves as Dean Emeritus.  He has also served as the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 1997-2001.

From 1995-1997, Mr. Bosworth was the Executive Director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization [KEDO], an inter-governmental organization established by the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan to deal with North Korea.  Before joining KEDO, he served seven years as President of the United States Japan Foundation, a private American grant-making institution.  He also taught International Relations at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs from 1990 to 1994.  In 1993, he was the Sol Linowitz Visiting Professor at Hamilton College.  He has co-authored several studies on public policy issues for the Carnegie Endowment and the Century Fund, and, in 2006, he co-authored a book entitled Chasing the Sun, Rethinking East Asian Policy.

A public reception will follow the seminar in the Encina Hall Lobby.

A year has passed since the Japanese government embarked on the new economic policy package called “Abenomics” with three “arrows”: aggressive monetary easing, flexible fiscal policy, and a growth strategy. The package is designed to bring the Japanese economy out of 20 years of stagnation and 15 years of deflation, and put it on a sustainable growth path. How effective has the policy package been during the first year of the Abe administration?  Will it succeed in bringing sustainable growth to Japan?  Professor Takatoshi Ito, a prominent expert on the Japanese economy, tackles these questions.

Takatoshi Ito, Professor at Faculty of Economics and Dean of Graduate School of Public
Policy, University of Tokyo, has taught extensively both in the United States and Japan,
including at University of Minnesota, Hitotsubashi University, and Harvard University.
He held visiting professor positions at Harvard University (1986-87 and 1992-94), Stanford
University (as National Fellow; 1984-85); Columbia Business School (fall semester, 2009),
and Tun Ismail Ali Chair Professor at University of Malaya (summer semester, 2008). His
public sector experiences include Senior Advisor in the Research Department, IMF
(1994-97); Deputy Vice Minister for International Affaires at Ministry of Finance
(1999-2001); and a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic and Fiscal
Policy (2006-08). He is an author of many books including The Japanese Economy (MIT
Press), The Political Economy of the Japanese Monetary Policy (MIT Press), and
Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan (MIT Press), and more than 50
refereed academic journal articles on international finance and the Japanese economy,
including ones in American Economic Review and Econometrica. He has distinguished
academic and research appointments such as President of the Japanese Economic
Association in 2004; Fellow of Econometric Society, since 1992; Research Associate at
National Bureau of Economic Research since 1985; and Faculty Fellow, Centre for
Economic Policy Research, since 2006. His research interest includes capital flows and
currency crises, microstructures of the foreign exchange rates, and inflation targeting. He
contributes frequently op-ed columns and articles to Financial Times, Nihon Keizai Shinbun,
Mainichi Shinbun, and Toyo Keizai Weekly.

This talk explores the work of Swiss diplomats and Red Cross delegates to explain the experience of Allied POWs and civilian internees in the Pacific War. As the only foreigners allowed into both POW and internee camps, and the only ones to work in Japan as well as Allied countries, they were uniquely positioned to record the flow of information between the two sides, the attempts to deliver material and financial aid, and the intensifying exchange of recrimination and threats. Washington and Tokyo made claims and counter-claims about the observance or non-observance of the Geneva Conventions. Both sides threatened and carried out reprisals and made their observance of international law conditional on the conduct of the enemy. While life was far worse for Allied captives than for their Japanese counterparts, it was not because of a deliberate policy of cruelty. Instead, senior Japanese officials never developed clear policy guidance for POWs and failed to provide adequate logistical and administrative support. The few Japanese officials who oversaw the camp system lacked any authority over individual commanders. Even so, the Swiss may well have helped prevent a bad situation from becoming even worse.

Sarah Kovner is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B.) and Columbia University (Ph.D), associate professor of history at the University of Florida, and is currently a Chauncey Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale. She works on modern Japanese history, international history, and the history of war and society. Kovner's first book, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, won the Southeast Conference Association for Asian Studies book prize. It is available in paperback from Stanford University Press. She is now writing a history of Allied prisoners in the Pacific War.

 

By any measure, China’s economy and defense budget are second only to those of the United States. Yet tremendous uncertainties persist concerning China’s military development and national trajectory, and areas with greater information available often conflated misleadingly. Fortunately, larger dynamics elucidate both areas. Particularly since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China has made rapid progress in aerospace and maritime development, greatly facilitating its military modernization. The weapons and systems that China is developing and deploying fit well with Beijing’s geostrategic priorities. Here, distance matters greatly: after domestic stability and border control, Beijing worries most about its immediate periphery, where its unresolved disputes with neighbors and outstanding claims lie primarily in the maritime direction. Accordingly, while it would vastly prefer pressuring concessions to waging war, China is already capable of threatening potential opponents’ military forces should they intervene in crises over islands and maritime claims in the Yellow, East, and South China Seas and the waterspace and airspace around them. Far from mainland China, by contrast, it remains ill-prepared to protect its own forces from robust attack. Fortunately for Beijing, the non-traditional security focus of its distant operations makes conflict unlikely; remedying their vulnerabilities would be difficult and expensive. Despite these larger patterns, critical unknowns remain concerning China’s economic development, societal priorities, industrial efficiency, and innovation capability. Dr. Erickson will examine these and related issues to probe China’s development trajectory and future place in the international system. 

The views expressed by Dr. Erickson are his alone, and do not represent the policies or estimates of any organization with which he is affiliated.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is an Associate Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a core founding member of the department’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He is an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies (2008-). Erickson also serves as an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report (中国实时报), for which he has authored or coauthored 25 articles. In spring 2013, he deployed in the Pacific as a Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard USS Nimitz (CVN68), Carrier Strike Group 11.

Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. in international relations and comparative politics from Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a B.A. in history and political science. He has studied Mandarin in the Princeton in Beijing program at Beijing Normal University’s College of Chinese Language and Culture and Japanese language, politics, and economics in the year-long Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University.

Erickson’s research, which focuses on Asia-Pacific defense, international relations, technology, and resource issues, has been published widely in English- and Chinese-language edited volumes and in such peer-reviewed journals as China Quarterly, Asian Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Asia Policy (forthcoming January 2014), and China Security; as well as in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The American Interest, Foreign Policy, Joint Force Quarterly, China International Strategy Review (published in Chinese-language edition, forthcoming in English-language edition January 2014), and International and Strategic Studies Report (Center for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University). Erickson has also published annotated translations of several Chinese articles on maritime strategy. His publications are available at <www.andrewerickson.com> and <www.chinasignpost.com>.

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.