Political Change in Japan II: One Step Forward, One Step Back
The Japanese elections of 2007 and 2009 brought about the most significant political change in postwar Japan since the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. The elections saw a collapse of the LDP that had ruled Japan for almost the entirety of the postwar period, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) gained control of both houses of parliament (Diet). The elections appeared to mark the consolidation of a new era of genuine competitive electoral politics in Japan, potentially leading to a stable two-party system. The DPJ came into power in the fall of 2009 promising to revolutionize Japanese policy making and diminish the authority of the government bureaucracy in favor of a greater role for elected politicians and a cabinet-led system of governance.
A year later, the winds of change seem to have lost much of their momentum. The DPJ's string of electoral victories came to a quick end in the Upper House vote of 2010. Prior to the election, Prime Minister Hatoyama was forced to step down in favor of Naoto Kan after the government proved ineffectual in forging clear and cohesive policies in both domestic and foreign arenas. The LDP, along with new conservative groupings, has stepped back from the brink of self-destruction.
The future of politics in Japan is now highly uncertain with numerous possible outcomes. When it comes to political change in Japan, are recent events a case of one step forward, one step back? Alternatively, is the 2010 election simply be a temporary setback in what will become either a period of DPJ dominance or a period of genuine party competition? Or, are we still in a period of flux, in which further realignment and possibly even grand coalition making between the LDP and DPJ may continue to shake up the system?
Moreover, even if the events of 2007 and 2009 really did usher in a new party system, what sorts of changes are we looking at? Will the system be focused on genuine two-party competition, or will small parties help decide future governments? And what do these changes really mean in terms of government policy-making in Japan?
This conference follows in the footsteps of our successful conference on political change in Japan in 2007 at Stanford that produced an edited volume - Political Change in Japan. We again hope to bring together both junior and senior academic specialists on Japanese politics and policymaking to take stock of the state of political change after genuine party alternation has occurred. The conference will examine the impact of change on parties and politics and on key areas of governance.
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Inter-Korean relations
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Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC and Stanford KSP, speculates on what inter-Korean relations will be like after the sinking of the Cheonan and the artillery firing at Yeonpyeong island, in a column in the The Korea Times. While predicting that tension and reconciliation efforts will go side-by-side with one another in the inter-Korean relations in the next few months, Shin further contends that the Lee Myung-bak administration should take on the task of improving inter-Korean relations by diplomatic solutions, not by military means, and that this strategy should be approached in a broader context which takes into account U.S.-Korea relations and the relations among Northeast Asian countries.
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Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC and Stanford KSP
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Taiwan's Sovereign Status and the Neglected Taipei Treaty of 1952
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With a territory consisting of 36,000 square kilometres and a population of 23 million, the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, Penghu, Jinmen and Mazu had, in 1970, the year prior to its withdrawal from the United Nations (UN), a population larger than two thirds of the countries in the world. In 1996, its population exceeded that of three quarters of the member nations of UN. However, the question of Taiwan being a nation in the international order is, strangely, still debated. To enquire into this delicate issue, Dr. Man-houng Lin will address to what extent the statehood of the ROC on Taiwan has or has not been secured by the Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China and Japan, singed and turned effective in 1952, and often referred to as the “Taipei Treaty.” (Taibei heyue) She will also illustrate that not only the People’s Republic of China, but also the Taiwanese in general have been unclear about Taiwan’s status as a sovereign state on the world stage. Meanwhile, in this special seminar Dr. Lin will further depict the background of the Taipei Treaty in terms of the long-term history of the Asian Pacific region. She will show how the Cold War made the Taipei Treaty, and ironically, how the ideological attachment of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland has also blurred this treaty.
Man-houng Lin received her Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. She has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica since 1990, and Professor at the Department of History, National Taiwan Normal University since 1991. Her research interests include treaty ports and modern China, native opium of late Qing China, currency crisis and early nineteenth-century China, and Taiwanese merchants' overseas economic networks during the Japanese colonial period. She has published 5 books and about 70 articles in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean. From May 2008 to December 2010, Dr. Lin was President of the Academia Historica, the Republic of China (Taiwan).
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Man-houng Lin
Senior Research Fellow
Speaker
Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica
Seminars
Thomas Fingar analyzes China and the global system
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Despite all of
the rhetoric, it is clear from the numbers that China's ascendency has not been
at the expense of the United States.
-Thomas Fingar
China unquestionably occupies a significant place in the world's U.S.-led economic and political system. Will it continue to participate in the system that it has benefited from and contributed to, adapting its policies and practices in order to do so? Or, will it attempt to overturn the current system at some point in an effort to gain global dominance? Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, will address these core questions in a new research project, arguing that the situation is neither so polarized, nor so simplistic. Former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Fingar takes an empirical approach to his research, examining whether there have been recurring patterns to China's involvement in the global order; what drives, shapes, and constrains Chinese initiatives; and how others have responded to Chinese actions.
Fingar asserts that there have been patterns to China's participation in international economics and politics over the past 30 years, including a pendular quality to the U.S.-China relationship. According to him, relations between the two countries were largely instrumental during the Cold War era when the United States was at odds with the Soviet Union and China was undergoing a period of self strengthening. U.S.-China relations cooled following the Tiananmen Square incident, the timing of which coincided roughly with the fall of the Soviet Union. Trust between the two countries deteriorated as China displayed its more authoritarian side, and the United States responded with sanctions that did not significantly impede China's economic growth, but did change the relationship in ways that still shape perceptions of one another.
Economics are now the primary focal point of discussions about U.S.-China
relations, with a negative light frequently cast on China. "Despite all of
the rhetoric, it is clear from the numbers that China's ascendency has not been
at the expense of the United States," states Fingar. Trade with China, in
fact, creates jobs in the United States, but trade-related jobs are dispersed
and therefore not clearly visible. "They are not concentrated in a place where
a factory closed, often for reasons that that have nothing to do with China,"
says Fingar, "but the pain and the political impact is local. I would
predict that when our economy turns around, the pendulum will swing further
back in a less-worried, less-critical direction."
While China has a legal system and has adopted many international standards,
Fingar asserts that "it is still not a society governed by law," and
that it in fact does not always measure up to global or even to its own
standards. He cites China's record of undesirable practices and issues, such as
currency manipulation, government corruption, and intellectual property
violation, which complicate and confuse understanding of its involvement in the
global system.
Fingar does not believe that the U.S.-China relationship will ever return to
the "honeymoon" era of the Cold War, but he says, "The swings of the
pendulum and the perturbations in the relationship are less intense and of
shorter duration; that is the pattern." Quoting Anne-Marie Slaughter, director
of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, Fingar suggests that the
best vision for the global order is "a world in which there are more
partnerships and fewer alliances." He cautions against disregarding important,
long-time alliances, such as the U.S.-Korea relationship. He notes, however,
the crucial fact that alliances assume that there is an adversary, which can
marginalize and threaten regional neighbors, such as China, or put allies in
the uncomfortable position of having to choose between siding with a neighbor
or a distant ally. "We must find a way so that no one has to choose," says
Fingar.
On January 6, Fingar outlined the primary points of his new research project at a public lecture co-sponsored by the Stanford China Program and the Center for East Asian Studies, part of the China in the World series. He will also lead Stanford students through an examination of related key issues and questions in "China on the World Stage" (IPS 246), a course that he is teaching during the current winter quarter.
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President Hu Jintao of China waits in a hallway before the start of a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama, during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., April 12, 2010.
Official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson
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Thomas Fingar: The view from Beijing
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In the January/February issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Thomas Fingar, the former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, examines Chinese President Hu Jintao's assessment of the economic and political challenges his nation faces. China's "growth has bolstered national pride and earned the respect of people around the world," Fingar writes in an imagined memo from Hu. "But it has also raised expectations at home and reinforced foreign concerns about China's rise. Our successes have made it even more important to make progress on corruption, perceived injustice, and other long-standing problems."
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Factions in a Bureaucratic Setting: The Origins of Cultural Revolution Conflict in Nanjing
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Mass factions in China during the first two years of the Cultural Revolution have long been understood as interest groups: collections of individuals who shared interests due to common occupations, statuses, or party affiliations. An alternative view, developed primarily with evidence about the distinctive case of Beijing students, emphasizes not the characteristics of participants but histories of political encounters in collapsing bureaucratic hierarchies. This article pursues the issue in settings outside China's capital, tracing the development of factions in two schools and one factory that played major roles in the politics of Nanjing. Individuals from the same backgrounds were commonly pitted against one another, and their political stances were strategic responses to context-specific histories of conflict rather than expressions of some underlying interest of members in either preserving or challenging existing arrangements
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The China Journal
Transitions from State Socialism: A Property Rights Perspective
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Numerous countries have transitioned away from state socialism since the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states two decades ago. At the core of this phenomenon, suggests Andrew G. Walder, is “a radical change in the definition, enforcement, and allocation of various rights over property.” In the chapter “Transitions from State Socialism: A Property Rights Perspective” (The Sociology of Economic Life, 2011), Walder examines property rights changes within the context of the transition from state socialism in Hungary, China, and Vietnam.
Published by Westview Press in January 2011, The Sociology of Economic Life was edited by sociology professors Mark Granovetter of Stanford University and Richard Swedberg of Cornell University.
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Books
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Westview Press
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9780813344553
Private Health Insurance in South Korea: An International Comparison
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OUR APOLOGIES: THIS WORKING PAPER HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY REMOVED PENDING PEER REVIEW FOR PUBLICATION.
In this study, we discuss the historical and policy background of expanded private health insurance in South Korea. Looking at the public-private mix of health care financing and its impacts, we conduct a comparative study of 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the period 1980–2007 to ask whether private health insurance can counterbalance limited government financing, high out-of-pocket payments, and the persistent financial deficit of South Korea’s National Health Insurance system. The panel analyses of OECD Health Data 2009 suggest that private health insurance financing is unlikely to reduce government spending on health care and social security. Also we find little evidence that out-of-pocket payments will be replaced by private health insurance payments. Private health insurance payments, however, are found to have a statistically significant positive association with total spending on health care, which indicates that the coverage effect of private health insurance—in addition to national health insurance—may exceed the efficiency gain through the market competition that private insurers may deliver to the health care sector. These findings leave it unclear whether private initiatives in health care financing will be as effective as the policy advocates hope for, in dealing with the challenges of national health insurance in South Korea. Further studies of how public and private insurers, and providers and consumers interplay in response to a given structure of private-public mix in financing are warranted to decide the right balance between private coverage and publicly provided universal coverage.
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Asia Health Policy Program working paper #22
Fourth Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum
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The fourth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held at Stanford University on June 18, 2010, convened former senior South Korean and American West Coast-based policymakers, scholars, and regional and functional experts to discuss North Korea, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and regional dynamics in Northeast Asia. Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center organized the Forum in association with its Korean partner, The Sejong Institute, of Seongnam, Korea. The Forum operates as a closed workshop under Chatham House Rule of confidentiality, allowing participants to engage in frank and in-depth exchanges on important and sensitive current issues. Meeting in the aftermath of the March 26 sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan, Forum participants focused on developments in North Korea, how the U.S.-ROK alliance should respond to North Korean challenges, and the role of China vis-à-vis the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asia region.
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Shorenstein APARC