On August 28, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he will step down from the position, citing serious health concerns. What is his legacy and what lies ahead? Below, I list his three major accomplishments (hits) and disappointments (misses) and consider who is likely to succeed him.

Hit: Abe’s greatest accomplishment is that he kept winning elections and stayed in power, becoming the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history. In a country where only one prime minister (Koizumi) lasted more than two years in the last three decades, this is a significant achievement. He started his (second) term in 2012 when Japan was still reeling from the triple disaster of 2011 and the mismanagement by the then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). He initially restored confidence in Japan, energized the economy with bold policies, and brought stability to Japanese politics. The weakening and eventual disintegration of the DPJ facilitated his streak of electoral victories, but he deserves credit for launching several policy initiatives to revitalize the stagnant and aging economic giant and for incorporating social welfare policies – many of which were proposed by opposition parties – to stave off dissatisfaction among voters. He raised the consumption tax rate twice and still won six straight elections, an amazing feat considering how past prime ministers faired after a tax hike.

Miss: Despite this long period as prime minister, it is not entirely clear that he accomplished major policy goals. Abenomics – Abe’s signature economic policy – reinvigorated the Japanese economy, shooting stocks up to great heights, but the economy as a whole did not grow any faster under his watch and per capita GDP shrank, exacerbating economic inequality. Revising the Constitution, widely seen as his ultimate goal as prime minister, did not come close to being a reality, even though he launched a number of trial balloons. Abe also proposed many new policy initiatives with catchy phrases – womanomics, work-life balance reform, reviving rural Japan, etc. – but was often criticized for producing only an impression that he is doing something (yatterukan) rather than actually getting things done.

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Hit: Foreign policy was Abe’s strong suit. Having outserved most G7 leaders, his stature at international meetings rose to a height few Japanese prime ministers reached before. Overcoming the initial perception as a hawkish nationalist ideologue, he demonstrated savvy pragmatism in foreign affairs, developing strong relationships with the United States, particularly with President Trump, and recovering from the rocky start with President Xi to forge a practical partnership with China. His administration also passed a series of legislation that advanced realist security policies and popularized a vision of Free and Open Indo-Pacific, which other countries including the United States bought into. Furthermore, despite the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Abe marched on and led the charge toward the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a rare example of Japan leading a multilateral agreement without support from the United States.

Miss: Yet, Abe failed to achieve some key foreign policy goals. The issue of abduction of Japanese by North Korea, which prompted him to national prominence when he was a young cabinet member under Prime Minister Koizumi, did not see any progress, nor did territorial negotiations with Russia – another foreign policy issue he expended a good deal of capital on. South Korea was another thorn on his side: the “comfort women” agreement could have been Abe’s major accomplishment, but domestic political turmoil in South Korea led to President Moon’s scuttling of the agreement, which sent the Japan-South Korea relations into a downward spiral. This development had more to do with South Korean politics than Abe, but he still could have tried to repair the damage. Instead, he threw in a towel on Moon and escalated tensions with South Korea, when the two countries should be close allies collaborating to cope with China’s assertiveness and the North Korean nuclear threat.

Hit: Abe’s cabinet accumulated enormous power over bureaucrats by holding authority on personnel decisions, which is critical in controlling them. This shift of power from bureaucrats to politicians was what the DPJ advocated when it became the ruling party. Abe nearly perfected this transfer of power and established a system under which the prime minister can take the initiative for new policies, going over opposition from career bureaucrats, and seek voters’ judgment about the merits of the policy in subsequent elections. This departs from decades of political practice in Japan, whereby bureaucrats set major policies, and most politicians merely parrot policy goals, which is unconducive to major policy changes needed to energize the stagnant economy and society. Abe leaves in place the cabinet apparatus that could empower the next prime minister to launch major policy initiatives.

Miss: The downside of the concentration of power is corruption. A series of scandals that revealed excessively cozy relationships between Abe and his supporters threatened Abe’s hold on power in the last few years. As is often the case, the coverup was worse than the initial infraction in the major financial scandals, and other transgressions challenged the public’s sense of fairness as Abe’s supporters – politicians, government officials, business leaders, journalists, or celebrities – allegedly received special treatment. The lack of accountability undermined Abe’s credibility toward the end, and the weakened administration struggled to handle the coronavirus crisis. Despite the relatively low numbers of coronavirus cases and victims in Japan, Abe received few applauses for his handling of the crisis. Even though his health was the main reason for his resignation, all these recent developments sapped the energy out of his cabinet, setting the stage for his resignation.

Who’s Next?

Abe’s abrupt departure prompted a number of party leaders to jockey for the successor position. As of this writing, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has all but secured the position, having picked up support from key factions within the ruling LDP. Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba will remain on the ballot but other major candidates such as Defense Minister Taro Kono have decided not to run this time.

Suga has been the most important partner for Abe in the cabinet along with Deputy Prime Minister Aso, contributing to the consolidation of power in the cabinet and executing various policy initiatives and legislative successes. Suga would likely carry forward many of Abe’s key policies, and with his tactical savvy and the potent cabinet apparatus that he helped create, has the potential to become a powerful prime minister. On the other hand, he would only have a year before the next election for LDP presidency (because he would be filling Abe’s remaining term) and he would have to account for Abe’s negative legacies, in some of which he is seen as complicit. These factors lead many observers to predict a short stint for him, but Suga is a scrappy self-made man who rose from a modest background, and his political instincts and already strong hold on power are not to be underestimated.

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Lee studies the impacts of AI and robotics across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail banking, and nursing homes. A trend he sees across most sectors following the adoption of robotics or AI is a positive increase in productivity. This has impacts for both the short-term and long-term relationships between humans and their robot coworkers, or “co-bots.” While it is true that the introduction of automation and robots initially replaces a significant number of workers in sectors such as manufacturing, over time, that impact reverses and there are job gains in many cases.

“The impact of robots often evolves over time from replacing human workers to augmenting them,” Lee explains, “and productivity gains [can] create opportunities for existing and new occupations.” This happens in a variety of ways. In some cases, the use of robotics and automation in one area frees up time, labor, and resources to employ more people in other, higher-skilled areas. In another situation, increases in productivity brought on by automation allow for greater company growth than would not have been possible otherwise. This, in turn, spurs the need to expand the workforce.

Alternatively, supplementing the labor of a small workforce with robotics and AI can also spread limited resources much farther. Lee and Eggleston’s studies of the impacts of robots on nursing home care in Japan repeatedly show that the use of robots positively increases the quality of service that oftentimes-understaffed care facilities can provide to the elderly and infirm. This can range from monitoring the physical condition of patients and reliably delivering medications to providing mental and emotional support to elderly residents through the use of robotic humanoid companions. Such innovative use of tech fills critical gaps that a human-only workforce would struggle to meet in a staffing shortage like Japan faces.

Looking to the future, Lee shares this perspective: “When the automobile was invented, we suddenly had a new demand for drivers. Now we’ll have to see if [automation] creates demand for other new occupations.” It’s an area of innovation and research he, Dr. Eggleston, and other Stanford researchers will be closely watching with their human eyes in the years to come.

Read the original article by Stanford HAI here >>

This op-ed by Kiyoteru Tsutsui originally appeared in The Hill.

On Aug. 6, 1945, an American B-29 named the Enola Gay dropped and detonated a five-ton atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb’s 15-kiloton explosion claimed the lives of about 70,000 people instantly. While there’s some debate about the total number of individuals who ultimately died because of bomb-related injuries and radiation poisoning, the total number of fatalities likely exceeded 100,000 and potentially even 200,000.

Despite the colossal damage that the American military inflicted on Hiroshima, and subsequently on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, Japan soon would develop a warm, productive relationship with its war-time rival that has lasted to this day. According to a national survey of 1,586 Japanese citizens that we conducted this May, residents of Japan rank America as their best economic and military ally today and also in 20 years, when compared to other large, wealthy countries. Favorable views about America extend outside foreign policy into Japan’s culture, food, and products, which have been deeply ingrained into the fabric of Japanese cultural and social life. 

On the heels of one of the most devastating military defeats in human history, how has this pro-American sentiment been sustained for so long in Japan, and why has the dropping of atomic bombs, a potentially deeply divisive issue, rarely been politicized in the U.S.-Japan relations? (Continue reading the full article in The Hill.)

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This op-ed by Kiyoteru Tsutsui was originally published in The Hill.

With the specter of a cold war with China arising, allies in Asia-Pacific are increasingly important for the United States, whether in fighting pandemics, negotiating trade deals, or containing territorial disputes. Japan historically has been one of the most important partners for American interests in the region and a steadfast ally in the post-World War II era. 

For Japan, too, the U.S.-Japan security alliance has been the cornerstone of its foreign policy for decades, and the Japanese public clearly understands that. Reflecting this understanding, every new security decision in Japan, from the relocation of a U.S.-base in Okinawa to the recent cancellation of Aegis Ashore deployment, spurs intense public debates about the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance. (Continue reading the full article at The Hill.)

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The world’s population is aging at a faster rate and in larger cohorts than ever before. In countries like Japan that have low fertility rates and high life expectancy, population aging is a risk to social sustainability. Developing policies and healthcare infrastructure to support aging populations is now critical to the social, economic, and developmental wellbeing of all nations. As the COVID-19 pandemic has repeatedly shown, accurate projections of future population health status are crucial for designing sustainable healthcare services and social security systems.

Such projections necessitate models that incorporate the diverse and dynamic associations between health, economic, and social conditions among older people. However, the currently available models – known as multistate transition microsimulation models – require high-quality panel data for calibration and meaningful estimates. Now a group of researchers, including APARC Deputy Director and Asia Health Policy Program Director Karen Eggleston, has developed an alternative method that relaxes this data requirement.

In a newly published paper in Health Economics, Eggleston and her colleagues describe their study that proposes a novel approach using more readily-available data in many countries, thus promising more accurate projections of the future health and functional status of elderly and aging populations. This alternative method uses cross‐sectional representative surveys to estimate multistate‐transition contingency tables applied to Japan's population. When combined with estimated comorbidity prevalence and death record information, this method can determine the transition probabilities of health statuses among aging cohorts.

In comparing the results of their projections against a control, Eggleston and her colleagues show that traditional static models do not always accurately forecast the prevalence of some comorbid conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and stroke. While the sample sets used to test the new methodology originate in Japan, the proposed multistate transition contingency table method has important applications for aging societies worldwide. As rapid population aging becomes a global trend, the ability to produce robust forecasts of population health and functional status to guide policy is a universal need.

Read the full paper in Health Economics.

Learn more about Eggleston’s research projects >>

The Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU), the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and the APARC China Program jointly hosted a workshop on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in early March. The workshop, held on March 2 and 3, welcomed researchers from around the world with expertise in the Initiative. Unfortunately, because of the rapidly developing health emergency related to the coronavirus, participants from not only China, but also Japan, were prevented from attending. As described by Professor Jean Oi, founding director of SCPKU and the China Program, and Professor Francis Fukuyama, director of CDDRL and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, who co-chaired the workshop, the meeting aimed to provide a global perspective on the BRI, consolidate knowledge on this opaque topic, and determine the best method and resources for future research.  

The workshop began with presentations from several of the invited guests. Dr. Atif Ansar from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School kicked off the first day by describing not only the tremendous opportunity that the BRI presents to developing economies, but also the serious pitfalls that often accompany colossal infrastructure projects. Pointing out the poor returns on investment of mega infrastructure projects, Ansar examined the frequest cost and schedule overruns, random disasters, and environmental degradation that outweigh the minimal benefits that they generally yield. China’s own track record from domestic infrastructure projects does little to mitigate fear of these risks, Ansar claimed. In response, he urged professional management of BRI investments, institutional reforms, and intensified deployment of technology in BRI projects. Dr. Ansar was followed by Dr. Xue Gong of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr. Gong’s analysis centered on the extent to which China’s geopolitical motivations influenced its outward foreign direct investments (OFDI). Although her research was still in the early stages, her empirical analysis of China’s OFDI inflows into fifty BRI recipient countries from 2007-2018 nevertheless revealed that geopolitical factors often outweigh economic factors when it comes to China’s OFDI destinations.

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Professor Curtis J. Milhaupt and Scholar-in-Residence Jeffrey Ball, both at Stanford Law School, followed with individual presentations on the role of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the BRI and the emissions impact of the BRI on climate change, respectively. Professor Milhaupt  characterized Chinese SOEs as both geopolitical and commercial actors, simultaneously charged with implementing Party policies and attaining corporate profits. Chinese SOEs are major undertakers of significant overseas BRI projects, acting not only as builders but also as investors, partners, and operators. This situation, Milhaupt asserted, carries significant risks for SOEs because these megaprojects often provide dismal returns, have high default rates, and can trigger political backlash in their localities. Milhaupt highlighted the importance of gathering firm-level data on businesses actually engaged in BRI projects to better infer geostrategic, financial, or other motivations. Jeffrey Ball turned the discussion to carbon emissions from BRI projects and presented preliminary findings from his four-country case studies. He concluded that, on aggregate, the emissions impact of the BRI is still “more brown than green.” Twenty-eight percent of global carbon emissions may be accounted for by BRI projects, Ball asserted, underscoring the importance of the BRI to the future of global climate change.

The day concluded with presentations by  Michael Bennon, Managing Director at the Stanford Global Projects Center, and Professor David M. Lampton, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Bennon first presented findings from two empirical case studies of BRI projects and then went on to describe how the BRI is now practically the “only game in town” for infrastructure funding for developing countries. Lengthy environmental review processes at Western multilateral banks have turned the World Bank, for example, from a lending bank into a “knowledge bank,” he argued. He also highlighted that, in general, economic returns on BRI projects for China are very poor, even though recipient countries may accrue macroeconomic benefits from these projects. Finally, Professor Lampton turned the discussion back to Southeast Asia, where China is currently undertaking massive cross-border high-speed rail projects through eight ASEAN countries. He described how each host country had varying capacity to negotiate against its giant neighbor, and how the sequential implementation of these cross-border rail projects also had varying impacts on the negotiating positions of these host countries. BRI played out differently in each country, in other words, eliciting different reactions, push-backs and negotiated terms.

The second day of the workshop was dedicated to working toward a collaborative approach to future BRI research. The group discussed the key gaps in the existing research, including how to know what China’s true intentions are, how to measure those intentions, who the main players and their interests in both China and the host countries are, and even what the BRI is, exactly. Some cautioned that high-profile projects may not be representative of the whole. Participants brainstormed about existing and future sources of data, and stressed the importance of diversifying studies and seeking empirical evidence.