Reprint from NBR Analysis volume 7, number 4.

Reprint from Living with China: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (New York: W.W.Norton, 1997).

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

China’s performance in numerous environmental areas—emission of greenhouse gases, use of ozone-depleting substances, reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions, or exploitation of fishing grounds in the western Pacific—will help determine the success of various global and regional environmental protection efforts. And as the World Bank’s recent study Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century documents, the quality of life within China will be greatly affected by efforts to protect air, water, and soil, all of which are under heavy assault.

Ever since 1973, when Premier Zhou Enlai attended the United Nations–sponsored Stockholm Conference, the Chinese government has paid steadily increasing attention to environmental issues. It has joined many international accords, passed numerous environmental protection laws, and established a national environmental protection bureaucracy. On the surface, at least, there has been considerable movement. But how about beneath the surface?

With regard to its international commitments and agreements, what is the record to date? Why does China join international environmental accords? What happens domestically once it enters into an agreement? And what lessons can both China and the international community derive from the record to date? What factors encourage and inhibit effective implementation and compliance? What measures can be undertaken to improve the record?

This paper addresses these questions through an examination of China’s accession to and compliance with five environmental protection treaties: the Convention in Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in January 1981; the London Convention against Ocean Dumping in October 1985; the World Heritage Convention in December 1985; the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) in July 1986; and the Montreal Protocol in June 1992.

The paper is part of a multi-nation study under the direction of Professor Edith Brown Weiss of George Washington University Law School and Professor Harold Jacobson of the University of Michigan Political Science Department comparing compliance with these same treaties in the United States, Russia, Brazil, India, Japan, the Cameroons, and portions of Europe. The MIT Press is publishing the results of these studies under the title Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

The first book available devoted exclusively to China's rural organizational change and the subsequent implications for rural societies and politics. Following China's successful decollectivization, diverse new organizational forms arose in response to different local situations. Yet the collective tradition did not die. The contributors dissect the closely structured relationships among the newly emerging class of rural entrepreneurs, local officials, and their family members and associates.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

This APARC discussion series clearly recognizes that the international and regional condi- tions of the post–Cold War era raise new and vexing questions about the future of the United States and its alliance relations in Northeast Asia. Today I would like to raise and begin to analyze a specific subset of questions related to proliferation, which I believe have a direct bearing on the future security situation in the region—and, more importantly for us, the U.S. alliances there. I do not think that this subject receives sustained analysis, so I would like to try to initiate that process. I am at the outset of putting this research together and welcome the opportunity to hear your thoughts and criticisms as the study evolves.

In this presentation, I take a preliminary look at how issues of proliferation affect the present and future disposition of U.S. alliances in Northeast Asia. In particular, I hope to answer three questions. First, how do issues of proliferation either weaken or strengthen U.S. relations with its allies in Northeast Asia? Second, how do issues of proliferation affect the overall security situation there? And third, how does the security situation, in turn, shape the rationale or justification for continued U.S. alliance presence in the region? For this presenta- tion, when I speak of proliferation I generally refer to the spread of nuclear, missile, and advanced conventional weapon capabilities. I will not address issues related to chemical and biological weapons, although I do believe that these are a concern. Such a definition obviously casts a rather wide net, and in a presentation such as this at a relatively early stage of the research, I want to keep my focus relatively narrow. Thus, I will not address what I consider global issues of nonproliferation, such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Rather, I want to focus more narrowly on issues of specific relevance to Northeast Asia.

In trying to keep this focus narrow, then, I will proceed in four steps. First, I wish to briefly consider the contemporary trends of proliferation, around the globe and regionally, which have a bearing on the security situation in Northeast Asia. Second, I want to discuss three types of proliferation concerns and show how they intersect and interact with U.S. alliance relations. The first is nuclear proliferation, and here I would like to look at alliance relations in the context of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO. On the issue of the proliferation of theater missile defenses (TMD), I want to look specifically at the development of these capabilities by South Korea and Japan. And third, on the issue of ballistic missile proliferation, I would like to consider the efforts by South Korea to develop a more powerful ballistic missile force. In the third part of the talk, I would like to address how these and other proliferation issues affect relations with China, because future U.S. alliance relations will be shaped in no small measure by Chinese reactions to them. In the fourth and concluding section of the talk, I will try to look ahead and assess how these several developments affect relations between the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia; how they influence security in the region; and how U.S. alliance relations in Northeast Asia might be readjusted in the future so that cooperation and nonproliferation can help justify a continued U.S. presence in the region, simultaneously contributing to long-term regional confidence and stability.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

East Asia is a global geopolitical fault line, where historically great powers have interacted, collided, receded, and rebounded. Seen in the context of this long history, the end of World War II ushered in at least four paradigm changes of international and regional politics in Asia-Pacific.

This paper was published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

This discussion focuses on U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea relations and how the two interact. The U.S.-Japan review of the 1978 Defense Guidelines also will be considered, in terms of what it does and does not entail and in terms of its application to the security of the Korean peninsula and, more broadly, Asia.

An underlying theme of this presentation is that the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea relationships can survive and prosper only if the United States, Japan, and Korea share some degree of confluence of views on relations with China. There are common objectives in Northeast Asia shared not only by the United States, Japan, and Korea, but by China, Russia, and perhaps even North Korea. Many of these objectives concern the Korean peninsula, where all of the powers want stability and no one wants to see war. From a theoretical viewpoint, everyone is looking toward a "soft landing" and eventual peaceful reunification. Sometimes the visceral South Korean view seems to differ, and some of the Republic of Korea's policies may be in contradiction with the stated desirable outcome; this may cause tension in the U.S.-Korea alliance in the future.

The desire for a soft landing does not mean that the major powers are pushing to hasten reunification. Ironically, the country least anxious to see it, namely China, is the one least often accused of trying to prolong separation of the two Koreas. South Koreans accuse Japan of trying to keep Korea divided, and whenever the United States talks with North Korea, it is similarly charged. That is not the policy direction of either Japan or the United States; in fact, the Koreans seem not to need help from the outside to be hostile to each other.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.