Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship played a critical role in transforming Japan’s  telecommunications sector. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, in a sector long dominated by a stable set of large actors with well-established patterns of interaction, entrepreneurs introduced new technologies, new business models, and new norms of  interaction.

The subsequent transformation of Japan’s telecommunications sector was dramatic, providing consumers with not only fast and sophisticated services but also low prices and an entire new ecosystem of mobile content—a considerable departure from Japan’s long track record of being known as producer- rather than consumer-oriented, with consumers enjoying high-end services and products, but at high prices.

Yet, these transformative entrepreneurs were not acting in a vacuum. Regulatory shifts in telecommunications were critical in providing opportunities for entrepreneurs, while simultaneously protecting them from large incumbent firms. These regulatory shifts were driven by the political dynamics of the 1990s as Japan struggled through its post-bubble economic malaise and political changes.

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Prior to March 11, 2011, many observers had all but written Japan's economy off; after all, it was said, Japan produced only 10 percent of global manufacturing output. Four days later, the world realized that a good portion of that 10 percent sits at a critical upstream spot in the global supply chain, in many products that we not only like (such as the iPad) but also need (e.g., fine chemicals for lithium-ion batteries, silicon wafers, or microcontrollers). In some cases, more than half of global output in critical input materials was located in the Tohoku region. Remarkably, by May 2011, most of the factories not located in the radiation zone had repaired the earthquake damage and resumed operations. 

This presentation explores Japan's role in producing components and materials that are critical in global manufacturing, and then zooms in to analyze the speedy efforts at reconstruction by Japanese business after the Tohoku disaster. It argues that Japan is unlikely to relinquish its leading role in supplying critical components due to this shock, precisely because these "New Japan" companies are competitive, nimble, and fast.

Ulrike Schaede studies Japan’s corporate strategy, business organization, management, financial markets, and regulation. Her book Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century (Cornell UP, 2008) argues that Japan’s business organization has undergone a strategic inflection so fundamental that our knowledge of Japanese business practices from the 1980s and 1990s is no longer adequate. Her current research looks at “New Japan” companies that have assumed global supply chain leadership in materials and components. She also works on projects regarding corporate restructuring, changing human resource practices, and entrepreneurship in Japan.

Schaede holds an MA from Bonn University, and a PhD from the Philipps-Universtät in Marburg, Germany. She is trilingual and has spent a total of more than eight years of research and study in Japan. She has been a visiting scholar at the research institutes of the Bank of Japan, Japan's Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and at the Development Bank of Japan. Before joining the University of California, San Diego in 1994, Schaede held academic positions in Germany (Philipps-Universtät Marburg) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo), and she was a visiting professor at the business schools of UC Berkeley and Harvard.

The fall of Bo Xilai is the most serious political crisis in China since Tiananmen in 1989. The leadership succession process was nearly derailed and a deep rift has opened up at the top of the Communist Party. While many critical details of this power struggle remain unknown, the effects of this incident are certain to be far-reaching. Many key questions have been raised, including: How will the fall of Bo affect the new leadership line-up and its policies? How will the rift affect the party's ability to maintain control over a society showing growing signs of defiance and tensions? What does the incident tell us about the systemic corruption at the core of the party's leadership? Professor Minxin Pei will address these and other issues during this timely seminar.

About the Speaker

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He is a frequent commentator for BBC World News, Voice of America, and National Public Radio; his op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek International, the International Herald Tribune, and other major newspapers.

Pei received his PhD in political science from Harvard University. He was on the faculty at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998, and he has received numerous prestigious fellowships, including the National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the McNamara Fellowship at the World Bank, and the Olin Faculty Fellowship of the Olin Foundation.

So much has been written and said about the Obama administration’s “pivot” toward Asia that one might think diplomacy has become ballet. More than three years have passed since February 2009 when Hillary Clinton broke a 48-year-old precedent at the State Department by choosing Asia as the destination for her first trip abroad as secretary of state. “As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan,” she wrote in November in Foreign Affairs, “the United States stands at a pivot point.” A skeptic might have stressed the negative: a pivot away from failure in the Middle East. She preferred the positive: a pivot towards greater “investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region,” itself the designated pivot of “America’s Pacific century.” 

How much of this pivot talk is hype, and how much is real? How have Asians responded to this apparent turn toward them? What global and regional scenarios and strategies could it imply? Will future historians remember the pivot as the start of a Sino-American cold war, or the requisite of a realistic entente? Does the pivot illustrate renewed American leadership in foreign affairs, or belated American acquiescence in a multi-polar world? Is Washington being implicated in conflict over the South China Sea? Even if Obama is re-elected this November, will Clinton’s replacement continue to pivot? Or is it time for the pivot’s critics to do some pivoting of their own—to stop worrying about the downside, start acknowledging the upside, and help make the ballet a constructive performance for all concerned?

Donald K. Emmerson has discussed the pivot recently with analysts in Asia, Canada, and the United States. “America Pivots toward ASEAN” and “US, China Role Play for ASEAN,” datelined November 2011 in Asia Times Online, reflect his impressions of the East Asia Summit that President Obama and Secretary Clinton attended that month in Bali. Forthcoming work includes an essay on Southeast Asia in the Journal of Democracy and a chapter in Indonesia Rising: The Repositioning of Asia’s Third Giant.