As in the United States, over the decades Korean domestic politics developed in dynamic ways that helped to shape the country’s foreign policy. In particular, Korea-U.S. relations have been influenced by changing political environments in both countries. Seoul and Washington have come to learn through hard experience that the domestic dimensions of foreign policy cannot be ignored if the alliance is to be managed well and unnecessary conflicts avoided. On the divided Korean Peninsula, North Korea continues to pose the primary challenge to the alliance, and in the eyes of South Koreans the achievement of Korean unification may be the ultimate test of the Korea-U.S. alliance. Few people are as qualified to address these complex issues as Dr. Jin Park, a former three-term member of the National Assembly, where he served as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and National Unification Committee.

Dr. Jin Park is currently Chair Professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He is also working as the Executive President of Asia Future Institute, an independent policy think-tank. The purpose of the institute is to research on the future development of Asia and to promote Korea’s role in the region. Dr. Park served in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Sessions of the National Assembly, representing the Grand National Party (renamed to Saenuri Party) in the central Jongno District in Seoul. While in politics, he served as the Chairman of Foreign Affairs, Trade and National Unification Committee of the National Assembly between 2008-2010. He graduated from the College of Law, Seoul National University, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, New York University Law School and received a doctorate degree in politics from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is the Vice President of Korea-America Association, a member of the New York State Bar, and is a regular member of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs. Dr. Park received Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) from Queen Elizabeth II. He speaks Korean, English, Japanese, and conversational Chinese.

SCID and SCP present a special seminar with Professor Xiaonian Xu

The Chinese economy has grown so fast and for so long. But the “miracle” has started fading in recent years.  Why?  Prof. Xu argues that the reform era can be divided into two fundamentally different phases.  Phase I, from 1978 to the mid-1990s, is characterized by market-oriented reforms, whereas Phase II, from the mid-1990s onward, is dominated by government-led investment and interventions. Though China’s growth performance looks identical in numbers over the two phases, the source of growth has changed from efficiency gains to increased use of resources. Phase II growth is thus unsustainable, and worse, it has brought about structural distortions that severely undermine the economy’s growth potential. To maintain growth even at a moderate level, China needs to go beyond what the leadership has promised and planned.

Dr. Xiaonian Xu is Professor of Economics and Finance at CEIBS. He worked for China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) since 1999 as Managing Director and Head of Research. The research team under Dr. Xu was ranked No. 1 in 2002 among domestic brokerage firms by Chinese institutional investors. And Dr. Xu himself was voted in the same survey as the best in economics research. Prior to CICC, Dr. Xu was Senior Economist with Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong from 1997 to 1998. He worked as a consultant of the World Bank in Washington DC in 1996. Dr. Xu was appointed Assistant Professor of Amherst College, Massachusetts, from 1991 to 1995, teaching Economics and Financial Markets. He was employed by the State Development Research Center of China as a research fellow from 1981 to 1985.
 
Dr. Xu obtained Ph.D. in Economics, University of California, Davis, in 1991, and MA in Industrial Economics in 1981 from People's University of China . He received Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 1996, the highest Chinese award in the field, for his research on China 's capital markets. His research interests include: Macroeconomics, Finance, Financial Institutions and Financial Markets, Transitional Economies, and China 's Economic Reform. Dr. Xu is the recipient of the 2005 and 2006 CEIBS Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Xu received the prestigious CEIBS Medal for Teaching Excellence in 2010. 

There are four serious island disputes in East Asia: from north to south, the Southern Kurile dispute (Russia vs. Japan), the Liancourt dispute (two Koreas vs. Japan), the Pinnacle dispute (Japan vs. two Chinas) and the Paracel-Spratly dispute (two Chinas vs. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei). All of these territorial disputes involve a perception of historical injustice by one of the parties. Japan's territorial claim against Russia is closely linked to the rancor over the Siberian Deportation (1945-56); Korea's territorial claim against Japan reflects the rancor over Japan's colonization (1910-45); Chinese territorial claims against Japan are rooted in the response to Japan's major invasion of mainland China going back to the Manchurian Incident (1931-45); and Vietnamese passion for the territorial claim against China is linked to the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979-89), among other things.

In this talk, the speaker will argue that the four territorial disputes over relatively unimportant islands in East Asia have persisted for such a long time not because of the contest for natural resources or the inherent importance of those territories but because of perceived historical injustice. If these disputes are to be settled now, the solutions therefore have to be political, taking perceived justice and injustice in consideration

Tetsuya Toyoda, has been teaching international law and constitutional law at Akita International University since 2007. Before that he was a project researcher at the University of Tokyo (2006-2007) and an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1994-2000). He graduated from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Law) and obtained his Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris II-Panthéon-Assas. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia. 

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.

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.

Over the past 35 years of the reform period Beijing has tried to make its state-owned enterprises more efficient and competitive. In the early 1990s it adopted a strategy modeled closely on the Western corporation and the equity and debt capital markets that support its operations. But China's big SOEs have demonstrated more and more independence despite outright economic and ownership control by the government and the Communist Party. And this independence has not led to greater efficiencies or, arguably, even competitiveness. Instead the National Champions represent monopolistic economic and political power. Today China's new leadership confronts the National Champions seeking to regain control over the state's principal assets. How did this happen and what can be done to reassert Beijing's rights?  

Carl E. Walter worked in China and its financial sector for over 20 years and actively participated in many of the country’s financial reform efforts. While at Credit Suisse First Boston he played a major role in China’s groundbreaking first overseas IPO in 1992. Later at Morgan Stanley he was a member of senior management at China International Capital Corporation, China’s first and most successful investment bank. While there he supported a number of groundbreaking domestic and international stock and bond underwritings for major Chinese corporations. More recently at JPMorgan he was China Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of its China banking subsidiary. During this time Carl helped build a pioneering domestic security, risk and currency trading operation. In his spare time he enjoyed driving his Jeep to distant provinces.

A long time resident of Beijing before his recent return to the United States, Carl is fluent in Mandarin and holds a PhD from Stanford University and a graduate certificate from Peking University. In Spring 2013, Carl returned to Stanford as a visiting scholar at the Shorenstein-Asia Pacific Research Center, FSI. He is the co-author of Red Capitalism: the fragile financial foundations of China’s extraordinary rise, which has been published in Chinese in China. His earlier book, Privatizing China: inside China’s stock markets, was also published in China and, like Red Capitalism, contributed to the government’s policy debate.

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