President Xi Jinping is scheduled to pay a state visit to Japan this spring. How have the relations between Japan and China been evolving during the last several years? How has the U.S.-China “trade war” been affecting the Japan-China relations? What is the best way for us to address China’s trade issues? The U.S. and Japan have been promoting cooperation under the Free and Open Indo Pacific (FOIP). Will Japan cooperate with China’s Belt and Road Initiative? How can the U.S. and Japan expand the cooperation under the FOIP?

Speaker:

Noriyuki Shikata, Former Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Japan in Beijing

Bio:

Noriyuki Shikata holds a B.A. in Law from Kyoto University and Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Most recently, he was the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Japan in China. His other prior positions include: Deputy Director General, Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau; Director, Economic Treaties Division, International Legal Affairs Bureau; and Director, Second North America Division, North America Bureau. Mr. Shikata has also been a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Law/Public Policy. He is currently at Harvard conducting research on an emerging U.S. policy toward China and the Indo-Pacific region. His Twitter handle is: @norishikata.

In the eyes of China’s neo-authoritarian reformers, Singapore, despite being a tiny city-state, long exemplified a state of affairs for which the PRC should strive: resilient authoritarianism alongside but unweakened by liberalizing steps conducive to economic growth.  On behalf of Beijing’s effort to learn from Singapore, tens of thousands of officials visited the city-state and thousands of articles and books were written about it. Today, however, Xi Jiinping has derided foreign templates and relegated adopting the “Singapore model” to a path not taken by China’s current hard-line leadership and unavailable for authoritarian reformers to pursue. Although the demotion was triggered by Xi’s anti-reformism and China’s rise, Singapore’s loss of “model” character was also path-dependent. Chinese academics studying Singapore had long misunderstood fundamental institutional differences between the two countries that went back to the city-state’s colonial past and China’s Stalinist-Maoist revolution. Efforts to model reforms on the Singaporean “state-party” ran into the prerogatives of the Chinese party-state. Proposals to strengthen market forces, impose limited legal constraints on the party, and introduce semi-competitive elections were seen as threatening the institutional foundations of the CPC. Moreover, despite a (partial) revival of Confucianism in China that imitated the city-state’s attraction to “Asian values,” Singapore’s neo-liberal “pragmatism” and multi-racialism contradicted the CPC’s self-portrayal as an engine of Marxist socialism embodying the Han-Chinese nation.

Mark R. Thompson heads the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. He is president of the Hong Kong Political Science Association (HKPSA) and a former president of the Asian Political and International Studies Association (2013-14). A comparativist specializing in Southeast Asian politics, his publications include China’s “Singapore Model” and Authoritarian Learning, ed. with Stephan Ortmann (forthcoming 2020); Authoritarian Modernism in East Asia (2019); The Routledge Handbook of the Contemporary Philippines, ed. with Eric Batalla (2018); Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia, ed. with Claudia Derichs (2014); Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (2004); and The Anti-Marcos Struggle (1995).

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China has grown faster for longer than any country in recorded history.  Is it market-oriented reform, state industrial policy, or some sophisticated blend of the two that explains this success?  In this talk, Dr. Nicholas Lardy will also further examine what might explain China’s slowdown of recent years.  Is China falling into the frequently fatal middle-income trap?  Or have domestic policy choices led to the slowdown?  Have trade frictions with the United States also contributed to China’s slowing growth?  In addition, what should U.S. policy stance be towards China?  Should the United States continue to ramp up restrictions on two-way flows of technology to try to further slow China’s growth?  How successful is such a strategy likely to be and what costs to the United States would be inherent in such an approach?

Nicholas R. Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow 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 the Chinese economy.  Lardy's most recent books are The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China? (2019), Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China (2014), Sustaining China's Economic Growth after the Global Financial Crisis (2012), The Future of China's Exchange Rate Policy (2009), and China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities (2008). 

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This event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE: 

In keeping with Stanford University's March 3 message to the campus community on COVID-19 and current recommendations of the CDC, the Asia-Pacific Research Center is electing to make this event available through live stream only. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we do our best to keep our community healthy and well. 

Please join the live stream via Zoom by clicking here at the scheduled time, 4:30 PM, on March 4 to view Adam Segal's talk.

 

Analysts on both sides of the Pacific have described an escalating “technology cold war” between Beijing and Washington. Chinese hackers attack American technology companies and Beijing is reportedly planning on the removal of foreign software and hardware from government offices. Washington is blocking Chinese investments, using punitive measures against Huawei and Chinese surveillance companies, and scrutinizing research collaboration with Chinese universities as well as scientists and students. Both sides believe they are in and have to win a race to dominate 5G, AI, quantum, and other emerging technologies. What are the weapons of the tech cold war, and are the US and China doomed to ever more competition, or can they find common ground for cooperation? What does increasing competition between China and the United States mean for the rest of the world?

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman Chair in emerging technologies and national security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Segal was the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force reports titled Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge. His most recent book, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age (PublicAffairs, 2016), describes the increasingly contentious geopolitics of cyberspace. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, among others. He currently writes for the blog, “Net Politics.”

 

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This event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

On 20 October 2019, Indonesia’s president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo began his second five-year term in office.  In his first successful presidential campaign in 2014, he promised to transform the country into a “Global Maritime Fulcrum”—a seemingly keystone role between the Indian and Pacific Oceans that comprise the now popular term “Indo-Pacific.” How has that vision fared, and what priority will it have in 2019-2024? How will Indonesia deal with Sino-American strategic competition? Will Indonesia’s national and regional security policies change or stay the same? In addressing these questions, the talk will feature not only the president but his new ministers’ political, bureaucratic, and personal goals and differences as well.  Laksmana will argue that, in practice, the GMF’s promise of proactive centrality has not been to date and is unlikely to be met in future. 

Evan A. Laksmana, in addition to his position at CSIS in Jakarta, is completing his doctorate in political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where he has been a Fulbright Presidential Scholar. He has held visiting fellowships and research positions with the National Bureau of Asian Research, Sydney University’s Southeast Asia Centre, the Lowy Institute for International Policy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Journals that have carried his scholarly work include Asian Politics & Policy, Asian Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Defense & Security Analysis, and the Journal of Contemporary Asia. Other writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications.