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.

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) in southern China is a major world-manufacturing hub populated by small- to medium-sized firms; many are family-owned and run by entrepreneurs based in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. With a population of 56 million and a land area about one tenth the size of the State of California, the region produces over 10 percent of China’s GDP.

In April 2009, the local party chief announced that Beijing had set the goal for “the PRD’s economy to surpass that of South Korea in the next decade.” He also wanted the region “to reduce its dependence on resource-intensive industries, and increase the number of high-tech manufacturing and service industries.” More recently, in light of the worldwide declining asset values resulting from the 2008 global financial crisis, Beijing has been urging mainland firms, including those in the PRD region, to “go abroad” to invest and compete in overseas markets.

This call for firms’ international expansion, together with the mandate to move the PRD up the value-chain, makes the region an excellent research site to study China’s industrial policy and its impact on local economic and social development. Additionally, because of the changes mentioned above, the PRD also provides a natural quasi-experimental setting for investigating organizational learning and adaption to shifting environmental conditions, particularly those requiring the development of new capabilities for firm survival.

Professor Joseph L. C. Cheng will present preliminary findings from his research on the PRD region, with a focus on the entrepreneurial firms and how they acquire new internationalization knowledge and corporate governance practices to help enhance their competitiveness in the global marketplace. He will also discuss the findings’ implications for designing public policies and corporate programs to facilitate economic reform and enterprise development.