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191. Old Scores and New Grudges: Evolving Sino-Japanese Tensions

Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Enmity between China and Japan is hardening into a confrontation that appears increasingly difficult to untangle by diplomacy. Positions on the dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku island group are wide apart, and politically viable options to bridge the gap remain elusive. New frictions have arisen. China's announcement in November 2013 of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), overlapping that of Japan's and covering the disputed islands, deepened Tokyo's anxiety that Beijing desires both territory and to alter the regional order. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's provocative visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 triggered a bitter argument as to whether Japan has fully atoned for its Second World War aggression, a still vivid sore in the region. Amid heightened suspicion and militarisation of the East China Sea and its air space, the risks of miscalculation grow. Leadership in both countries needs to set a tone that prioritises diplomacy to calm the troubled waters: November's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit might provide such an opportunity.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Territorial Disputes, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, Tokyo, and Island

192. What Future for Human Rights?

Author:
James W. Nickel
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor (Japan was under military reconstruction, and Mao's heavy-handed revolution in China was still in the future). Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion.
Topic:
Climate Change, Human Rights, Human Welfare, International Law, International Political Economy, Sovereignty, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Europe, Asia, and United Nations

193. Japan's New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

Author:
Sheila A. Smith
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Electoral reform in the early 1990s ended single-party dominance in Japan and promised an era of new politics in which political parties would alternate control of the government. In the two decades that followed, Japan's foreign and domestic policy priorities were subjected to greater scrutiny and debate as Japan, like so many other nations around the globe, sought to reorient itself in a new post-Cold War world. The U.S.-Japan alliance that anchored Japan's postwar foreign policy was not immune to these domestic political reforms. For half a century, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) prided itself on managing the relationship with Washington. But its ouster in 2009 by the reformist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) led many to expect that even Japan's alliance with the United States would be subject to serious review.
Topic:
Government and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

194. Energy efficiency: the ever neglected priority of the European energy strategy

Author:
Tania Zgajewski
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
Energy saving has been a stated policy objective of the EU since the 1970s. Presently, the 2020 target is a 20% reduction of EU energy consumption in comparison with current projections for 2020. This is one of the headline targets of the European Energy Strategy 2020 but efforts to achieve it remain slow and insufficient. The aim of this paper is to understand why this is happening.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Reform
Political Geography:
Japan and Europe

195. A call for a new Japanese foreign policy: the dilemmas of a stakeholder state

Author:
Takashi Inoguchi
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The world was different in 2002 when Henry Kissinger published a book entitled Does America need a foreign policy?, and Le Monde came out in support of the United States after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 by proclaiming: 'We are all American.' In many ways, this was the high point of the American global era—the era of unipolar American power. In 2014 the world has moved on. The United States is still the leading global power with unique capabilities and responsibilities for global leadership. But other states—particularly in Asia and the non-western developing world—are on the rise. The world is more fragmented and decentralized. States are rising and falling. The terms of global governance are more contested and uncertain. This article addresses the foreign policy of Japan and the choices that Japan faces in this shifting global context.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, America, Asia, and North America

196. Is China's Property Market Heading toward Collapse?

Author:
Li-gang Liu
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
China's property market has slowed significantly since the first half of 2014, with sharp declines in sales and a buildup in the inventory of new homes. This sharper than expected downturn—which has affected not only second- and third tier smaller cities but also first-tier megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou—contrasts with last year's buoyant sales and double-digit price surge. Compounded by fears of a default in the shadow banking system and the perception of a highly leveraged Chinese economy, the sudden declines in the property sector are being watched closely. Many commentators believe this could be a turning point for the sector, triggering a hard landing of the Chinese economy and even a financial crisis. Over the last decade, China's property sector has become an important pillar for the country's growth as well as the key source for elevated commodity prices. A property market slump would hurt other sectors, as well as drag down resource-rich economies that rely heavily on China to buy their exports.
Topic:
Economics, Financial Crisis, and Urbanization
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and United Nations

197. Executives, legislatures, and whales: the birth of Japan's scientific whaling regime

Author:
Michael Strausz
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Why did Japan begin scientific whaling, a policy that benefits few domestically and alienates many around the world? In this essay, I argue that Japan's scientific whaling regime was formed as a result of a 'two-level game' between President Reagan and Prime Minister Nakasone. Although Reagan was faced with a unified, anti-whaling Congress, he himself was not much concerned about the issue. Nakasone was also not particularly concerned about whaling, and he initially was faced with a Diet that was divided on how to deal with whaling (although it became less divided over time). Ultimately, these circumstances led Japan to develop the scientific whaling regime that persists to this day.
Topic:
Regime Change
Political Geography:
Japan

198. The New Continentalism: Energy and Twenty-First-Century Eurasian Geopolitics

Author:
Takamichi Mito
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This book by Kent Calder successfully demonstrates the growing geopolitical ties between oil and gas producers and consumers around the central Eurasian continent, which spreads from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the former Soviet Union to India, China, South Korea and Japan; this vast area he terms the New Silk Road. According to Calder, these ties are being institutionalized, a development he terms the 'new continentalism'. This is brought by a series of critical junctures in geopolitics and the growing economic needs of oil and gas producers and consumers in the region. These junctures signify major policy changes caused by international or domestic factors, such as, the oil crises of the 1970s; Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernizations in China, which started in 1978; India's financial crisis, which led to economic reforms from 1991; the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; and the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999. These subsequently brought about a series of politico-economic realignments; nationally, regionally, and internationally, a pre-requisite to the rise of the new continentalism.
Political Geography:
Japan, China, India, and South Korea

199. Various Misleading Facts

Author:
Unryu Suganuma
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Japan's nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands in 2012 reignited the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute that had been relatively quiet since the 1970s,making news headlines yet again. Renewed attention to the dispute prompted the publication of a number of books in Japan and China, including this book, claiming to be 'the first academic book in more than a decade focusing exclusively on the Senkaku issue....'While Eldridge's book has some positive points, such as addressing declassified information relating to the Diaoyu Islands in the period between the San Francisco Peace Treaty (SFPT) in 1951 and the Reversion Treaty in1971, the book has some critical shortcomings.
Political Geography:
Japan and China

200. In the care of Nurse Ann Droid

Author:
Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Would you like to be left exclusively in the care of robots in your old age? Robots have been working in our factories, painting cars, assembling tiny components and mixing dangerous chemicals for decades. In the new era, service robots have begun working alongside humans in cleaning, medicine, farming and policing. Now robots are being given the intimate jobs of care and companionship for our elderly. Should we welcome such developments? Could a robot empathize and care for us in the way that a human could? Can we trust robots and robot manufacturers with such important and life–defining roles?
Political Geography:
Japan