I spent Friday afternoon at the headquarters of the Keidanren -- a classic example of Tokyo-style brutalism if I've ever seen one -- at a symposium convened by the World Trade Center Tokyo and the Tokyo American Center on "China's Rise and the Emerging Architecture of Trade and Investment in the Asia-Pacific Economy." Keynotes by …
Tag: China
A new "new world order"?
Apologies for the lag in posting; life in Nagata-cho has gotten busy, leaving little time to dash off notes.In any case, I want to call attention to an article in Foreign Affairs by Tufts University professor and blogger Daniel Drezner, called "The New New World Order."Drezner argues that US foreign policy in recent years has …
Breaking for book notes
Another day, another session of the budget committee, with the opposition once again raking the Abe Cabinet over the coa...by which I mean soberly discussing Japan's policy goals and requirements.As such, I want to take a brief break from tracking the current Diet session to post some notes on a book I recently finished reading.But …
Hysteria on China
This op-ed by James Pinkerton (via RealClearPolitics) is typical of the hysteria in many corners of the chattering classes that has greeted China's test of an ASAT missile, the kind of breezy certainty that China is definitely, one-hundred percent, no doubt about it the biggest threat America faces and we better do something about it …
China challenges the regional security order
Reports have emerged that China successfully tested an anti-satellite missile last week, after two previous failures (BBC; CNN). The implications of this test are obvious but not necessarily ominous.The question is, in light of Japan's recent overtures to improve cooperation with China and with a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao scheduled for this spring, …
Continue reading China challenges the regional security order
Chinese Siberia
This piece in today's Japan Times by Cambridge's own David Wall spells out in detail the silent, slow-motion annexation of Pacific Russia by China.Russia is in quite a bind as far as the Russian Far East is concerned. As Wall points out, the region is being depopulated of Russians, and millions of Chinese are migrating …
Paulson’s long-anticipated journey
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is in Beijing this week at the head of a mission that includes Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.Will these talks achieve concrete results?I have my doubts, because I don't think talks of this nature can "resolve" long-term structural changes in the global economy. As noted in this article in the International …
Two looks at modern China
Two recent articles provide an excellent look at the bundle of contradictions that is modern China.First, the Atlantic's James Fallows, currently residing in China, presents his "Four Cautions and Two Mysteries" about rapidly changing China. His look is largely limited to urban China, but it is still worthwhile, because Fallows also was on hand when …
Bell on the Chinese way of sport
The always enjoyable Daniel Bell has an essay in Dissent called "The Politics of Sports: Watching the World Cup in Beijing." Before elaborating further, I just want to note as an aside how much I look forward to Bell's essays from Beijing. Bell is one of my intellectual heroes, and he has an extremely sharp …
The paranoid fantasies of Lou Dobbs
This morning before work I caught Lou Dobbs on CNN International while flipping through the news channels. In the span of the few minutes I watched, he reported on grassroots efforts to fight illegal immigration quashed by the US corporations and the government, US cooperation on policing with "totalitarian" Red China, "the march of the …
Tobias S. Harris 