Dr. Paul Sheard will join Professor Bruce Aronson for a discussion about Japan’s economic growth strategy and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the Takaichi Cabinet’s growth agenda, sometimes called “Sanaenomics,” and how it compares with “Abenomics.” They will also discuss how Japan’s broader strategic priorities are evolving in response to shifting domestic and global economic conditions.
Please note that the location of this event has changed to Furman Hall 212
North Korea is one of the world’s poorest countries, but also one of the most challenging places to deliver humanitarian aid. For years at a time, its government has barred foreign aid workers, suspicious of their intentions. Swiss aid worker Kathi Zellweger, one of the very few Westerners to have lived in North Korea, and who visited the country seventy-five times over three decades, will share her experiences working with local medical experts, negotiating with suspicious government officials, and finding ways to help thousands of people, most of them children. She is joined by Mike Chinoy, a former CNN correspondent and repeat visitor to North Korea, with whom she wrote the book, Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea.
As the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) launched in 2016, many wondered how this new China-led multilateral development bank (MDB) would fare. Natalie Lichtenstein, AIIB’s founding lawyer takes a look at AIIB in context, surveying 100 years of MDB legal genealogy. What does AIIB’s first decade tell us about the combination of heritage and innovation in AIIB’s 21st century charter?
What happens when local governments that cannot make treaties enter into written commitments with foreign governments? To find out, Yuhei Matsuyama laboriously created a database of agreements entered into over a forty-year period between Japanese prefectures and foreign governments. He discovered a network of practical and constructive agreements, many with Japan’s neighbors, that serve the interests of local communities and also generally support national foreign policy.
China’s new Regulation on Countering Unjustified Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by Foreign States introduces a potentially significant conceptual shift in the global debate over jurisdictional conflicts. Rather than asking only whether a foreign state’s exercise of jurisdiction is lawful under international law, the Regulation creates a further requirement: that such jurisdiction be “justified.” Zheng (Sophia) Tang writes that the “justification” standard has the potential to influence the development of customary international law.
The deep partisan divisions rending Taiwan's government are no secret. Legislative push-back to President Lai Ching-te’s budgets has received international attention. Yinn-Ching Lu writes that much less attention has been paid both abroad and within Taiwan to a different manifestation of the power struggle between the branches: near-paralysis of the government appointment process. Critical institutions’ leadership ranks are being decapitated by the legislature’s refusal to approve presidential nominees, a phenomenon that Lu says may ultimately be more damaging to Taiwan’s democracy.
September 20 – September 26
China and the United States agree to extend their trade truce for two months and reduce tariffs on selected goods; Hong Kong signs an investment protocol with Southeast Asian nations, and a fifteen-nation Asia-Pacific trade pact sets up a working group on the city’s bid to join; a Japanese court rules that a decades-old ban on election campaigning by minors is unconstitutional; South Korea's Cabinet approves staffing for its new prosecution service that begins operations next week, shorn of all powers to conduct investigations; Taiwan moves to raise the minimum wage by nearly 5 percent.
September 13 – September 19
China implements new exit and entry rules that provide more bases for barring travel; Hong Kong's chief executive promises new fire safety legislation in response to a 2025 apartment complex fire that killed 168 people; Japan's Cabinet approves reducing the consumption tax on food for two years in response to rising inflation; South Korea announces a plan to authorize the prescription and sale of abortion pills, seven years after the Constitutional Court struck down a criminal ban on abortion; Taiwan's Labor Ministry proposes extending paid marriage leave to fourteen days as part of President Lai Ching-te's strategy to encourage births.
September 6 – September 12
China's Supreme People’s Court issues its first guidance on deciding artificial intelligence disputes; a Hong Kong court sentences three former organizers of Tiananmen candlelight vigils to prison for inciting subversion; Japan's consumer agency calls for regulation of website interfaces that steer online shoppers into choices against their own interests; South Korea's Interior Ministry nominates a former senior prosecutor to lead the new agency that will take over major crime investigations from prosecutors next month; Taiwan's president promulgates a law directing the government in principle to budget US$1.3 billion annually for the military to purchase domestically made drones.
Program on International Law & Relations in Asia
Contemporary trends suggest a sea change in the international order as the US reverses its longstanding commitments to free trade and liberal democracy. Based on a forthcoming book titled Chinese Developmentalism in the Global Legal and Economic Order, co-edited with Jacques deLisle and Jaclyn Neo, our speaker, Matthew Erie, says that China promotes a novel ordering they call “Chinese developmentalism,” which favors state-led economic growth, industrial policy, technological innovation, and illiberal governance. Chinese developmentalism is complex and still evolving, but Erie says while its aspirations are far-reaching, the magnitude and direction of its impact are far from inevitable.