Top Stories

China’s new diplomatic strategy
Oct 16 2006 Caijing/Issue:170
By Hu Shuli, editor of Caijing Magazine

In the past week, East Asia has suffered a major blow to the security of the region: North Korea’s nuclear test. The test poses a threat to global peace and to financial markets. As a neighbor and a traditional ally of North Korea, China plays a key role in resolving the nuclear stand-off. The world has shifted its attention to what new strategies China will adopt to denuclearize the peninsula. East Asia’s security has great bearing on China’s peaceful development. The strategies mapped out by Chinese authorities in the past week, combining flexibility with principle, point to the political wisdom and pragmatism of the central leadership.

China took three important steps in the days just before and after the nuclear test. After Pyongyang announced on October 3 that it planned to conduct the test, Beijing pushed for diplomatic cooperation with Japan and South Korea to head off North Korea’s test and steer the country back to the six-party talks. Second, after North Korea tested its nuclear bomb on October 9, China reacted instantly and expressed its unequivocal opposition to the test. Third, by committing to “appropriate sanctions”, China helped initiate a UN Security Council resolution that is conducive to easing the crisis and to bringing out peaceful solution to the nuclear dispute.

Such support for “appropriate sanctions” represents an adjustment in the country’s policy toward the Korean peninsula, and it comes in response to a new set of circumstances. Despite efforts by the relevant parties, North Korea clearly broke its promise to give up nuclear weapons when it test-fired its Taepodong-2 missiles in July. The October 9 nuclear test further negated years of efforts by the international community to denuclearize the peninsula. China, as the chief peacemaker among the concerned parties, has been forced to make a choice as to how to cope with the new challenge.

Although the test has increased tensions in East Asia, the nuclear stand-off has brought new opportunities for Beijing – especially with Japan. For five and a half years since April 2001, when former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine after returning from a visit to China, the countries have not been able to hold a summit of their top leaders. Sino-Japanese relations have hit a low point. Although China is not to blame for the bilateral sores, it is obvious that the situation is not conducive to China’s peaceful development and to Sino-Japanese economic ties. Since Shinzo Abe replaced Koizumi as prime minister, Beijing has taken the initiative to mend bilateral ties. It did not require a clear stance from Abe regarding visits to the shrine as a precondition for endorsing his visit. The October 8 joint communiqué indicates the two sides have reached a general consensus regarding their historical differences while avoiding comments on such specific issues as shrine visit. Thus they hope to avoid a repeat of the diplomatic stand-off that plagued the Koizumi era. This is a sign of Beijing’s flexibility in the implementation of its pre-set diplomatic principles.

The new security dynamic in the region, along with China’s flexible and pragmatic diplomacy, hopefully will maximize the effect of Abe’s ice-breaking visit. Already, the nuclear crisis appears to have helped restore Sino-Japanese cooperation. After Abe left Beijing for Seoul, foreign minister Li Zhaoxing and Japanese minister for foreign affairs Taro Aso exchanged views via telephone on implementing the consensus reached during Abe’s China visit. Chinese leaders also accepted in principle an invitation from Abe to visit Japan and agreed to resume the trilateral summit among Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders.

Sino-Japanese relations may still be hampered by frictions and conflicts of interest. But since the escalating crisis on the Korean peninsula is the glue the two sides needed to join hands, it appears increasingly unlikely that the new Japanese leadership will continue to seek domestic political benefits at the risk of sacrificing Sino-Japanese relations. Moreover, China stands to gain a bargaining chip with Japan over its relations with Taiwan.

Click here for the original editorial. Click here for Caijing's Chinese language website.

2006 Clean Water Report Card released by Strategic Community Consulting and San Diego Coastkeeper

Todd Frank, Stephanie Kenny and Paul Hennig at a press conference at City Hall, San Diego.

Strategic Community Consulting (SCC) and San Diego Coastkeeper are proud to announce the release of the 2006 Clean Water Report Card. This is the fifth anniversary of the Clean Water Report Card and marks the fifth year of SCC's involvement. The Report Card assigns grades to San Diego City Council Members based upon their voting record for the year on issues related to water quality and coastal protection. The City Council itself received a B grade for the year while individual grades for the council members ranged from C+ to A+. The 2006 Clean Water Report Card is perhaps the most comprehensive to date and includes a statistical analysis of whether the report has had an impact on Council members’ votes over the past five years. The analysis concluded that council members who got a poor grade on the report card were more likely to vote pro water quality in the subsequent year.

SCC would like to thank Paul Hennig and Stephanie Kenny for their excellent work in researching, authoring, and publishing this year's report card.

Click here for the complete text of the 2006 Clean Water Report Card.

Click here to read the coverage by the Union Tribune about the Report Card.

2006 Clean Water Report Card
Paul Hennig SCC Consultant
Stephanie Kenny SCC Consultant
Todd Frank SCC Project Manager

SCC Directors
Nina Merchant- Operations Director
Saori Nakai- Marketing Director
Todd Frank- Finance Director

For more about Strategic Community Consulting, please visit our website, irps.ucsd.edu/scc/

Dean Peter Cowhey Takes Leave to Write a Book

IR/PS Dean Peter Cowhey is on a sabbatical from August 1 until December 31, 2006. IR/PS Professor Takeo Hoshi will act as an Acting Dean at that time. During his sabbatical, Dean Cowhey will research and write a book about global communications markets. He will be collaborating with Jonathan Aronson, with whom he wrote When Countries Talk, twenty years ago. In that book, they predicted how competitive global communications markets would organize themselves. The early intersection of computing and telephone networks convinced them that political and economic conditions were ripe for change and they suggested how to organize the potential for competition most practically and efficiently. They foresaw that the cost and power of networks could change dramatically with hugely positive implications for the world economy. Dean Cowhey’s new book will build upon that original analysis and focus on the factors that explain the particular path of change that emerged. It will analyze what that explanation suggests for the organization of the next market revolution and what it means for the future of the world economy, including the poorest countries. Dean Cowhey is looking forward to the opportunity to once again work with Aronson. Their diverging but complementary styles of work, analysis and writing create a synergistic and energizing working relationship.  For this project, they will also be joined by one of Dean Cowhey’s former PhD students who is a very successful executive in the industry. 

This sabbatical provides Dean Cowhey with the opportunity to devote the uninterrupted blocks of time necessary for academic research and writing. Although he enjoys the challenges and opportunities of being a dean, there is always a tension regarding time that makes it difficult to pursue other projects. According to Dean Cowhey, “Some kinds of thinking and writing just take large chunks of time that are not interrupted much by other demands. That is what this sabbatical offers and I will relish it.” Dean Cowhey has balanced numerous responsibilities over the past seven years – serving as director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) for seven years, with two of those years also spent simultaneously leading the creation of the Rady School of Management, and four of them spent simultaneously serving as dean of IR/PS. For this sabbatical, Dean Cowhey is also stepping down as the head of IGCC. During Dean Cowhey’s sabbatical, IR/PS Professor Takeo Hoshi will serve as acting dean. Hoshi is a very talented scholar who brings to the position his experience as a leader while serving as associate dean. Dean Cowhey commented that Hoshi is “organized, has good judgment, and can listen. He is backed by an energetic staff and a superb faculty. The school will be in excellent hands.”     

Susan Shirk Named to New Position

Susan Shirk, a professor of political science in the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and a globally respected scholar of Chinese politics and foreign policy, has been named director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), the UC systemwide foreign policy think tank based at UCSD.
 
Shirk previously served as research director of IGCC and was also deputy assistant secretary of state for North Asia in the Clinton administration.  Her latest scholarly work, an analysis of the domestic basis of Chinese foreign policy, will be published next year.  She is the organizer of the Northeast Asian Cooperative Dialogue, a "track-two," or unofficial diplomatic force comprised of the six-nations currently involved in talks over North Korean nuclear weapons.

IR/PS 2002 Graduate Vanessa Golding Awarded Council On Foreign Relations’ International Affairs Fellowship

Vanessa Golding, a 2002 graduate of IR/PS has been awarded the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations’ International Affairs Fellowship. Her proposed research project was entitled “Redefining U.S. Democracy and Human Rights Policy: Enabling a Pro-Active Approach to Accountability and Transitional Justice.” She will be spending the year at the East-West Center in Honolulu, HI; doing independent research and working with the EWC's Asian international Justice Initiative. She was seen as a very strong candidate by both the committee and the interview sub-committee, and her selection as a fellowship recipient is a tremendous honor.

Golding entered the Presidential Management Fellowship program upon graduation from IR/PS and served as an Indonesian/East Timor Desk Officer in the Bureau for East Asia and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She managed bilateral relations in the areas of human rights, trafficking in persons, religious/ethnic conflict, environmental, and refugee/asylum issues. Later Golding worked at The Hague serving as a Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy, working on UNGA, OSCE, EU, nonproliferation and Asia issues. She left The Hague to serve at the National Security Council (NSC) in the Office of the G-8 Presidency, working for the Deputy National Security Advisor on International Economic Affairs prior to and during the 2004 G-8 Summit (hosted by the U.S. in Sea Island, Georgia). Golding is currently with the State Department as a Foreign Affairs Officer in the Office for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy, covering Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, East Timor, and Thailand. Over the past year, she has traveled to Indonesia, East Timor and Thailand. In 2004, she also traveled to Burma and Cambodia .

Bryan Green Receives Rae K. Hepps Fellowship Award for the 2006-2007 Academic Year.

Bryan Green, Class of 2007, was awarded a Rae K. Hepps fellowship ($2500) for the 2006-2007 academic year. The highly competitive J.M. Hepps and R.K. Hepps Fellowships provide financial support to students who demonstrate excellent academic achievement. Bryan was chosen on the basis of his academic performance, and an essay he wrote regarding the importance of graduate studies to his future career. Congratulations, Bryan!

Ellis Krauss Receives UC Pacific Grant for an Extended Research Trip to New Zealand

IR/PS Professor Ellis Krauss has received a UC Pacific Rim grant for an extended research trip to New Zealand. While in New Zealand, Professor Krauss will investigate the consequences of New Zealand's mid-1990s electoral reform for comparison with Japan's electoral reform that occurred during the same period. He will be visiting with scholars in New Zealand who work on electoral and party politics, especially Stephen Levine and Nigel Roberts at Victoria University in Wellington. Professor Krauss is also hoping to have the opportunity to interview members of parliament in New Zealand, as he and a coauthor have done with MPs in Japan. He was also invited to visit Canberra, Australia, while in the region, to present two talks, one at Australian Defence Forces Academy and the other at Australia National University. Professor Krauss is also hoping to see former IR/PS colleague, Andrew MacIntyre, while there. Dr. MacIntyre is now Director of the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government at ANU, a school similar to IR/PS.

Richard Feinberg Evaluates the Role of Social Movements in Latin America Will Civil Society Improve the Quality of Democracy in Latin America? In their book, Civil Society and Democracy in Latin America, IR/PS Professor Richard Feinberg, and his colleagues Leon Zamosc and Carlos H. Waisman, evaluate the role of social movements in the emergence of more vibrant and representative democracies in Latin America. The authors take into consideration the contemporary political situations of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Professor Richard Feinberg is an expert on Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, globalization and democratization. He served as a special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs and senor director of the National Security Council's Office of Inter-American Affairs.

2007 Dean's Fellows Announced

On April 27, Dean Peter Cowhey announced the 2006/2007 group of Dean’s Fellows. The Dean’s Fellows Program serves to recognize the qualities of professional excellence that IR/PS cultivates in its students; to reward outstanding performance; to provide incentives to stimulate emulation by other students; and to create a prestigious group of outstanding IR/PS students and alumnae to showcase to the world. The 2006/2007 Dean's Fellows are:

Kris Erickson
Andres Gentry
Bryan Green
Brett Hamsik
Dylan Mann
Nina Merchant
Ashley Pierson
Sean Porter
David (D.J.) Sigband
John Spernoga
Kumi Smith
Connie Tao
Laura Tierney
Veronica Valdez
Yang Yang

Please join us in welcoming Shuli Hu to IR/PS. Ms. Hu has been chosen as the first fellow for the Pan-Pacific Leadership Fellow program at IR/PS. With this program, IR/PS will bring market, government, and civil society leaders to IR/PS where they will work with faculty, students, and the community. Our goals for the Fellows while in residence are collaboration with IR/PS and UCSD scholars, discussions with students, and dialogue with leaders in San Diego and California.

Ms. Hu is currently the editor-in-chief of Caijing, an independent business and financial journal published out of Beijing, China. Since Ms. Hu's launch of Caijing in April 1998, the journal has become the leading domestic publication concerning China's financial markets and business environment. Under Ms. Hu's editorial leadership and journalistic vision, Caijing's profile as a respected journal has grown worldwide, with economists, scholars, and the public looking to Caijing for reliable and thorough investigations of the Chinese market. The magazine has exposed corruption and abuses in corporate governance, banking, and the stock markets. It also was largely responsible for breaking the story of the SARS epidemic.

Ms. Hu's career in journalism was actually not one that she chose herself. She was assigned to study journalism when she was admitted by the Chinese literature department of Beijing University after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Upon graduation, Ms. Hu was assigned to the Worker's Daily and sent to Xiamen, one of China's Special Economic Zones (SEZ), to found the newspaper's first local bureau. In 1987, Ms. Hu was awarded a World Press Institute fellowship for early career journalists to study in the United States. In the early 1990s, she was transferred to China Industry & Business Times and became the chief of the international desk. As the 1990's progressed, Ms. Hu became more intent on creating a news medium that would be both informative and powerful in China. As she states, "I soon found that in China, reporting on business and finance is much more exciting and practical than reporting on politics. While business and finance constitute the motivating force pushing our society forward, and thus offer the most fascinating scenarios for journalists to cover, they are less taboo than politics in China. We are thus able to go beyond what falls into the narrow definition of business and finance, and can indulge ourselves in covering business-related issues such as SARS."

Ms. Hu was honored by the World Press Review as the 2003 International Editor of the Year. The World Press Review presents the award each year to an editor or editors outside the United States in recognition of enterprise, courage, and leadership in advancing the freedom and responsibility of the press, enhancing human rights, and fostering excellence in journalism.

During Ms. Hu's three-month long residence at UCSD, she will be collaborating with IR/PS faculty on issues concerning the Chinese media. In early May, Ms. Hu will be a featured presenter at Changing Media, Changing China, a conference to be held at IR/PS. If you are interested in contacting Ms. Hu while she is in residence at IR/PS, her email is shhu@ucsd.edu.

Roger Bohn Studies Evolution of Manufacturing IR/PS Professor Roger Bohn and late Professor Ramchandran Jaikuman of Harvard Business School are the authors of From Filing and Fitting to Flexible Manufacturing. The development of mass manufacting ranks as one of the most important contributors to human living conditions - of the same mangnitude as agriculture and modern medicine. This monograph examines the development of manufacturing over several centuries, through the eyes of a single industry and company, an Italian firearm manufacturing company Beretta. Bohn and Jaikuman found that throughout this period, the key has been precise control of manufacturing processes, rather than production speed, and that there have been six revolutionary transformations in manufacturing. Professor Roger Bohn is a specialist in technology and operations management. His primary research is on the management of engineering and other knowledge-based activities in technology-driven companies.

Peter Gourevitch Discusses why Corporate Governance Varies around the World Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? IR/PS Professor Peter Gourevitch and James Shin, ex-CEO of Dialogic and now visiting professor at Georgetown University, explain in their book Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. Gourevitch is an expert on international relations and comparative politics. He specializes in political economy with a particular focus on international trade and economic globalization, trade disputes, and regulatory systems.

Jessica Wallack's Book Federalism and Economic Reform Hits the Shelves IR/PS Professor Jessica S. Wallack and Yale Professor T. N. Srinivasan are the editors of a newly published book Federalism and Economic Reform: International Perspective. The book is a collection of essays focusing on the ways in which federalism has affected and been affected by economic reform, especially global integration. The editors and contributors focus in particular on the political economy of institutional and economic change - how the division of authority between national and subnational governments shapes debates over policy changes, as well as how the changing economic environment creates incentives to modify the basic agreements between levels of governments. The book studies economies of major countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Professor Jessica Wallack's research interests covers comparative political economy in the regions of Latin America and India, especially as it pertains to economic policy changes in these developing regions.

Australian Leaders Visit UCSD
UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations/Pacific Studies Dean Peter Cowhey questioned former Premier Bob Carr, who, until he stepped down last year, had served more than 10 years as leader of Australia's most populous region, the province of New South Wales. Now a leading spokesman for the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, which aims to promote relations between the two nations, Carr was interviewed January 18 by Cowhey and Andrew MacIntyre, former IR/PS Acting Dean and current Dean of the Asia-Pacific School of Management at the University of Australia on a wide range of topics. The interview and conversation took place as part of the Dean's Round Table at the Faculty Club.



The interview will premiere locally on UCSD-TV as well as nationally (and worldwide on the Internet) on University of California Television (UCTV) in February. Australia: The Under-Valued Ally on UCSD-TV: