China and Regional Security: How Should Neighbouring Powers Respond?

30 April 2013, 6:00 – 7:45pm

Commitee Room 14, The House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1 2TT

China’s continuing enhancement of its international presence is a result both of the country’s growing economic and military strength and its perception of a weakened US. This is in contrast to Deng’s policy of keeping a low profile, and appears at odds with ongoing talk of harmony and peaceful development. Since 2008, China has been increasingly assertive in its approach to territorial issues, not only with Japan, but also with other neighbouring countries. How are these nations to respond? Are there only two alternatives – counter-action or surrender? What about legal/ diplomatic options, including submitting the case to international arbitration? Can China and its neighbours still build stable and cooperative ‘win-win’ strategic relationships to deal with regional security issues such as North Korean nuclear aggression, boundary questions and navigation and resource rights? Or has the long-standing neglect of a historical problem combined with old disputes and new power configurations now set a course of conflict for the next generation? How do US interests play into these questions? Now that the political and economic focus seems to have shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, the attitudes of China and its neighbouring countries will have implications for Europe too. This seminar will examine these themes and consider them from a neutral British perspective, also addressing how the new leaders of China and Japan are dealing with the growing tensions in the region, and the negative attitudes towards each other fostered by the territorial disputes between them.

Professor Michael Clarke

Professor Michael Clarke is currently the Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Until July 2007, he was Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King’s College London. He was the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies and of the International Policy Institute at King’s. He has taught international politics at the Universities of Aberystwyth, Manchester, Newcastle, and the Open University. He has been a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997. In 2004, he was appointed the UK member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. In 2009, he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s National Security Forum and in 2010 to the Chief of Defence Staff’s new Strategic Advisory Group. His recent publications include: The Afghan Papers: Committing Britain to War in Helmand2005-06, London, RUSI/Routledge 2011; ‘Strategic Posture Review: United Kingdom’, World Politics Review, November 2011; ‘Does War Have a Future?’, in Lindley-French and Boyar (eds), The Oxford Handbook of War, Oxford, OUP, 2012.

Professor Barry Buzan

Professor Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Honorary Professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities, and a Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas. During 1993 he was a visiting professor at the International University of Japan, and from 1997-98 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. Among his books are:Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde); International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (2000, with Richard Little);Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver); The Evolution of International Security Studies (2009, with Lene Hansen); and Non-Western International Relations Theory (2010, co-edited with Amitav Acharya).

Sir David Warren

Sir David Warren was British Ambassador to Japan from 2008 to 2012. This followed a career in the Diplomatic Service that focused on East Asian affairs, in which he served three times in the British Embassy in Tokyo (1977-1981; 1993-1998; 2008-2012), and as head of the FCO’s China Hong Kong Department (1998-2000). He was also a member of the team that set up the Government’s business promotion agency, UK Trade and Investment, from 2000 to 2004, and Director of Human Resources for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (and a Board member) 2004-2007. He retired from the Diplomatic Service in January 2013, and has since become a Visiting Professor at Sheffield and De Montfort Universities, and is also Chairman of the Japan Society.

Rod Wye

Rod Wye is currently an Associate Fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House and a Senior Fellow in the China Policy Institute atNottingham. He was an analyst specialising in China and East Asia for over thirty years in the Research Analysts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He also did two postings inChina as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Beijing in 1985-88 and again in 1995-99, and Deputy Head of the China Hong Kong Department in 1999-2002.

Dr Bobo Lo (Chair)

Dr Bobo Lo is an independent scholar and consultant. He was previously Director of the Russia and China Programmes at the Centre for European Reform; Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. Dr Lo writes extensively on Russian and Chinese foreign policy. His books include Russiaand the New World Disorder (Brookings and Chatham House, forthcoming in 2013), Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics (Brookings and Chatham House, 2008). Other recent writings include ‘Kinder, gentler geopolitics’, Caixin Media, 22 January 2013, ‘A 21st century myth – authoritarian modernization in Russia and China’ (with Lilia Shevtsova), Carnegie Moscow Center Report, June 2012; ‘What can we learn from China’s modernisation?’, Diplomaatia,May 2012; ‘The Russia-China-US triangle and its post-Cold War fate’, in Robert E. Bedeski and Niklas Swanstrom (eds), and ‘How the Chinese See Russia’,French Institute of International Relations, Dec 2010.

Social Innovation and New Solutions to Youth Unemployment: UK & Japan’s Emerging Youth Policy

12 March 2013

6:00 – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:00pm

13-14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle), London, NW14QP

In the UK, young people with low or no qualifications make up 39% of all young people unemployed and not in education, and 47% of those inactive and outside learning, despite only accounting for a quarter of the youth population. Tony Wilson, Policy Director of Inclusion, which delivers research and new approaches to policy that promote social inclusion in the labour market, will talk about the UK’s policy of intervention and provision of training to improve the employability of  British youth. His recent publications include the BIS research paper (Number 101) Youth Unemployment: Review of Training for Young People with Low Qualifications (Dept. for Business Innovation and Skills, February 2013).

From the 1960s onwards, Japan’s rapid economic growth generated internationally low levels of youth unemployment. This changed in the 1990s however, and by the 2000s, youth unemployment was recognised as a serious concern. Japan’s Emerging Youth Policy (Routledge, 2013) is based on extensive fieldwork that draws on both sociological and policy science approaches, and is the first book to investigate in detail how the state, experts, the media, and youth workers have reacted to the rise of youth joblessness in Japan. The book argues that entrepreneurial youth support leaders in Japan can provide sustainable, attractive solutions to the dilemmas that virtually all post-industrial nations currently face but have not yet seriously addressed. Dr Tuukka Toivonen, the author of the book, will discuss Japan’s emerging youth policy and attempt to bring evidence from Japan into a dialogue with the realities in other advanced nations, such as the UK.

Dr Tuukka Toivonen

Dr Tuukka Toivonen is Junior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Communications Centre (GLOCOM), the International University of Japan, Tokyo. He holds a DPhil in Social Policy from the University of Oxford, and is a graduate of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. He has held visiting positions at the universities of Kobe, Tokyo, Kyoto and Keio. He is a sociologist by training and has published several articles in world-class journals that comparatively analyse policy-making processes, youth problems and social innovations. He is also the co-editor of A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs (Routledge, 2012). Currently, he is carrying out fieldwork on the evolution of social entrepreneurship and related innovation communities in Japan. Alongside his purely academic work, he also engages in social innovation activities himself as the founder and representative of Kansai RISE, which promotes young people’s creative involvement in public improvement and policy-making at regional level.

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson joined Inclusion as Director in October 2011. He has more than ten years’ experience of policy and research, project management and delivery across a range of roles in HM Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus. Since joining Inclusion, Tony has led on a range of projects including a feasibility study on developing a new employment programme in Northern Ireland, assessing approaches to tackling youth unemployment, the fragmentation of services for young people, and evaluations of programmes to increase employment among inactive groups. Most recently, Tony led on employment policy and delivery at HM Treasury: advising on labour market trends, policy responses to the downturn, delivery of welfare-to-work programmes and benefit reform. Prior to this he was responsible for the design and delivery of a number of Department for Work and Pensions employment projects. These included overseeing the development and introduction of the Future Jobs Fund, which created over 105,000 temporary jobs for long-term unemployed people. He was an expert policy adviser to David Freud on his independent review of welfare-to-work, published in 2007.

Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

BOOKING FORM

The Challenges of an Ageing Society in Japan

 

4 December 2012 from 6.30pm

The Japan Foundation, London

Ageing Society is a phenomenon happening not only in Japan but also in many other developed countries, and will soon spread to developing countries as well. In this seminar looking at how Japan is tackling this challenge, we have invited four speakers from Kobe University to address different aspects of the issue – Prof Naoki Mitani will look at the question of ageing in relation to Employment Policies in Japan; Prof Yuki Sekine will be considering the status of social security within an ageing society; Prof Masahiko Yoshii will be looking at the consequences for the Japanese economy of ageing; and, Prof Zhiwei Luowill examine Innovations in Health Engineering related to an Ageing Society. Each speaker will talk for 10-15 minutes, followed by time for discussion.

This event will be chaired by Professor Christina Victor of the School of Health Sciences and Social Care, Brunel University.

Prof Naoki Mitani has been Professor of Labour Economics at the Graduate School of Economics at Kobe University since the year 2000. He studied Mathematics at the Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo and obtained a Ph.D in Economics at Kobe University. His professional experiences include the positions of Deputy Director at the Ministry of Labour, as well as Administrator at OECD. He has published papers in various journals and books on topics such as the employment of older workers, youth and female workers, and the Japanese employment system.

Prof Yuki Sekine is Professor of Social Security Law at the Graduate School of Law, Kobe University. She holds a degree of Bachelor of Law from Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and a Master of Law from the University of Tokyo. She has worked for six years with the ILO, spending three years in the International Labour Standards Department in Geneva, and two years in detachment to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Tokyo, before joining Kobe University in 2004.

Prof Masahiko Yoshii has been Professor of the Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University since 1998, and is currently Dean of the Graduate School. He obtained a PhD in Economics at Kobe University in 2001. His major research interests are comparative economic systems, and the economics of Russia and Central-Eastern European countries.

Prof Zhiwei Luo obtained his PhD in Engineering from Nagoya University in 1992. From 1992 to 1994 he was an Assistant Professor of Toyohashi University of Technology. In 1994, he moved to BMC RIKEN as a Frontier Research. He then worked at Yamagata University as an Associate Professor. Since 2001, he served as laboratory head of BMC RIKEN, and led the development of a human interactive robot RI-MAN, which was selected by TIME as the best invention of 2006. In 2006, he became a Professor of Kobe University, where he joined the setting-up of the new Graduate School in System Informatics, and is now promoting integrative research on health for the Aging Society.

This event is free to attend but booking is essential. To reserve a place, please email your name and the title of the event you would like to attend to event@jpf.org.uk.

TAT to hold Miracle of Thai Food and Fruit Festival 2012

 

BANGKOK, 16 May 2012 (NNT) – The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is set to host the ‘Miracle of Thai Food and Fruit Festival 2012’ with over 40 booths selling products from across the country in order to stimulate the country’s tourism and economy. The Miracle of Thai Food and Fruit Festival 2012 will feature Thai food from four regions, popular Thai food among locals and foreigners, as well as seasonal fruit. CNNGo has previously ranked Thai food among the 50 most delicious dishes in the world, with Massaman Curry topping the list at number 1, followed by Tom Yum Goong at number 8, Nam Tok Moo at 19 and Som Tam at number 46. Thus, the TAT will help Thai entrepreneurs in boosting the economy by promoting food which are well-known among foreigners. The TAT expects that the organization of this event will also stimulate the country’s tourism as well as the economy. The overall spending by the event’s visitors last year stood at 30 billion baht. Meanwhile, a 10% growth has been estimated for this year. The Miracle of Thai Food and Fruit Festival 2012 will be held during 25-27 May at Central World.

Leadership in Central Banking

23 February 2012

6:00 – 7:45pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:45pm

Daiwa Foundation Japan House

Central banks currently face unusual challenges. In both the UK and Japan, the normal policy lever – interest rates – is at or close to its limits, forcing central bankers to consider innovative measures, such as “quantitative easing” (QE), to support their economies. But these measures have been controversial. Some argue that the Japanese experience shows that QE doesn’t work, while others say that the real problem is the Bank of Japan’s cautiousness. In the UK, critics argue that QE has failed to boost the economy, debased the currency, and pushed up inflation. In the meantime, savers and pensioners in both countries have been squeezed by unusually low returns on their investments. In this seminar, the second in the 2012 series Leadership: People and Power in the UK and Japan, we ask what lessons can be learnt from the Bank of Japan’s experience over the last two decades – and what central bankers in both countries should do next?

Satoshi Kawazoe

Satoshi Kawazoe has been General Manager for Europe and Chief Representative in London at the Bank of Japan since May 2011. Prior to this, Mr. Kawazoe was General Manager of the Bank’s Shizuoka branch (2009-2011). Mr. Kawazoe held several other posts at the Bank, generally relating to international relations. In that capacity, he represented the Bank in various fora, such as the Committee on the Global Financial System and the Markets Committee, which regularly meet at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, discussing developments and issues in the international financial markets and the economy.

Stephen King

Stephen King is HSBC’s Group Chief Economist and the Bank’s global head of economics and asset allocation research. Since 2001, Mr. King has been writing a weekly column for The Independent. He has given written and oral evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, and oral evidence to the House of Lords Committee on UK Monetary Policy. Between 2007 and 2009, he was a member of the European Central Bank Shadow Council, and he recently became a member of the Financial Times Economists’ Forum. His first book,Losing Control (Yale University Press) examines the impact of the emerging nations on western economic prosperity.

Edward Carr (Chair)

Edward Carr is Foreign Editor of The Economist. Carr started at the paper as a science correspondent. In 2000 he left for the Financial Times, where he served as News Editor. Returning to The Economistin 2005, Mr. Carr was Business Affairs Editor, charged with the coverage of business, finance and science.

Then and Now: Japanese Investment in the UK

Sierk A. Horn
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Leeds

Monday, 19th September 2011 6.45pm

School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Khalili Lecture Theatre
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG

Japanese firms have a reputation as influential foreign investors. With this back-drop in mind, Sierk Horn’s lecture examines how Japanese firms are currently developing their presence in the UK. His research finds that Japanese investment behaviour is evolving. While benefiting from a strong presence within Europe, Japanese firms are in the process of reconfiguring their UK presence. Recent surveys show Europe losing ground as a promising region for medium-term overseas business operations. Japanese manufacturers have downgraded the attractiveness of the UK as a business destination. In the last decade the number of Japanese firms in the UK has declined considerably, indicating an appreciable slow-down in interest from Japan.

In light of the continued importance of Japan as an inward investment source country despite investment ‘newcomers,’ most notably from India or China, the long-term commitment of Japanese investors and their contribution to the regional regeneration of the UK represents a useful context in which to examine the current strategies and localisation behaviour of Japanese companies. A comparative and longitudinal analysis of the spatial distribution of Japanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the UK over the past two decades help explore agglomeration economies, investment and exit scenarios and the changing role of regional industrial policies.

Dr Sierk A. Horn is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds. He was awarded a PhD in Japanese Studies and Habilitation from Freie Universitaet Berlin. He has published widely in the fields of consumer behaviour in East Asia, international knowledge transfer and strategic management of Japanese and European multinational enterprises (MNEs).

To reserve your place, please call the Japan Society office on 020 7828 6330 or email events@japansociety.org.uk or submit the online booking form

Social Security and the Welfare State

In a period of economic crisis this event seems to fit well.

What the State Provides: Social Security and the Welfare State

Daiwa Foundation

Japan House, 13/14 Cornwal Terrace, London NW1 4QP

2 March 2011

6:00 pm – 7:45 pm followed by drinks

Booking information

This second seminar in the 2011 series, ‘Uncertain Futures: The Individual, Society and the State in the UK and Japan’, will explore the concepts and issues surrounding social security and welfare provision in the UK and Japan. The speakers will consider current arrangements in both countries in the context of longstanding debates on trust and responsibility and what the State should provide to support social needs. From the Beveridge Report to the ‘Big Society’, the evolution of the welfare state and the impact of spending reviews on social policy in the UK will be assessed. Our Japanese speaker will draw upon recent research to compare ‘livelihood security systems’ and to explore future possibilities for a society of social inclusion in Japan.