The leading index increased 0.3 percent, the coincident index increased 0.4 percent, and the lagging index decreased 0.2 percent in January. Taken together, the three composite indexes and their components show a strong economy: The coincident indicators show that the economy continued to expand through the first month of the year. With the release of January data, the economy has tied the expansion of the 1960's as the longest expansion in U.S. history. The leading indicators point to a continuation of the expansion during 2000. The lagging index shows that cyclical imbalances were not a problem in January.
"There's got to be priorities," George W. Bush responded when asked about Africa in the second presidential campaign debate. Africa did not make his short list: the Middle East, Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. A Bush presidency portends a return to the blatantly anti-African policies of the Reagan-Bush years, characterized by a general disregard for black people and a perception of Africa as a social welfare case. Vice President Dick Cheney is widely expected to steer the younger Bush on most policy matters especially foreign affairs. Cheney's perspective on Africa in the 1980s was epitomized by his 1986 vote in favor of keeping Nelson Mandela in prison and his consistent opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Territorial development processes and patterns in Korea from the 1950s have encountered four turning points. The first involved the reconstitution of the Korean nation state, which, following radical land reform, implicitly focused on the expansion of the Seoul Capital Region. The second came with the launching of strategies for export-oriented urbanindustrial growth in the early 1960s, which led to the development, in the 1970s, of an urban-industrial corridor moving from the rapidly expanding metropolis of Seoul to the southeast coast, centered on Pusan and heavy industrial complexes. The third turning point was brought about by rising wages and labor costs; the ascending value of the Korean currency; and the overseas relocation of labor-intensive industries, which saw a repolarization of growth in Seoul and a deindustrialization of other metropolitan economies. While some regions outside of Seoul began to register high rates of economic growth around automotive and electronics industries in the early 1990s, this pattern was abruptly challenged at the fourth turning point, the 1997 financial crisis in East and Southeast Asia. Recovery from the crisis is being pursued under a fundamentally new political and economic strategy of decentralized policymaking. The major territorial development question facing Korea at this turning point is whether localities can create capacities to rebuild and sustain their economies through direct engagement in a turbulent world economy.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Richard Bush is chairman of the board and managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), a private organization that conducts unofficial relations with the island of Taiwan on behalf of the United States government. Established in April 1979, AIT has a small headquarters in Washington, D.C., and offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung. Dr. Bush was appointed to the AIT Board by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on September 2, 1997, and was selected as chairman and managing director on the same day.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Now, more than at any point since 1949, Hong Kong's economic future is tied to that of China. This commonplace observation must be coupled with the less obvious, but equally fundamental point that Hong Kong's future with China is based largely on activities that arise in or pass through the Pearl River Delta. This region, however, is cut in half by a sovereign border and governed by a patchwork of political authorities. The Delta as a whole is rich with opportunities, but it is increasingly apparent that these can be realized only if integration moves forward, both in a metropolitan and regional sense. This prospect is currently marked by serious uncertainties.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Scholars describe the East Asian—Japanese and South Korean—state as a network state that guides the private sector by means of embedded relationships (i.e., informal persuasive ties). In theoretical terms, these embedded ties represent informally institutionalized social capital. This study refines the network state thesis by comparing embedded ties with tangible resource exchanges in their effects upon political influence among political (organizational) actors in Japanese and U.S. labor politics. The network state thesis predicts that in Japan embedded ties should channel the flow of tangible resources (e.g., vital information, political support), and that embedded third party brokers should mediate this flow. Embedded ties have generally pervaded the Japanese polity, whereas in the United States, they have remained concentrated within the labor sector. In Japan, the embedded ties form a “bow tie” pattern: the Ministry of Labor (MOL) bridges a structural hole between corporatistic business and labor. The presence of embedded third parties predicts the dyadic exchange of information. Political support, by contrast, forms a distinct, nonembedded network, centered on political parties. Tensions between the embedded network and the instrumental political support network help explain characteristics of Japanese politics, such as the relative slowness of its response to financial crisis.
Topic:
Industrial Policy and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Israel, East Asia, and South Korea
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
American military power underpinned the security structure of the Asia Pacific region during the Cold War. Post-Cold War, its role is still vital to peace and stability in the region. The most overt manifestations of American military might are the Japan–America Security Alliance (JASA) and the Korea–America Security Alliance (KASA). These bilateral alliances, together with a modified Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) treaty relationship, point to the diversity of security interests and perspectives in the region. Even during the height of the Cold War, the region never quite presented the kind of coherence that would have facilitated the creation of a truly multilateral defense framework of the sort exemplified by NATO. In Southeast Asia, the lack of strategic coherence resulted in a patchwork of defense arrangements between local and extraregional states. Dominated by the United States, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was only nominally regional.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, America, Asia, Korea, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper discusses the relationship between the United States and the Republic of China (ROC) from 1949 to 1979. This was an association that began and ended with an American determination to distance itself from the government on Taiwan, in the interests of improved relations with the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. In the intervening years, the United States and the ROC were aligned in a relationship—formalized by a mutual defense treaty from 1955 to 1979—which weathered two (almost three) military confrontations with the PRC.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
It is now almost a cliché to say that domestic politics and foreign policy are closely connected. Yet however trite this expression, nonetheless it is true. Japan's international behavior and particularly its security policy cannot be fully understood without analyzing its domestic politics. In post–World War II Japan, security policy has been the dominant theme of domestic politics and source of ideological divide.
The electricity industry is being challenged on the one hand by restructuring and on the other by the potential of new technologies. Restructuring is proceeding slowly and unevenly, with uncertain national leadership, disputes over the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), continuing and increasing environmental concerns, and a plethora of state policies and regulations.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology