Japan's Reginal Economic Strategy: New TPP, the BRI and Geoeconomics in the Asia Pacific - lecture

Japan’s Reginal Economic Strategy

―New TPP, the BRI and Geoeconomics in the Asia Pacific―

July 12, 2018 6:00 PM (finished)

Saori N. Katada (片田さおり, 南カリフォルニア大学国際関係学部)

(University of Southern California (USC))

Date/Time	July 12, 2018 6:00 PM
Location	Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo　 [map]
Abstract	One decade after the Global Financial Crisis, the Asia Pacific economic order is in flux. We see increasingly confident China introducing alternative rules, approaches and institutions to economic governance of the Asia Pacific region, while the United States with its precarious leadership struggles to balance domestic demands with maintenance of a liberal international economic order. Geo-economic competition in the area of trade has taken place, as the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), despite the US withdrawal, lives on among the promoters. In the area of infrastructure investment, China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) has energized an investment boom, and establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has conjured up reform at the Asian Development Bank. In both cases, Japan’s role has been important and Japan’s strategy has contributed to shaping the regional economic order. What kind of economic strategy has the Japanese government taken during this period, and what are the sources of its strategic choice? I argue that Japan’s state-led liberal strategy has been guided by the country’s changing political and economic institutions as the country has grown out of its developmental state model.
Bio	Saori N. Katada is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC). She is the author of Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press) and The Global Economic Crisis and East Asian Regionalism (Routledge), and co-author of the upcoming Taming Japan's Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press).