Stanford University

China Drives into the Future: Automotive Upgrading in East Asia Today

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China’s giant automobile market continues to grow robustly, but its once thriving domestic producers have lost ground recently to global auto giants such as Volkswagen and GM. The excessive optimism of the past, however, has given birth to unwarranted pessimism about the future. The tangled legacy of China’s automotive policy has created numerous dilemmas, but it has also helped to create significant capabilities. A comparison of developments in China with those of other developing economies in East Asia suggests that institutions for promoting industrial upgrading have played a significant role in enabling some countries, such as China and South Korea, to deepen their industrial bases, while others either remain limited to assembling foreign models (as in Thailand and now Indonesia) or have failed to develop a sustainable automobile industry at all (as in the Philippines and even Malaysia). China faces tough policy choices, but it is likely to move, however reluctantly, in a more liberal and competitive direction.

Gregory W. Noble’s specialty is the comparative political economy of East Asia. His many publications include “The Chinese Auto Industry as Challenge, Opportunity, and Partner” in The Third Globalization (2013); “Japanese and American Perspectives on Regionalism in East Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (2008); “Executioner or Disciplinarian: WTO Accession and the Chinese Auto Industry,” Business and Politics (co-authored, 2005); The Asian Financial Crisis and the Architecture of Global Finance (co-edited, 2000); and Collective Action in East Asia: How Ruling Parties Shape Industrial Policy (1999). After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government, he taught at the University of California and the Australian National University before moving to Tokyo.

China Drives into the Future: Automotive Upgrading in East Asia Today
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Gregory W. Noble Professor, Institute of Social Science Speaker University of Tokyo
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Ryo Sahashi

Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Encina Hall, Rm. E313
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Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Ryo Sahashi is a visiting associate professor of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from April 2014 to March 2015. He joins APARC from Kanagawa University, where he concurrently serves as an associate professor of international politics. He will be writing a book on U.S. strategy toward China, Taiwan, and Northeast Asia since the Cold War.

Sahashi is a specialist on the regional security architecture in East Asia and Japan’s international relations. His articles are published in Chinese, English, and Japanese, including “Security Arrangements in the Asia-Pacific: a Three-Tier Approach,” William T. Tow and Rikki Kerstain (eds.); Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, pp.214-240; “Security Partnership in Japanese Asia Strategy: Creating Order, Building Capacity, and Sharing Burden,” ifri Policy Papers, February 2013; “The rise of China and the transformation of Asia-Pacific security architecture,” William T. Tow and Brendan Taylor (eds.); Contending Cooperation: Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and Asia-Pacific Security, London and New York: Routledge, 2013, pp.135-156. His newest articles on Japan-Taiwan relations and on Japan’s foreign policy since DPJ era (2009-) will soon be available.

He also serves as Research Fellow at Japan Center for International Exchange. In the past, he was the visiting researcher at the Japanese House of Councilors and German Fund of the United States. His early academic career as faculty started with the University of Tokyo and Australian National University.

He is an active commentator and contributor to international media, including NHK (Asian Voice & Newsline), CCTV, APF, Newsweek, Defense News, Stars and Stripes, Global Times, China Dairy, Asia Pacific Bulletin, and East Asia Forum.

Sahashi is a graduate from International Christian University, spending junior year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and earned his LL.M. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo.

Electoral System Reform

On March 14-15, the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, held a workshop on electoral system alternatives in the United States. The workshop brought together a number of scholars of American electoral institutions, practitioners working to implement electoral reforms, and experts on electoral systems reforms in advanced democracies. The workshop examined how different electoral systems options have worked in other countries, and what the implications of similar reforms might be in the United States.

Among other things, the workshop asked:

  • How might plurality elections in single-member districts in the United States skew democratic outcomes? Is there a relationship between the electoral system and the problems we see today, such as ideological and political polarization?
  • What lessons might be drawn from reforms in other countries? Examples include the single-transferable vote (STV) in Ireland, the alternative vote (AV) in Australia, and mixed-member systems in Italy, Japan, and New Zealand;
  • How might we go about reforming American electoral systems -- through local, state, or federal means, and through engagement with which types of political and civil service actors?
  • How has ranked-choice voting (RCV) worked in local experiments in the United States, including in Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA; and Cambridge, MA?
  • How might electoral systems reforms interact with other proposed political reforms in the United States, including the National Popular Vote for the Electoral College, top-four primaries, and the adoption of redistricting commissions? 

 

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Nick Stephanopoulos: Our Electoral Exceptionalism

 

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Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia

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Southeast Asia Program director Donald K. Emmerson's essay by the above title appears in the just-published volume, Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo, available for purchase at the Cornell University Press.

The book's authors, to quote the publisher, reflect on "the development of Indonesian studies over recent tumultuous decades...Not everyone sees the development of Indonesian studies in the same way. Yet one senses—and this collection confirms—that disagreements among its practitioners have fostered a vibrant, resilient intellectual community."

The disagreements featured in Emmerson's chapter, to quote him, "arose over how to interpret two consequential changes of regime in Indonesia," namely, "the demise of liberal democracy and the rise of President Sukarno's leftward 'Guided Democracy' in 1959, and the latter's replacement by General Suharto's anti-leftist 'New Order' starting in 1965." At stake in these controversies were facts, minds, and formats: "perspectival commitments developed inside the minds, disciplines, and careers of professional analysts of Indonesia."

At the center of his essay lies a consequential question of choice: whether to maintain or to change one's argument in the face of evidence against it. The issue is framed at the outset of the essay by two contrasting quotations:  

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

                                      -- John Maynard Keynes on the Great Depression

"I didn't change. The world changed."

                                      -- Dick Cheney on 9/11

About the Essay

The 26 scholars contributing to this volume, Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo, have helped shape the field of Indonesian studies over the last three decades. They represent a broad geographic background—Indonesia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada—and have studied in a wide array of key disciplines—anthropology, history, linguistics and literature, government and politics, art history, and ethnomusicology. Together they reflect on the “arc of our field,” the development of Indonesian studies over recent tumultuous decades. They consider what has been achieved and what still needs to be accomplished as they interpret the groundbreaking works of their predecessors and colleagues.

This volume is the product of a lively conference sponsored by Cornell University, with contributions revised following those interactions. Not everyone sees the development of Indonesian studies in the same way. Yet one senses—and this collection confirms—that disagreements among its practitioners have fostered a vibrant, resilient intellectual community. Contributors discuss photography and the creation of identity, the power of ethnic pop music, cross-border influences on Indonesian contemporary art, violence in the margins, and the shadows inherent in Indonesian literature. These various perspectives illuminate a diverse nation in flux and provide direction for its future exploration.

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Crop yields likely to fall with rising temperatures

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Laura Seaman
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FSE’s David Lobell finds that an increase of more than two degrees Celsius in average global temperature is likely to cause yields of wheat, rice and maize to fall throughout the 21st century. Early adaptation could increase projected yields by up to 15 percent.

If global temperatures continue to rise, the amount of crops farmers can harvest will sharply decline during the next 100 years.

Stanford professor David Lobell and an international team of climate scientists modeled future crop yields under several global climate scenarios throughout the 21st century. They found that if average global temperatures rise by more than two degrees Celsius, farmers are likely to get less wheat, rice and maize out of each plot of land. Yields are expected to fall by an average of 4.9 percent for every one degree Celsius rise in average temperature. Year-to-year variability of harvests is also expected to rise, as drought and flooding become more frequent. Crop yield losses will speed up throughout the century, with declines in yield beginning around 2030 and with the fastest drop happening in the second half of the century.

Lobell, an associate professor of Environmental Earth System Science and the associate director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford, reviewed over 1,700 published studies with a team of climate scientists from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The team found that if farmers adapt to climate change within the next few years, they have a better chance of avoiding or even reversing the predicted decline of wheat and rice yields in some regions. Agricultural adaptation strategies like irrigating fields and developing new crop breeds could increase projected yields between 7 percent and 15 percent.

The new study also highlights the need for better data on the potential future impacts of other factors that affect crop yields, like the prevalence of pests and plant diseases, and the availability of water supply. A full version of the study can be found online at Nature Climate Change.

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