This is a CDDRL's Special Seminar within our Democracy in Taiwan Program. In this seminar, Dr. Chia-hung Tsai will present up-to-date survey data regarding Taiwan’s 2008 presidential election. He will also discuss the dynamics of the presidential campaign and their implications for prospective voters.  

Chia-hung Tsai is Associate Research Fellow of the Election Study Center at the National Chengchi University. He received his PhD in political science from the Ohio State University, 2003, and he worked at the Election Study Center since then. Chia-hung Tsai’s research interest lies in voting behavior and methodology, especially Bayesian statistics. Winner of the “NCCU Outstanding Research Award,” he has published articles in various professional journals including Party Politics, International Political Science Review, Journal of Election Studies (Chinese), and so forth. Currently, he is conducting a multi-year project on voting behavior, public opinion, and public policies in Taiwan. The main focus of this project is to examine the quality of Taiwan’s young democracy. Specifically, this project investigates the extent to which public policies respond to public opinion.  

Conventional wisdom says that relations between China and Japan are fated always to be exceptionally wary, if not openly hostile -- and Japanese leaders' visits to the notorious Yasukuni have done nothing to undermine this view. Nor have Sino-Japanese standoffs over the disputed Senkaku islands. Meanwhile Beijing's opposition has been widely credited as the reason why Japan has failed in its reported aspiration to join the United Nations Security Council. Author and long-time Tokyo-based East Asia watcher Eamonn Fingleton argues that these issues have been grossly misunderstood in the West and that on closer inspection they say little if anything about the true state of Sino-Japanese relations. He insists that on a host of substantive issues overlooked by the press, Japan and China have been cooperating closely for decades. So much so that Japanese help has been one of the most powerful factors in China's rise.

A former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, Eamonn Fingleton has been monitoring East Asian economics since 1985. He met China's supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986 as a member of a New York Stock Exchange delegation. The following year he predicted the Tokyo banking crash and went on in Blindside, a controversial 1995 analysis that was praised by J.K. Galbraith and Bill Clinton, to show that a heedless America was fast losing its formerly vaunted leadership in advanced manufacturing to Japan.

His 1999 book In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity anticipated the American Internet stock crash of 2000. In his 2008 book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony, he issues a strong challenge to the conventional view among Washington policymakers and think tank analysts that China is converging to Western economic and political forms and attitudes. His books have been read into the U.S. Senate record and named among the ten best business books of the year by Business Week and Amazon.com.

He was born in Ireland in 1948 and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He was the recipient of the American Values Award from the United States Business and Industry Council in 2001.

Copies of Fingleton's newest book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony - due March 4 by St. Martin's Press - will be for sale during the event.

In early 2007, CSIS launched an expert task force to examine the growing involvement of the Department of Defense as a direct provider of “non-traditional” security assistance, concentrated in counterterrorism, capacity building, stabilization and reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. The task force set out to shed light on what drives this trend, including the new global threat environment; assess what was happening at the same time in the diplomatic and developmental realms; evaluate DOD performance in conducting its expanded missions; and consider the impact of the Pentagon’s enlarged role on broader U.S. national security, foreign policy and development interests. From the outset, the task force sought to generate concrete, practical recommendations to Congress and the White House on reforms and legislation that will create a better and more sustainable balance between military and civilian tools.

J. Stephen Morrison joined CSIS in early 2000. He directs the CSIS Africa Program, the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS (begun in 2001) and most recently co-directed a CSIS Task Force on non-traditional U.S. security assistance. In his role as director of the Africa Program, he has conducted studies on the United States’ rising energy stakes in Africa, counter-terrorism, the stand-up of the U.S. Africa Command, and implications for U.S. foreign policy. In 2005–2006, he was co-director of the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Africa, ‘Beyond Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa.’ Immediately prior to that, he was executive secretary of the Africa Policy Advisory Panel, commissioned by the U.S. Congress and overseen by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell. From 2005 up to the present, he has directed multi-phase work on China’s expansive engagement in Africa. His work on HIV/AIDS and related global health issues has involved multiple missions to China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Africa, and most recently, a series of focused studies on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. He publishes widely, testifies often before Congress, and is a frequent commentator in major media on U.S. foreign policy, Africa, foreign assistance, and global public health. From 1996 through early 2000, Morrison served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. From 1993 to 1995, he conceptualized and launched USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, which operates in countries emerging from protracted internal conflict and misrule. From 1992 until mid-1993, he was the U.S. democracy and governance adviser in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the period 1987 to 1991, he was senior staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. Morrison holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, has been an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies since 1994, and is a graduate magna cum laude of Yale College. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.

However, such observations invite the following questions:

• If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
• Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
• Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?

Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.

His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).

Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.

"Eastern Europe" is a concept many political scientists, area studies scholars, and lay people have been using over the years almost by default. But what does "Eastern Europe" mean geo-poltically, culturally, and historically? It is increasingly difficult to define where "Eastern Europe" may or may not be: since the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Soviet bloc, the term is one that carries a nuance of belonging to the list of losers of globalization, rather than the winners. My contention is that the very notion of "Eastern Europe" is slowly, but surely disappearing. The question that emerges is what are the viable alternatives for talking about and defining this region as it enters into negotiations or joins the EU. What place, if any, does the "East" have in the political agenda of European governments, elites, and the general populace?

Klaus Segbers is Professor of Political Science at Freie Universitat in Berlin. He is the Program Director of the Center for Global Politics and directs a number of the Friei Universitat's innovative graduate studies programs, including East European Studies Online, International Relations Online, German Studies Russia, and Global Politics Summer School China. Segbers conducts research on a range of topics involving contemporary Europe: Germany's foreign relations with Eastern European countries, EU enlargement, the impact of globalization on world cities, elections in Russia, comparative analysis of institutional changes in Russia and China, and an analysis of area studies as practiced in academic settings. Segers is a visiting scholar at the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at Stanford University for Winter 2008.

What issues await Japanese politicians and diplomats in 2008? At home, Japan's new Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda must rebuild confidence in his party while working with an upper house controlled by the opposing Democratic Party of Japan. Abroad, Japanese politicians and diplomats grapple with Japan's role in the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a nuclear North Korea, and sovereignty disputes with South Korea and China. Our two panelists will share their views on Japanese political, diplomatic and security challenges in the year ahead.

Andrew Oros is an assistant professor of political science and international studies at Washington College. Selected as one of five "emerging leaders" in US-Japan relations by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007, Oros specializes in international and comparative politics of East Asia. His work has appeared in Japan Forum, Intelligence and National Security, and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, among others. His forthcoming book, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice, will be released in May 2008.

Yuki Tatsumi is research fellow of the East Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Prior to her current position, she worked as a research associate at the CSIS, as well as, at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Her analyses on Japanese security policy, Japanese defense policy, US-Japan alliance, and Japanese domestic politics frequently appear in the PacNet Newsletter. In September 2006, Tatsumi testified before the House Committee on International Relations regarding Japan's relationship with its Asian neighbors.

Robert Weiner is an assistant professor of political science at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA). His research and teaching focus on Japanese and East Asian politics, political parties and elections, democratic institutions, and research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California at Berkeley. Weiner spent the 2006-2007 academic year at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a Shorenstein Fellow. He was an assistant professor in the Government Department of Cornell University for three years before joining NPS in 2007.

Please visit www.usajapan.org or call 415-986-4383 for reservation.
2008 Year Ahead is made possible by the generous support of Union Bank of California