Northeast Asia Forum is supervised by Ministry of Education of PRC, and sponsored by Jilin University. It is an authoritative academic journal, aiming to promote international cooperation, economic and trade, friendly exchanges, especially emphasizing on the strategic issues among Northeast Asian countries. Its scope covers studies in political, economic, historical, cultural, regional cooperation and international relations of Northeast Asia, and also lays stress on the development and new trends in all industries in Northeast Asian and Asia-Pacific areas.
The journal is included in CSSCI.
Editor-in-Chief Zhu Xianping
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Li Yingwu
Editorial Board Lowell Dittmer (U.S.); Lee Il-houng (ROK); Mikhail Titarenko (RUS); Davydov Andrey (RUS); Ogawa Yuhei(JAP); Wang Jisi; Zhu Xianping; Liu Jiangyong; Liu Debin; Li Junjiang; Li
In the 21st century, protectionism, unilateralism and anti-globalization trend of thought in some developed countries began to prevail, which led to the imbalance between globalization dilemma and global governance, such as continuous trade friction, disordered economic development, political opposition, and frequent security issues. The setbacks of globalization and the plight of global governance are profoundly affecting the evolution of the international pattern and order. In this context, China proposes to build a community with a shared future for mankind, which shows that China’s concept of global understanding and global governance has been formed.
In the study of the Northeast Asian politics and security, opinions differ as to whether the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy towards the DPRK is a decisive factor to force it to return to the path of denuclearization negotiations with the United States in 2018. As soon as he took office, Donald J. Trump ended “strategic patience” with the DPRK and put forward “maximum pressure” policy towards the DPRK. The policy of “maximum pressure” is wide-ranging, and it focuses on using the US super power and wide international influence, and puts deepen political, diplomatic, military, economic and financial pressure on the DPRK, in order to isolate, deter and punish it until the DPRK halts its nuclear program and stops all missile tests. In 2018, the situation on Korean Peninsula underwent positive changes, including Kim Jong-un’s New Year speech, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the Panmunjom Declaration between South Korea and the DPRK and the Joint Declaration between the US and the DPRK. The strategic intention of the Trump administration’s policy is to impose maximum pressure on the DPRK to force it to submit to the pressure before contacting it. It resonates with the Kim Jong-un government’s strategic intention of establishing a credible nuclear fact and then forcing the US to peace talks. The result of the resonance of their strategic intentions brought peace to the Korean Peninsula. The United States has insisted that “maximum pressure” on the DPRK must remain in place until Pyongyang has achieved complete denuclearization, which resulted in the failure of the second summit meeting between the two countries. “Maximum pressure” policy will remain as a fundamental part of the US policy towards the DPRK for a long time in the future. In order to understand the change and trend of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, it is important to analyze the characteristics and the content of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy.
As the world’s population and productivity continue to grow, resources are more and more important to human society. After years of exploitation, land resources have been gradually exhausted inevitably, and marine resources have become the focus of exploitation. Therefore, the development of international seabed area resources has gradually become an important issue in international politics. The international seabed area is the commonwealth of mankind, which contains a large number of resources and has a high value of scientific research and development. For China, the international seabed area is of vital importance as the future strategic development space and the source of strategic resources, thus becoming worthy of attention. Since the restoration of the legitimate seat in the United Nations, China has participated in the development of the international seabed area in four fields: law, diplomacy, science and technology, and commerce, with fruitful results. Looking forward to the future, China will increase its investment in the development of the international seabed area under the strategic thought of building China into a maritime power.
Globalization provokes populism and polarization, posing risks to the stability of national societies. A mainstream in classical sociology based social integration on core values. Xi Jinping advocates core socialist values for China: prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship. Emile Durkheim’s theory of state-society oscillates between the organic solidarity generated by the division of Labor and universal values. Talcott’s answer to this dilemma was to require that a society’s core values be underpinned by a central power, but the US fails to meet this requirement. In Xi’s account, power is central but should be caged by the system. By combining Western, Marxist and non-Marxist theories with its unique political system, China has become the most united and powerful nation-state in the history of the world
The proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative has had a positive and far-reaching impact on promoting the economic and social development of countries and regions along the Belt and Road. However, in recent years, there have been many failed cases of overseas cooperative investment. It is urgent for Chinese investors to deeply explore and analyze the main factors affecting investment risk from the aspects of politics, economy, culture, society, and international relations, to rationally identify and evaluate the investment risk of the host country and to improve the efficiency of investment cooperation among countries. Based on this, this paper applies principal component analysis and cluster analysis to select 35 typical countries along the Road participating in the Belt and Road economic and trade cooperation. Altogether, 37 indicators were selected from five aspects of economic condition, debt capacity, social stability, governing capacity, and bilateral relations to calculate their sub-items and comprehensive risk coefficients. On the basis of cluster analysis and the ranking results of comprehensive risk coefficients, 35 countries are divided into five types of risk levels. The conclusion of this paper is that Southeast Asian countries are generally suitable for Chinese enterprises to invest overseas, and the scale of cooperation should be further expanded; BRICS countries present a higher level of investment risk, and China should strengthen ties and pay close attention to the improvement of the investment environment of the host countries; the investment risk of the five Central Asian countries is polarized, and China should enhance political mutual trust and give play to the demonstration effect of investment in Kazakhstan; and China needs to pay close attention to the potential risks of investment risk in high-risk countries, and establish the necessary compensation mechanism.
As China-Japan political relations improve and the BRI bears fruits, Japan has significantly changed its attitude towards the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has solidified the foundation of China-Japan cooperation under the framework of the BRI. China and Japan are actively pursuing to further their cooperation that centers on third-party markets with the ASEAN as the basis, focusing on public infrastructure and logistics, energy conservation and environmental protection, and financial service. However, the promotion of bilateral cooperation still faces challenges, such as the sustainability of the relationship improvement between China and Japan, the different perspectives of the Japanese government and its private sectors on the BRI, and the potential risks from other countries along the Belt and Road. Both Chinese and Japanese governments need to carefully and constantly cultivate their bilateral relationship and develop new motivations to continuously advance their bilateral relationship. The Japanese government and its private sectors need to work together to reconcile their different perspectives on the BRI. China and Japan need to share information to mitigate investment risks. In this case, China and Japan can usher in a new era in their cooperation under the BRI.
Integration into global value chains is an important reason for the rapid economic growth of East Asian countries. For a long time, unlike the integration trend of EU and NAFTA, the progress and effect of regional integration in East Asia are not significant. However, as East Asian countries actively integrate into the global value chain, with China’s reform and opening up as the most prominent case, East Asian countries have successfully joined the international division of labor system and gradually become the center of global production and processing. However, under the impact of anti-globalization phenomena such as Brexit and Trump shock, the global value chain is now facing severe challenges. As the double core of the East Asian production network, China and Japan have formed a close and win-win relationship economically. In the future, the cooperation between the two sides will still have broad space and great potential.
Against the background of Trump’s “America First” policy, changes in the situation in East Asia, increased demands from Japan to expand overseas markets, and remarkable early results of the Belt and Road Initiative, Sino-Japanese relations have shown improvement since the spring of 2017, and Japan’s attitude towards the Belt and Road Initiative has also changed. The atmosphere of the cooperation between China and Japan around the Belt and Road Initiative has warmed up, and begun to enter a pragmatic discussion and preliminary cooperation stage. In October 2018, Prime Minister Abe officially visited China, and the two countries signed more than 50 agreements on third-party market cooperation. China and Japan will gradually expand cooperation in the fields including infrastructure, finance, logistics, energy, environmental protection, industrial upgrading, modern agriculture, and e-commerce. In the process of promoting the Belt and Road construction and strengthening the cooperation between China and Japan in the third-party market, there will be some challenges in the future, such as interference of America, unstable Sino-Japanese relations, institutional differences between the two countries, uncertainty in the third-party market, and the complicated and volatile international situation, which require China and Japan to work together to overcome difficulties and obstacles, promote the sound operation of Sino-Japanese relations, seek common ground while reserving differences in cooperation, work together to promote the development and prosperity of the region, and build a community with a shared future for humanity.
