• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.27-48
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• 2022

In the past decade, Korea and Japan have increasingly exhibited different strategic priorities in trade in face of China's rising global economic prowess and worsening US-China trade conflict. Japan's trade policy decisions have worked to reinforce its economic and security ties with the US as a means to counter China. Japan has used both bilateral and multilateral means to secure its ties with the US against China. In contrast, Korea's trade policy positions have been one of 'strategic ambiguity'. Korea has been more conciliatory towards China, reluctant to take actions that would counter China's interest. Korea has mainly resorted to bilateral channels to maintain favorable relations with both China and the US. Korea's reluctance to clearly ally with the US against China has been observed across different administrations with opposing political orientations. This paper examines Korea and Japan's diverging strategic priorities in trade through the 2017 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; the 2017 US imposition of Section 232 on steel; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Korea-US FTA renegotiation and the Korea-China FTA Phase Two Negotiation; and the 2019 Japan-US Trade Agreement.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.349-388
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• 2020

The US-China trade war forced a reluctant semiconductor industry into someone else's fight, a very different position from its leading role in the 1980s trade conflict with Japan. This paper describes how the political economy of the global semiconductor industry has evolved since the 1980s. That includes both a shift in the business model behind how semiconductors go from conception to a finished product as well as the geographic reorientation toward Asia of demand and manufactured supply. It uses that lens to explain how, during the modern conflict with China, US policymakers turned to a legally complex set of export restrictions targeting the semiconductor supply chain in the attempt to safeguard critical infrastructure in the telecommunications sector. The potentially far-reaching tactics included weaponization of exports by relatively small but highly specialized American software service and equipment providers in order to constrain Huawei, a Fortune Global 500 company. It describes potential costs of such policies, some of their unintended consequences, and whether policymakers might push them further in the attempt to constrain other Chinese firms.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.243-258
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• 2021

By using the trade in value-added(TiVA) database and employing social network analysis, this paper analyzes changes in global trade to be triggered by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the US-China trade war. The main results are summarized as follows. First, the BRI will help maintain China's core position as the world's manufacturing hub, and will strengthen Europe's service industry capabilities within the global value chain(GVC) network. Second, the US R&D industry, US wholesale and retail industries, and Germany's automobile industry were considered the most influential industries in the GVC network during the 1995-2011 period, and will retain their status until 2049, when the US-China trade war and the BRI are reflected. Third, the increase of the number of communities shows that the BRI might spur fragmentation of the production process. Finally, community structures of inter-industry trade relations, including China's electronics industry, Germany's automobile industry, and US R&D, show important features that are related to the competiveness of each country's service industries.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.49-91
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• 2022

Recent years have witnessed renewed interest in Africa and public diplomacy has emerged as the vital tool being used to cultivate these relations. China has been leading in pursuing stronger economic partnership with Africa while middle powers such as Korea are also intensifying engagement with the continent. While previous studies have analyzed the implications of China's activities in Africa on advanced powers, none has examined them from the paradigm of middle powers. This study fills this gap by assessing China's activities in Africa, their economic engagement and implications for Korea's interest in Africa. The analysis is qualitative based on secondary data from various sources and literature. The study shows that China's public diplomacy strategy involves a high degree of innovation and has evolved to encompass new tools and audiences. China has institutionalized a cooperative model that permeates many aspects of governance institutions in Africa, enabling it to strengthen their relations. This could also be helping China to adjust faster leadership transitions in Africa. Whereas the US is still the most influential country in Africa, China is influential in economic policies and has outstripped the US in infrastructure diplomacy. This could be because African policy makers align more with China's economic model than the US' mainstream economics. Chinese aid to Africa has been diversified to social sectors that are more responsive to the needs of Africa. Trade and investment relations between China and Africa have deepened, but so does trade imbalance since 2010. China mainly imports natural resources and raw materials from Africa. But this product portfolio is not different from Korea and the US. China's energetic insertion in Africa using various strategies has significant implications for countries with ambitions in Africa. Korea can achieve its ambitions in Africa by focusing resources in areas it can leverage its core strengths-such as education and vocational training, environmental policy and development cooperation.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.197-209
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• 2021

This article deals with the asymmetrical relations between Australia and China and explores their interdependence, tensions, and societal outlooks. Both countries are dependent on one another for trade to different degrees but attempt to diversify their supply chains. While there is no united position on China in Australia, there has been a bipartisan support for the counter-interference legislation there. The newly established security pact of the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia - 'AUKUS' - has brought a new dimension into these tensions and will most likely lead to an arms race. The author explores how a so-called middle power such as Australia balances the related economic and strategic interests and priorities. Although Australia has been vulnerable in its asymmetric relationship with China, it has shown that it is not a passive and helpless actor when facing an economic coercion. The interdependence has become a moderating factor in this strategic stand-off. Additionally, Australia demonstrates its tendency to reinforce its traditional reliance on its previous more powerful allies, the UK and the US.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.111-141
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• 2018

By the middle of 2018 there are signs of China's entry into a new period of development, characterized by a change in the old model: "market reforms-inner-party democratization - moderate foreign policy" to another: "market reforms - Xi Jinping personality cult - offensive foreign policy." This model contains the risks of arising of the contradiction between economic freedom and political-ideological rigidity which can lead to destabilization of the political life. However, in the current positive economic dynamics, these risks may come out, rather, in the medium and long term. Today, the political situation in China remains stable - despite growing dissatisfaction in scientific expert and educational circles due to increased control over the intellectual sphere by the authorities. The need for a new redistribution of power between central and provincial authorities could potentially disrupt political stability in the medium term, but, at the moment, is not a critical negative factor. The economic situation is positive-stable. Forecasts indicate a possible increase in China's GDP in 2018 at 6.5%. At the same time, there are negative expectations in connection with the Sino-US and potentially Sino-European "trade war". In the Chinese foreign policy, as a response to Western pressure, China increasingly uses the Russian direction of its diplomacy in the expanded version of Russia + SCO. The nuance here is seen in China's adjusted approach to the SCO: first of all, not as a mechanism for cooperation with Russia, but as an organization that allows using Russia's potential for pressure on the US in the Sino-US strategic rivalry. In the second half of 2018, the Chinese economy will continue to develop steadily, albeit with unresolved traditional problems (debts of provinces and state-owned enterprises, ineffective state sector, risks on the financial and real estate market). In politics, discontent with the cult of Xi will accumulate, but without real threats to its power. Weakening in economic opposition between China and the United States is possible due to Beijing's search for compromises on tariffs, intellectual property, trade deficit. To find such trade-offs, Xi will use the so-called. "Personal diplomacy" of direct contacts with Trump.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.82-108
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• 2023

As tension escalates between the US and China, scenarios for maintaining peace in Northeast Asia imply that secondary powers will perceive increasing incentives to reappraise their respective international roles. This analysis proposes that an analysis of France's Cold War role in Europe and the world under President Charles de Gaulle provides insights into conflict management in an increasingly multipolar international political environment. Their respective interests in preventing a so-called new Cold War emerging between the US and China include avoiding its excessive economic costs, if only because China is a massive trade partner. This study engages in theoretical framework-informed process tracing of de Gaulle's role. It explicates the assumptions that functionally underpinned de Gaulle's policy of soft balancing between the US and China. The analysis explores de Gaulle's contribution to the decay of the Cold War. It illuminates de Gaulle's contribution to a regional international environment that made West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik strategy more feasible politically. This study applies these findings in the formulation of strategy recommendations focusing on Japan. Valid inferences regarding the predominant motivations driving American and Chinese international interaction are necessary for this task. To the extent to which the US and China have entered into a conflict spiral, Japan's hedging towards Washington is further incentivized. Tokyo would necessarily need to convince the Chinese that Japan is no longer Washington's unsinkable aircraft carrier off its coast. Tokyo, like de Gaulle's France, would maintain close relations with Washington, but it would need to project to its interlocutors its commitment to its own strategic autonomy. Tokyo's emphasis on closer relations with liberal democratic Indo-Pacific actors would potentially fit well with a commitment to strategic autonomy to defend the global liberal order.

• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.104-143
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• 2015

China's new grand strategy, the "One Belt, One Road Initiative" (also Belt Road Initiative, or BRI) has two primary components: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the "Silk Road Economic Belt" in September 2013 during a visit to Kazakhstan, and the "21^st Century Maritime Silk Route Economic Belt" in a speech to the Indonesian parliament the following month. The BRI is intended to supply China with energy and new markets, and also to integrate the countries of Central Asia, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), and the Indian Ocean Region - though not Northeast Asia - into the "Chinese Dream". The project will be supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), due to open in 2016 with 57 founding members from all around the world, and China has already promised US$ 50 billion in seed funding. China's vision includes networks of energy pipelines, railways, sea port facilities and logistics hubs; these will have obvious commercial benefits, but also huge geopolitical significance. China seems to have two distinct aims: externally, to restore its historical sphere of influence; and internally, to cope with income inequalities by creating middle-class jobs through enhanced trade and the broader development of its economy. In South Korea, opinion on the BRI is sharply polarized. Economic and industrial interests, including Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL), support South Korean involvement in the BRI and closer economic interactions with China. They see how the BRI fits nicely with President Park Geun-hye's Eurasia Initiative, and anticipate significant commercial benefits for South Korea from better connections to energy-rich Russia and the consumer markets of Europe and Central Asia. They welcome the prospect of reduced trade barriers between China and South Korea, and of improved transport infrastructure, and perceive the political risks as manageable. But some ardently pro-US pundits worry that the political risks of the BRI are too high. They cast doubt on the feasibility of implementing the BRI, and warn that although it has been portrayed primarily in economic terms, it actually reveals a crucial Chinese geopolitical strategy. They are fearful of China's growing regional dominance, and worried that the BRI is ultimately a means to supplant the prevailing US-led regional security structure and restore the Middle Kingdom order, with China as the only power that matters in the region. According to this view, once China has complete control of the regional logistics hubs and sea ports, this will severely limit the autonomy of China's neighbors, including South Korea, who will have to toe the Chinese line, both economically and politically, or risk their own peace and prosperity.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.25-57
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• 2021

As the strategic competition between the United States and China for global hegemony intensifies, China is using economic sanctions against other countries more and more frequently. Republic of Korea, which has China as its largest trading partner but is an ally of the United States, is more likely to be a target of economic sanctions, as seen in China's retaliation toward its deployment of a THAAD missile-defense system. Against the background, this paper analyzes China's economic sanctions, especially focusing on its informality. China does not publicly declare economic sanctions in most cases, such as Korean one, in which the trade structure is in its favor and can take advantage of its position as a big buyer with huge markets. However, China responds in a more open and formal manner when it is related to its core interests, when it is impossible to exert substantial sanctions effect and when mutual disputes intensify and cannot maintain informality. Korea, which is vulnerable to China's informal economic sanctions, should prepare for them by analyzing the characteristics of China's economic sanctions in depth and thinking about various strategies and measures in advance.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.27-59
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• 2023

This study aims to serve as a critical comparison of the currently controversial 'new cold war' discourse. It took three triggers for the 'new cold war' discourse to emerge as a major issue in the media and academia and to have real political impact. With the launch of China's 'Belt and Road' project and Russia's annexation of Crimea leading to the 'Ukraine crisis,' the 'new cold war' discourse has begun to take shape. Trump's U.S.-China trade spat has brought the 'new cold war' debate to the forefront. The 'new cold war' debate is currently being intensified by the Biden administration's framing of "democracy versus authoritarianism" and Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Currently, there is no consensus among scholars on whether the controversial 'new cold war' is a new version, or a continuation of the historically defined concept of the Cold War. The term 'New Cold War' is less of an analytical concept and more of a topical term that has yet to achieve analytical status, let alone a theoretical validation and systematization, and the related debate remains at the level of assertion or discourse. Through this comparative analysis, I will argue that the ongoing discourse of the 'New Cold War' does not have the instrumental explanatory power to analyze the transitional phenomena of the world order today.