Date: July 8, 2010, 14:00~15:20

Venue: Grand Ballroom, Westin Chosun Seoul

 

Moderator: Feng Zhu

 

Please take your seat. At this session we have a couple of subjects we need to just go through. First of all, I’d like to invite all cluster members research institutions to give us brief introduction of what your research project is and how it’s going on. Second, we also need to spend some time discussing the format of next year’s annual meeting of MacArthur Asia Security Initiative. Because next year, it’s my turn to host annual MacArthur’s Asia Security Initiative conference. It’s also the last year of the first three year in a research project. So we need to think about in what format, such cluster-based collaboration and cooperation are moving and going successful. Another thing is for us to need to discuss with all of you here is that next year in Beijing, we also need to consider some sort of such a cluster-based research proceedings, another sort of such a proceeding we can set up, I think that each of cluster member institution also doing a very great job by proceeding with individualistic project. Next year, we can, not just get in together here, maybe in some way, we can put our research outcome together and make it, for example, published in some way and also produce some sort of piles of compacts. That’s why I need your suggestions and advice, how next year’s Beijing MacArthur’s annual conference could be going in a way not just efficient but also productive. The third one is, the progress of individual research institution-based research work must sort of help, and assistance you expect from others that also give us chance to exchange the views, and also we can discuss, for example, into a lot of such conferences, facilities, venues, logistical organizations, some sort of visiting fellowships, any sense like that so we can exchange the view and that sort of collaboration also can be variable among us. So first of all, let’s just start out from the first subject, and maybe we can have some sort of brief introduction of your project maybe we can start from General Banerjee. Please.

 

Dipankar Banerjee

 

The project that the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies has undertaken is a part of an on-going dialogue regionally addressing Asian security issues. And here, our project focuses on developing India, China, and the other nations, and there is a developing framework for regional cooperation in Southern Asia. As was discussed in the earlier session, China-India relations is going to remain one of the critical relationships not only in Asia but also in the world. Second importance perhaps is to China-U.S. relationship. If there are issues between China and India, which has impeded cooperation, and created conditions for instability, potentially in the future, and therefore, we address the issues of instability and develop a framework for cooperation. So, it has a three-track approach, one is developing and enhancing military confidence building across the unsettled border in India and China. Second is developing border-free relationships to introduce a degree of economic cooperation in this conflict-prone region. Of course, India-China trade is developing in a different dynamics that does not need to be addressed in a security framework, but the border trade does. And the third part of the project is developing border infrastructure for making it possible for greater cooperation between the two regions. The project partner in this project is Fudan University of Shanghai, and for each of the three separate projects we have different partnering institutions in China, in Beijing and in Yunan. I have a full list of these participants etc., of course I’m not going to details of that, the military confidence building measures dimension of this project. We held a conference in Beijing, in March of this year. It prepared peoples from India and China, addressing all issues of potential military conflict between the border countries. Participants were at a senior level, from senior officials, major research personnel from universities, leading think tanks, institutions from Fudan University, but the researchers from China and India came from other leading universities and institutions in respective countries. The next phase of the announcement of the border trade and developing border infrastructure is ongoing, and it will be developed during this year, and we held a planning meeting in Singapore, addressing planning agenda for all the separate issues, and processing and progressing the research into these areas at the present moment. We’ll bring them back for discussions and independent research on all the issues, and then further build up on the second and third year into a final output. I’ll discuss the details of the other dimensions that the chair mentioned, separately once we’ve discussed other issues regarding the projects that others are undertaking individually. Thank you.

 

Moderator: Feng Zhu

 

Ok, great. Thank you General Banerjee. So, Ajin?

 

Ajin Choi

 

Ok, I’ll introduce our project overview and objective of our project and then also what kind of achievement we have made so far. Yonsei Graduate School of International Studies submitted two-year research proposal entitled “Cooperation in Northeast Asia: Architecture and Beyond,” in collaboration with the UC San Diego, on global conflict and cooperation and University of Tokyo. We have three objectives: first, we aim to publish the English and Korean volume based on our project findings and results by the end of 2010. Second, we propose to publish two Northeast Asian security initiative policy brief, each in 2009 and 2010 for policy makers in the relevant ministries and agencies. And third, Yonsei also proposes to host the training workshop in the summer of 2010, inviting national security and foreign policy makers, analysts, academics and journalists across the region.

 

Next, I’ll introduce what we have done in 2009. First, we actually held an international conference on cooperation in Northeast Asia architecture and beyond in June 30th and July 1st in 2009. The conference had four sessions and three to four scholars presented in each session and this was followed by discussions by the scholars from various academic institutions and government officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Republic of Korea and embassies from Japan and the U.S. And second, based on the participants’ presentation and discussion during the conference, a policy brief has been prepared but not yet printed due to the final process of reviewing and editing. Although the brief does not reflect every view of the individual members, it represents our best collective views and opinions, the policy brief aims to provide the overview of the current challenges and huddles facing Northeast Asia security. Third, we made progress in publishing volumes in Korean and English. The Korean volume has been approved by the Yonsei University Press this year, and we also have been discussing the publication of the English volume through the leading publishing policy in the U.S. Fourth, we also supported, hosted actually, Young Leader’s Conference in Seoul in May 29th and June 2nd in 2010, and the conference was designed to provide participants with the valuable opportunity to understand the regional environment, identify security challenges in Southeast and Northeast Asia and discuss the confidence building measure in the region. This is what we have done in 2009, and then as a future plan we have a second international conference on the same topic, but we did it in June this year, and then actually in this conference aims to review and update how much papers submitted at the first conference in 2009 have been developed and articulated. Also, Yonsei GSIS hosts the workshop for the national security and foreign policymakers, analysts and academics, actually we held this conference, no, the workshop from June 16th and 18th this year. And third, the policy brief too will be published in winter of 2010, based on the policy brief of 2009, and this brief will provide the overview of the regional security environment challenges and issues including recent developments in the Korean peninsula. Fourth, during the second international conference, we discussed how we can publish the books in detail, and lastly, actually we have a plan to have a collaborative road show, actually collaboration with the IGCC, UC San Diego and University of Tokyo. And then we plan to conduct a collaborative road show in November 2010 in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and the road show has the objectives of sharing our academic findings with the scholars, politicians and government officials and public at large and then make most conceptual and practical suggestions throughout the dissemination of the policy brief of 2010. Thank you...(Continued)

 

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Moderator

Feng Zhu

 

Participants

Dipankar Banerjee

Ajin Choi

Malcolm Cook

Ralf Emmers

Kiichi Fujiwara

Brad Glosserman

Qingguo Jia

Roy Kamphausen

Santosh Kumar

Nikola Mirilovic

T.J. Pempel

Srinath Raghavan

John Ravenhill

John Schaus

Andrew Shearer

William Tow

Fu Xiao

Tadashi Yamamoto

Daqing Yang

 

Prepared by the Asia Security Initiative Research Center at the East Asia Institute. The East Asia institute, an Asia Security Initiative core institution, acknowledges the MacArthur Foundation for its generous grant and continued support. The East Asia Institute takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with the Korean government.