I organized a panel with my colleague, Yanming Li at the University of Tokyo, on the geopolitics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI garners attention in many scholastic and policy forums around the world as of late, but not necessarily so in Japan – excluding perhaps reports on some Japanese newspaper outlets. The panel was held in Japanese, intentionally targeting mainly Japanese audiences. It was hosted with generous support by the SGRA Forum of the Atsumi Foundation, and held at the Tokyo International Forum.

We designed the forum in such a way that a) we would have equal representation of Northeast Asian countries – China, Japan, and South Korea, and that b) we would be able to cover both the economic and geopolitical aspects of BRI while covering specific regions that may be impacted by the agenda – Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East. Unfortunately, we were not able to cover Europe and I hope to do this in collaboration with other European scholars in the near future.

• Progress reports by Yanming Li and June Park (posted in SGRA Kawaraban in Japanese)
• Photos of the forum
• A SGRA Report of the panel

From left to right: Prof. Hitoshi Hirakawa (Kokushikan University), Director Junko Imanishi (Atsumi Foundation), Dr. Yanming Li (University of Tokyo), Mr. Gouta Nishimura (Editor of 週刊東洋経済), Prof. Jianrong Zhu (Toyo Gakuen University), Prof. Young June Park (Korea National Defense University), myself and Prof. Kei Koga (Nanyang Technological University). Tokyo International Forum, November 18, 2017.