• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• 제20권2호
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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.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• 제26권1호
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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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• 제26권1호
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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.

• Strategy21
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• 통권39호
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• pp.114-139
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• 2016

Korea and China are neighboring countries with close contacts in many areas from long time ago, and have shared interests in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and in deepening economic relationship which has been mutually complementary in their nature. Therefore their bilateral relations has been developed at a remarkable pace to the extent that it can't be better than now. However, the differences in their responses to North Korean nuclear test and ensuing long-range ballistic missile test-fire and the Chinese strong concern on the possible deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Air Defence) anti-missile system in Korea show that there are some weaknesses in their relations. For example, Korea is not still confident that China would fully implement the sanction measures contained in the UNSC resolution and I argue that Chinese proposal of parallel negotiation of the denuclearization and the replacement of Korean armistice with the Peace Agreement is not much persuasive. In THAAD issue, if Korea comes to conclusion in the future that THAAD is the most effective way to counter North Korean threats, Korea should make every efforts to assure China that Korea-US alliance is not targeting China, and the THAAD is a defensive system, not damaging Chinese security. In the longer-term, deepening strategic distrust and competition between the US and China in this part of East Asia, changing nature of economic cooperation between Korea and China, and the revival of 'great country mentality' by Chinese people together with the rising nationalism in both Korea and China would cast shadow on Korea-China relation in the years ahead, unless properly handled. In this regard, I suggest that the security communications between the two countries be further strengthened, and the tri-lateral dialogue channel be established among the three countries of Korea, the US and China, particularly on North Korean issues. I also suggest the new pattern of economic cooperation be sought, considering the changing economic environment in China, while strengthening the efforts to understand each other through more interactions between the two peoples.

• 한국과 국제사회
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.89-130
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• 2018

본 논문은 '미중관계의 전개와 현안문제 및 시사점을 분석하기 위한 것이다. 초기 및 적대적 대결기의 미중관계, 미중접근 관계정상화기 및 1980~90년대 미중관계, G2시대 개막후 2010년대 중반까지의 미중관계, 트럼프-시진핑시대의 미중관계와 주요현안과 시사점을 살펴본 후 결론을 도출해본 것이다. 지난 30여 년간의 중국의 급속한 성장은 기존의 미국중심의 단극적 국제질서를 변화시키며 양국간의 경쟁을 촉발시키고 있다. 미국과 중국은 전략 경제대화'를 정기적으로 개최하는 유일한 국가가 되었고, 주제 역시 양자간의 관계뿐만 아니라 글로벌 이슈까지 논의하는 나라로 발전해왔다. 미중협력 갈등의 현안문제는 양국관계는 물론 글로벌 이슈를 망라하고 있다. 예컨대 남중국해, 북핵과 사드, 통상 금융질서, 대만문제 등이 바로 그것이다. 미중갈등은 남의 일이 아니라 한국의 외교 안보 경제에도 직결되는 문제이다. 우리는 미중관계에 있어서 '코리아 패싱(Korea passing)'이 나오지 않도록 튼튼한 한 미 안보공조관계를 유지 강화해 나가는 한편, 한 중 경제협력관계도 조화롭게 추진해 나가는 헤징전략이 요구된다.

• Strategy21
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• 통권36호
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• pp.59-93
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• 2015

A Paradigm shift is in process in China's foreign policies during Xi Jinping's era. Such changes occur with changing national identities from developing country to great power, and from continental power to continental-maritime power. China's pursuit for sea power embraces its global strategy. Accommodating the new identity of maritime power, China is developing its maritime strategy. New silk-road strategy actively utilizes China's advantage in economy, while avoiding direct military challenges against the U.S. China seeks an associated balance of power with the U.S. On the other hand, China make its determination clear to protect its core national interests, particularly Taiwan straits issue, deploying Anti-Access and Area-Denial strategy. 'Pax-Americana 3.0' and 'China's rise 2.0' have convoluted and evolved in complexity. South Korea faces much tougher challenges ahead in its foreign and security environments.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• 제11권2호
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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.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• 제24권4호
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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.

• 한국경제지리학회지
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.243-258
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• 2021

본 연구는 미·중 무역 전쟁과 일대일로가 촉발할 세계무역의 변화를 부가가치 기준 무역 통계를 이용하고, 사회연결망 기법을 활용하여 분석하였다. 분석 결과, 첫째, 일대일로 무역 환경은 제조 허브로서의 중국의 위상을 견고히 하고, 유럽 서비스 산업의 위상을 강화한다. 둘째, 1995년부터 2011년까지 GVC 네트워크 내에서 영향력이 큰 산업인 미국의 R&D 산업과 도소매업 및 독일의 자동차 산업은 미·중 무역 분쟁과 일대일로 무역 환경이 반영된 2049년까지도 그 위상이 안정적으로 유지된다. 셋째, 커뮤니티 수의 증가를 통해 일대일로가 GVC 네트워크의 분화를 심화시킨다는 것을 확인할 수 있다. 끝으로 중국의 전자 산업, 독일의 자동차 산업, 미국의 R&D 산업의 커뮤니티 진화 형태에서 주목할 만한 특성이 발견되는데 이는 각국 서비스 산업의 역량과 밀접하게 연관된다.

• 분석과 대안
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.5-31
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• 2024

The US-led and European partners supporting liberal international order has dwindled. A number of research has been conducted to explore reasons, starting point, the possibility of resurrection, and even the future scenarios of the international order. This is particularly important for the EU, in that the EU was built for a world that is peaceful, multilateral and driven by compromise inseparable from the liberal international order. The current situation of the crisis in the international order is also important to emerging powers notably China and Russia which seek for a new order best suitable for their own interests. In this sense, this paper explains the significance of the liberal international order to the EU, the necessity of salvaging an order or creating a new order, and important variables - elections held in 2024 across the EU, in the European Parliament, and the US, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, trans-atlantic partnership and EU-China relations - which possibly affect the EU to establish a new European order. In fact, the EU is unlikely to take the lead in forming a new international order. Nonetheless, the first task the EU should do is to acknowledge the crisis situation at present and to make a decision of the EU's position and role regarding saved, reformed or newly shaped order.