May 24, 2013
Japan’s ambitious economic recovery plan under the name of “Abenomics” has reached a crossroads much earlier than the government expected.
May 23, 2013
In Asia, there is much room left for the development of institutional investors.
May 20, 2013
A victory for the Liberal Democratic Party is seen as a certainty in the July Upper House election. It will be a do-over of the 2007 election, in which the LDP lost badly. If a "victory" for the LDP is increasing the number of seats it currently holds, then victory is nearly guaranteed.
May 16, 2013
Poverty among Japanese children is severe. Around 16 percent, or 3.26 million, are in a state of poverty, while the rate exceeds 50 percent for single-parent households. This is the worst ranking among 30 advanced countries (according to data compiled four years ago by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare). Research by the Ashinaga fund, which offers scholarships and moral support for children who have lost one or both parents, found that annual incomes among working widows averaged over 2 million yen ($19,500) in 1998, but this plummeted to 1.13 million yen in 2010.
May 16, 2013
Japan’s Financial Services Agency has unveiled plans to rescind the emergency short-selling restrictions imposed during the 2008 financial crisis and replace them with revised permanent regulations.
May 07, 2013
Since the Bank of Japan adopted an inflation target of 2 percent, debate has been raging over the government’s policy efforts to free the Japanese economy from the grip of deflation.
May 04, 2013
BEIJING—A year after fleeing to the United States, blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng says he will "certainly go back" to China one day.
May 01, 2013
At the National People’s Congress in March, the leaders of the new Chinese administration and its economic structural reform strategies were approved, along with major economic policies for 2013.
April 18, 2013
Chinese leader Xi Jinping takes over a country that set a lofty goal of doubling gross domestic product by 2020 from 2010 and has angered a number of neighbors over its territorial claims.
April 12, 2013
Locked in an acrimonious territorial dispute over a group of islets in the East China Sea, there are few signs of a thaw in the frosty relations between Japan and China.
April 11, 2013
World-renowned conductor Seiji Ozawa still remembers the strict—and sometimes volatile—instruction he received from his teacher, Hideo Saito (1902-1974), the conductor for whom the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto is named.
April 10, 2013
A religious studies scholar, citing the health of Crown Princess Masako, has stirred controversy by calling on Crown Prince Naruhito to abdicate his position as first in line to succeed Emperor Akihito.
April 08, 2013
CANBERRA--While welcoming the U.S. recommitment to the Asia-Pacific region through “pivot” or “rebalance,” former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd points out that “a step-by-step approach in building strategic trust” between the United States and China is missing.
March 26, 2013
Economics has come under fire for failing to provide a cure to the global recession triggered by the 2008 failure of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. It is also criticized for being unable to offer convincing ideas on how to pull the Japanese economy out of its deep deflationary hole.
March 23, 2013
As evidenced by recent developments such as hazardous air pollution and a decline in the working age population, the transformation of China’s economic development model has become a matter of urgency.
March 22, 2013
Many people expected Yukio Hatoyama to bring about major change in Japan after an August 2009 Lower House election swept the Democratic Party of Japan to power.
March 20, 2013
Although central and local governments have been upgrading their disaster damage projections and crisis management plans, Toshitaka Katada, professor at Gunma University, questions the usefulness of their disaster maps.
March 16, 2013
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King embraces the Bank of Japan's recently introduced 2-percent inflation target, calling the move "perfectly reasonable."
March 15, 2013
In China, stricter regulation of banks’ on-balance-sheet lending has paradoxically increased the overall economy’s financial risk as banks have become more engaged in circumventive financing through the use of off-balance-sheet products.
March 14, 2013
As it is poised to impose strict regulatory measures on the operation of nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulation Authority is increasingly met by opposition that it is making the resumption of plants that are currently offline virtually impossible.