http://irps.ucsd.edu IR/PS News Other people's travel problems are not interesting™, and thus I will go easy on my latest misadventures* at the hands of United Airlines. I will say, though, that if I see you either at a Zócalo event in Santa Monica this evening, at 7pm, or tomorrow evening at the Revelle Forum at UCSD, also at 7pm -- and I am wearing something other than the blue jeans and blue-checked shirt I am wearing right now, that will mean one of two things. Either United Airlines has figured out how to give us back the bags (with a week's worth of clothes, notes, supplies, pills, presents, etc) that my wife and I so innocently entrusted to its care around 6:45am yesterday morning at Dulles airport; or I have found a time to re-outfit myself at one of the fine clothing establishments of greater LA. Stay tuned, or look for the blue-checked shirt.Click here to read the full article. Mon, 14 May 2012 14:25:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012051484105.htm /media-center/news/news_2012051484105.htm Although North Korea remains one of the most closed countries in the world, more outside information is trickling in through foreign movies, television and radio than ever before, says a study commissioned by the State Department that surveyed hundreds of recent defectors.The findings from the Intermedia consulting group echo an earlier study done by researchers Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, which found that outside media were increasingly reaching the country.Click here to read the full article. Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120514.htm /media-center/news/news_20120514.htm The State Department is making innovative use of social media and online platforms to change the way employees communicate, share information and reach outside their own boundaries. Leading this ambitious effort is Richard Boly, head of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 08 May 2012 15:26:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120508.htm /media-center/news/news_20120508.htm Beijing's handling of a case involving a blind activist suggests dangerous political divisions at the top of the ruling Communist Party, splinters experts warn could plunge China into chaos. The world is riveted by the fate of Chen Guangcheng, who took refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after escaping house arrest last week. While Chen appears disappointed with a U.S.-brokered deal that led to his release, the incident accelerated China's move toward a political and economic crossroads. The Asian giant's rise to superpower status has been fueled by economic and social reforms. But experts say there are signs the Communist Party, fearing losing power, are in the midst of pumping the brakes on those changes while giving more leeway to the nation's brutal security forces. Click here to read the full article. Thu, 03 May 2012 15:24:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012050383017.htm /media-center/news/news_2012050383017.htm Susan Shirk featured on PBS NewsHour on the followup of Chen Guangcheng fate.Summary: "The government officials came into my home, wanted to beat my family to death," Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng said Thursday, indicating he now wants to leave China. Ray Suarez discussed the fast-moving saga of the blind activist with the AP's Charles Hutzler, the ChinaAid Association's Bob Fu and professor Susan Shirk. Click here to view the video. Thu, 03 May 2012 10:05:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012050483083.htm /media-center/news/news_2012050483083.htm WASHINGTON (MNI) - U.S.-China watchers expect only incremental progress over economic sticking points between the two countries in the latest round of the Strategic & Economic Dialogue in Beijing this week, with much of the focus simply on holding the process together amid tensions over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. With political transitions underway in both countries, and the recent decline in China's current account surplus blunting one of the key U.S. priorities, both sides are likely focused on keeping momentum for more meaningful talks once the political dust settles next year. Click here to read the full article. Wed, 02 May 2012 09:40:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120504.htm /media-center/news/news_20120504.htm This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. After 19 months in house arrest, a blind Chinese dissident named Chen Guangcheng escaped, it's widely believed, to the safety of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. That news comes as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrive for a conference planned to focus on economics. Now that agenda could also expand to cover the Obama administration's plans to sell new fighter jets to Taiwan and to the U.S. role in the still-developing mystery of the now-disgraced former Central Committee member Bo Xilai. Click here to listen to story and read transcript. Tue, 01 May 2012 15:14:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120503.htm /media-center/news/news_20120503.htm China's economy is growing rapidly, but Chinese currency has yet to join the ranks of the U.S. dollar, euro, yen and sterling pound to become a global reserve currency. Three prominent keynote speakers and many distinguished economists, bankers and business people will give their views on the internationalization of Chinese currency (renminbi or RMB) at the University of California, San Diego June 7 to 8. The Internationalization of Renminbi Conference, hosted by the 21st Century China program at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), is the first major international conference devoted to comprehensive discussions on liberalizing China's currency. The conference will be a unique opportunity to hear various experts engage in in-depth discussions with government officials about the logic behind, and implications of, RMB internationalization––one of the most important issues facing the global economy today. Public registration to the conference is open from May 9 to June 6. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 01 May 2012 09:44:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120502.htm /media-center/news/news_20120502.htm President Barack Obama says aggressive actions by North Korea are a sign of weakness not of strength. Today he met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda where they agreed to continue discussion on how to confront belligerence from Pyongyang. Those acts include North Korea's recent failed rocket launch and the expectation that it could soon undertake its third-ever nuclear test. For more, we're joined live on the KCBS newsline by Ellis Krauss who is a professor of International Relations and Pacific Studies specializing in Japanese politics and U.S.-Japan relations. He's at UC San Diego. Click here to listen to the interview (mp3 file). Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012043082585.htm /media-center/news/news_2012043082585.htm Susan Shirk featured on PBS NewHour on the discussion of Chen Guangcheng and the Chinese government. Summary: As Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng declared his freedom in a YouTube video, President Obama declined to speak directly Monday about the delicate diplomatic situation. Gwen Ifill discusses the story's significance and how it unfolded with Susan Shirk of the University of California, San Diego and Voice of America's Sasha Gong.  Click here to view the video. Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:35:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012043082528.htm /media-center/news/news_2012043082528.htm Rancho Santa Fe resident James D. Jameson, author of the new book “Capitalist at Large: Reflections of an International Entrepreneur,” answered questions recently by email. Q: Why did a memoir seem right at this time in your life? A: I began reviewing decades’ worth of journals and reflections I had compiled throughout my life and my career in international business. At this same moment, the world seemed to be coming to the end of a defining geopolitical process — the opening of closed societies. The confluence of these circumstances, my own maturity and the world’s, inspired me to chronicle what I had seen of these global changes as an entrepreneur. Click here to read full article. Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:38:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120430.htm /media-center/news/news_20120430.htm Chinese elite politics has often been described as a black box. Few people outside the innermost circle of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) really know what goes on behind the walls of Zhongnanhai. Transparency, in the smoggy city of Beijing, is a bad word. In recent years, such opacity seems to have worked. The leadership succession was smooth, major government policies were fairly consistent and competition at the top was not more intense than the usual elite rivalries. People may not know how or why the CCP does what it does, but as long as it kept its house in order, that's good enough. This sentiment is widely held at home and abroad. Continuity rather than chaos became Beijing's calling card. Click here to read the full article.   Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:55:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012043082492.htm /media-center/news/news_2012043082492.htm Energy ministers from around the world met in London this week and got a scolding. The International Energy Agency warned the ministers that they are falling way behind in their efforts to wean the world from dirty sources of energy. Nations are nowhere near being on track to avert significant climate change in the coming decades. It turns out that right now, just about everything is conspiring to make it harder to clean up the world's energy supply. Nuclear power produces very little carbon dioxide, but it is on the ropes after the Fukushima meltdowns in Japan. New methods for extracting natural gas from underground make that fossil fuel much cheaper than low-carbon fuels. Click here to read the full article. Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:14:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012043082504.htm /media-center/news/news_2012043082504.htm Emilie Hafner-Burton is a leading young voice bringing attention to international human rights issues. She is associate professor of political science and co-director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at UC San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, taught previously at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and received her PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2012, the International Studies Association awarded her the Karl Deutsch Award for outstanding scholarship on international relations and peace research by a scholar under the age of 40.Professor Hafner-Burton’s work brings rigorous theorizing and empirical testing to the fields of international human rights, gender, international political economy, and international law. Her numerous peer-reviewed articles have introduced new techniques for network analysis of international relations, investigated the limits of the “peace through trade” argument, and explored the expansion of gender as a focus for global diplomacy and agreements.Click here to read the full article. Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:45:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120426.htm /media-center/news/news_20120426.htm Por algún motivo, los informes económicos del Ministerio de Economía y Planificación de Cuba quedaron congelados en 2009 en el sitio web del gobierno. El año coincide con el peor desempeño productivo de ese país del que se tiene registro reciente, provocado por la crisis financiera internacional. Pese a todo, las cifras fueron positivas. Y la tendencia para los años siguientes muestra una curva ascendente, sobre 4% promedio en el período 2012-2016, a la par con las reformas de apertura anunciadas por el régimen del octogenario Raúl Castro. Click here to download the PDF. (Spanish) Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:36:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012050483092.htm /media-center/news/news_2012050483092.htm For more than two decades, diplomats have struggled to slow global warming. They have negotiated two major treaties to achieve that goal, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. And last year, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, they agreed to start talking about yet another treaty. A small group of countries, including Japan and the members of the European Union, now regulate their emissions in accord with the existing agreements. But most states, including the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, have failed to make much progress. As a result, total emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading long-term cause of global warming, have risen by more than 50 percent since the 1980s and are poised to rise by more than 30 percent in the next two to three decades. Click here to read the full article. (Registration required) Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:16:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012042482207.htm /media-center/news/news_2012042482207.htm Washington, DC, April 24, 2012 — Today the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program released a new report of the International Digital Economy Accords (IDEA) Project titled, Toward a Single Global Digital Economy: The First Report of the Aspen Institute IDEA Project. The report addresses the challenges and critical steps forward for establishing a fair, effective, and empowering multi-stakeholder system for governing the flow and use of data in a single global digital economy. The report is the result of the two-year long Aspen IDEA Project, an internationally inclusive project designed to explore the free flow of communications across borders on a unified Internet. The Project engaged 36 American and European corporations, high-level government officials from 6 countries representing 18 different agencies, and 14 representatives of civil society from the United States, Europe, India, and Brazil. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:37:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012042482186.htm /media-center/news/news_2012042482186.htm Mexico's most visionary leaders, vibrant culture and extraordinary accomplishments will be on display for the "Mexico Moving Forward" symposium, 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. May 3 at UC San Diego. This year's symposium, "Charting a Path to Prosperity," is designed to promote economic development in Mexico. The hosts of the symposium, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), invites the community to engage with visionary business leaders, scholars and social entrepreneurs who will provide diverse perspectives on the current economic challenges in Mexico, what can and is being done to address them, and how these lessons can be applied globally. The panel will address issues pertaining to regulation, human capital, social protection, informal economy, and entrepreneurship. Click here to read the full article. Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:57:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012042682303.htm /media-center/news/news_2012042682303.htm There are accusations of conspiracies, illegal secret meetings and double-dealing. Embarrassing documents and e-mails have been posted on an official Web site emblazoned with the words “Fact vs. Fiction.” Animosities have grown so deep that the players have resorted to exchanging lengthy, caustic letters, packed with charges of lying and distortion. And it is all about water. Water is a perennial source of conflict and anxiety throughout the arid West, but it has a particular resonance here in the deserts of Southern California. This is a place where major thoroughfares are named after water engineers (Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles) and literary essays (“Holy Water” by Joan Didion, for instance) and films (“Chinatown”) have been devoted to its power and mystique. Click here to read full article. Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:11:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_20120424.htm /media-center/news/news_20120424.htm In the 1970s, El Paso's economy was dominated by low-wage apparel, especially by makers of men's slacks like Billy the Kid, Farah and Levi-Strauss. Today's El Paso is quite different, with change led by rapid growth at the University of Texas at El Paso, the new Medical Center and the expansion of Fort Bliss. But the ghost of the old apparel business is still with us, at least in the sense that low-wage manufacturing remains a dominant factor in the El Paso business cycle and as a powerful job creator. This is not our low-wage employment, of course, but the maquiladoras in our sister city Juarez.  Click here to read the full article. Sun, 22 Apr 2012 09:27:00 +0000 /media-center/news/news_2012042382125.htm /media-center/news/news_2012042382125.htm