China’s Bid to Join the CPTPP: The View from Japan and the US

US-Japan Short Takes Series

Wednesday, February 16, 2022
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time)

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About the Event

Geopolitical rivalry with China and the US’s unexpected withdrawal pushed Japan to take the lead in negotiations for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. Now that China has applied to join the CPTPP, economic interests and leverage to reform China provide reasons to engage in accession talks with Beijing. But there is a risk that the CPTPP will be held hostage to ongoing geopolitical tensions. The case presents a challenge for Japan in its new leadership role as flag bearer for free trade. Harvard Professor Christina Davis, author of the book chapter Japan: Interest Group Politics, Foreign Policy Linkages, and TPP (from the book Megaregulation Contested: Global Economic Ordering After TPP), will discuss how Japan and the US view China’s application, drawing on her extensive research on Japan’s foreign policy interests and domestic political processes. Dr. David Malone, UN under-secretary-general and rector of the United Nations University, will be discussant and guest moderator.

About the speaker

Christina L. Davis is professor of government at Harvard and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.  She is also director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard, chief executive editor of the Japanese Journal of Political Science (with Junko Kato of Tokyo University), and serves on the executive committees of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Her research interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and the study of international organizations with a focus on trade policy. She is the author of Food Fights Over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO, and is co-editor with Carol Greenhouse of Landscapes of Law: Practicing Sovereignty in Transnational Terrain. Currently she is writing a book on the politics of exit and entry into international organizations and several projects on the evolving trade order. 

Dr. David M. Malone is rector of the United Nations University and under-secretary-general of the United Nations. He has served as Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, president of Canada’s International Development Research Centre, director general of the Policy, International Organizations and Global Issues Bureaus within Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), president of the International Peace Academy (now International Peace Institute), Canadian high commissioner to India, and non-resident ambassador to Bhutan and Nepal, along with other diplomatic positions. Dr. Malone has held research posts in the Economic Studies Program at Brookings Institution, Massey College at the University of Toronto, and Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He has been a guest scholar and adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, where he is currently a senior fellow. His latest books are The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (co-editor) and the second edition of Law and Practice of the United Nations (co-author).