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In special lecture, Gerald Curtis predicts at least two prime ministers for Japan in the next year and a win by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)

For the second year in a row, Gerald Curtis’ annual lecture on Japanese politics followed on the heels of the ascension of a new Japanese Prime Minister. With the lecture delivered the day after Taro Aso succeeded Yasuo Fukuda, Curtis provided a capacity crowd of scholars and journalists at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs with a picture of what appears to be an exciting time in Japanese domestic politics. Combining criticism, commentary, and predictions, the lecture hinted that Japan is currently in a process of creative destruction, out of which a stronger and healthier polity will emerge.

Among his targets of criticism were legacy politicians (more than 30% of all Diet members are legacies. The current and former two Prime Ministers are sons or grandsons of Prime Ministers); pork-barrel spending (especially given the new electoral system, in which narrow constituencies have become significantly less important); an inability of Japanese politicians, after more than 50 years of what has been nearly uninterrupted one-party dominance, in dealing with legislative gridlock; and bureaucrat-bashing (bureaucrats in Japan fill roles that in the United States would be the purview of Congressional staff or think-tanks).

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Guobin Yang, associate professor, on Brian Lehrer Live

On October 1, Guobin Yang, associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures at Barnard College, was a guest on Brian Lehrer Live. Yang, who’s writing The Power of the Internet: Chinese Society in the Information Age (Columbia University Press, forthcoming), spoke on how much of an activist role the Internet is playing in China. Watch the video.

Brown Bag Lecture Series to examine the responsibility of media in Reporting China

Minky Worden, Media Director of Human Rights Watch and Xiaobo Lu, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College assessed media coverage of the Olympics on Sept 16. Kefu Li, a coordinator for 2008 Olympic Games news coverage for NBC, not
pictured.

As China moves closer to becoming a major force in world affairs, the media has begun playing an increasingly important role in providing the lens through which China is seen by outsiders. This is part of a wider trend across the political spectrum: as forms of news media proliferate, the way journalists and columnists report the news becomes more critical in shaping public and political responses to that news. At the same time the shift of post-Cold War politics from ideological debate to managed displays of symbolism puts journalists in the front line in explaining and characterizing events, policies, personalities and trends in the contemporary world.

Against this background, crucial debates - such as whether China is a hidden Communist enemy waiting to dominate the world, or whether it is a new form of single-party capitalist state without expansionist intentions - will be decided for most people not by study or research, but because of the pictures painted and words chosen by editors and journalists in the field.

China remains one of the last foreign countries where major US and European newspaper and broadcast companies still post correspondents, and one where their expertise in language and history is still expected to be of a very high standard. These people, as the eyes and ears of the western world, will play a vital role in guiding the Western public towards a better, more nuanced understanding of an emerging China. "Reporting China," co-sponsored by WEAI and the International Media and Communications Concentration at SIPA brings some of them to Columbia to discuss their views and the role of the frontline media in interpreting a fifth of the world to the U.S. and its allies.

Click here for series schedule.