Interview
The 21st Century Is a Century of Public Diplomacy — An Interview with Yasutaka Kojima, a Well-known Figure of China-Japan Friendship
Zhao Xinli • 78 •
Yasutaka Kojima is a religious leader who was born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan. In 1966 he founded a jeweler, which became a public company with 161 stores after 26 years. Thirty years later he withdrew from the position of the company’s CEO and became a monk in 1987. He has been an advisor on cultural affairs for the government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, representative of the Academic Research Organization for the Niya Ruin of Bukkyo University in Japan, and visiting research fellow at Tsinghua University. He is more than a monk from Japan. He has also been a prominent contributor to preserving Xinjiang’s historic and cultural heritages and advocate for international society’s understanding of Xinjiang under the reform and opening-up policy. Some people describe him as “Abe no Nakamaro of our times”. Recently Public Diplomacy Quarterly had an interview with him.
Charhar Roundtable Meeting
China’s Reform and Opening-up and Public Diplomacy
Lyu Fengding & Zhao Kejin et al • 85 •
The year of 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening- up, a milestone policy that had changed China’s fate. Since 1978, China has made economic and social progress that has caught world-wide attention. It has also led to profound changes in China’s relationship with the rest of the world. China’s public diplomacy has created favorable international opinions for the country’s development. In the new era, China’s public diplomacy now faces new missions and tasks. On July 20, 2018, the Charhar Institute and Public Diplomacy Quarterly co-organized a symposium on China’s reform and opening-up and public diplomacy. This paper presents the views of the speakers at the symposium.
Case Studies
How Seoul Views Its Global Competitiveness?
Zhang Peng • 93 •
In recent years, Seoul in South Korea ranks top in global cities, largely thanks to its effort to improve its global competitiveness. The ancient city has only seen a short period of five decades of urbanization which began in the 1960s and 1970s. Supported by the disclosure of the information of Seoul’s participation in the Global Power City Index (GPCI) on the website of the Seoul Metropolitan Government and interviews conducted in Seoul, the author believes that Seoul is able to keep its smart competitiveness among global cities because it has joined all important international inter-city organizations, attached importance to and maintained the first place of specific rankings, and collaborated with a wide array of major global city ranking organizations.
The Sister Cities of Tianjin and the Role of City Diplomacy — Friendship Between Tianjin and Chiba
Zhang Nan • 99 •
City diplomacy is an effective measure to conduct public diplomacy and international sister city is a great way to conduct city diplomacy. In June 1973, Tianjin became the first Chinese city to have an international sister city -- Kobe in Japan. Thanks to its friendship with Kobe, Tianjin later cemented friendly relationships with two more Japanese sister cities -- Yokkaichi in 1980 and Chiba in 1986. This paper traces the history and introduces the current situation of the friendship between Tianjin and Chiba, arguing that sister city is important to political, economic, and cultural diplomacy. At present, with improved China-Japan relations, Tianjin should fully leverage its traditional strength to exchange and cooperate with Japan to contribute to China-Japan friendly exchanges.
