Dr. Takahara Akio is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Politics at the Graduate School of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, and is currently Visiting Scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. Previously he taught at Rikkyo University (1995-2005) and Obirin University (1991-1995), and was a Visiting Scholar at the Consulate-General of Japan in Hong Kong (1989-1991) and the Japanese Embassy in China (1996-1998). He also is a member of the Japanese Steering Committee of the International Politics Graduate Course at the School of International Studies, Beijing University. Dr. Takahara received a D.Phil. from the University of Sussex, and a B.A. from the University of Tokyo. His publications include “Japanese NGOs in China,” Japan’s Relations with China: Facing a Rising Power (Lam Peng Er, ed., forthcoming), New Developments in East Asian Security (2005, co-editor, in Japanese), and Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin (1999, co-author, in Japanese).

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About the Discussants

Mr. Steven Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, where he previously served as Executive Vice President. He also has been Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute and Senior Policy Advisor for Economic and International affairs to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman. Mr. Clemons also was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center. In addition, he was Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and in 1983 he co-founded the Japan Policy Research Institute with Asia specialist Chalmers Johnson. Mr. Clemons received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He writes and speaks frequently on domestic and international economic policy matters, and on U.S.-Japan and Asia Pacific economic and security issues.

Mr. Yang Bojiang is Visiting Fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, the Brookings
Institution, and Professor and Director, Institute for Japanese Studies, and Director, Institute for Korean Peninsula Studies, at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR). He is a council member of the Chinese Association for Japanese Studies and a committee member of CSCAP China. Mr. Yang received an M.A. from CICIR and is a currently a Ph.D. candidate. He has published the following articles in Chinese, among others: “Japan in the Process of State-Transition,” Strategic and Security Review 2004-2005, (2005) and “Japan’s Security Strategy and Sino-Japanese Relations in the Early 21st Century,” Japan in the 21st Century: Political and Diplomatic Tendency (2000).
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