John SEAMAN
Research Fellow, Center for Asian Studies
Research Interests:
- Chinese energy and raw materials policy
- Geopolitics of Asia (esp. energy, natural resources)
- U.S.-China and Europe-China relations
- U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific
- Chinese industrial strategy and foreign policy
- Political economy of East Asia
- Critical raw materials (esp. Rare Earth Elements)
John Seaman joined Ifri in 2009, where he specializes in the geopolitics and political economy of energy and natural resources in Asia, with a focus on China and Japan. He also conducts research on China's industrial strategy and foreign policy, the U.S. strategy and policy in East Asia, Europe-China relations, international relations and geopolitics in East Asia, and the political economy of critical raw materials (incl. rare earth elements).
Mr. Seaman holds a Master in International Affairs - International Security from Sciences Po, Paris, a Bachelor of Arts in International Economics from Seattle University, and studied as a NSEP David L. Boren Scholar at the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies (2002-03). In the summer of 2011 and 2013 he was a visiting researcher with the Energy and Environment Program of the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) in Tokyo, Japan and was an International Research Fellow with CIGS until 2018. He has spent a number of years studying and working in both China and Japan.
China’s rise, US rebalancing in Asia, historic defense reforms in Japan, the adoption of new Guidelines for bilateral cooperation: the Japan-US alliance has reached a turning point in its history.
As China’s rise continues to shape and shake the course of international affairs, and Europe enters a new chapter in its collective history, Europe-China relations are becoming more relevant, but also much more complex.
This paper examines how China seeks to secure access to an ever growing level of natural resources from overseas. In its quest for resources necessary to fuel its economy, does China seek to bolster the development of international markets,...
The upcoming Paris climate conference (COP21) is opening the door to a new post-2020 climate regime in which China and other large emitters will have to provide strong evidence of their domestic efforts in addressing global warming in the next century.
Asia is now a nerve center for global economic activity and a theatre of some of the most pressing security concerns of our time. So important has Asia become to global affairs today, and ostensibly for the decades to come, that many have already dubbed the 21st Century as the “Asian Century”....
China’s economic development has brought it to the center of natural resource markets.
China is poised for a dramatic increase in its demand for natural gas. As total energy demand has risen to record levels in the last five years, China has found itself in an increasingly difficult bind: the social and environmental burden from coal is becoming too heavy to bear and a growing...
As tensions persist between China and Japan in the East China Sea, it is interesting to note that one of the most symbolic actions of the previous crisis has yet to make an appearance this time around.
For China, coal is a crucial source of abundant, indigenous and affordable energy and is a pillar of economic and social stability. From a logic of energy security, and because the industry itself maintains a formidable political presence through the sheer fact of its history and size, this...
Deepening their partnership, Ifri and the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) are launching a series of op-eds, written both by Ifri and CIGS experts. This new series aims at providing the European and Asian public with...