Sorry, this entry is only available in Japanese. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
希望者は下記ページを参照のうえ、本部奨学厚生課奨学チームにお申し込みください。 https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/students/welfare/h02_02_01.html 【募集する奨学金】 ○公益財団法人 エフテック奨学財団 ※内部選考出願〆切：4/6（日） 大学担当課（奨学厚生課奨学チーム）経由で出願する必要があります。 修士、専門職、博士課程の1年生（※法曹養成専攻既習2年を含む）を対象とした奨学金です。Sorry, this entry is only available in Japanese. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
本部奨学厚生課より、奨学金情報更新のお知らせです。希望者は下記ページを参照のうえ、直接お申し込みください。 ○ メキシコへの奨学生派遣事業（２０２５年派遣） ・本事業では、滞在費や渡航費の支給及び授業料の免除等の特典がございます。派遣期間は約１年間の予定です。 ・国際課ホームページ https://www.pref.saitama.lg.jp/a0306/nichiboku-shogakusei.html ・応募締切 ４月１６日（水）１７時００分必着（郵送の場合は、簡易書留により提出） ※埼玉県在住者、在学者で、日本国籍を有する方が対象になります。（その他要件有）Course information for AY2025 such as course catalog and course schedule is now available from the link below.
Courses 2025-2026
You can also check course syllabi on UTAS.
The Graduate School Office will be closed on the following schedule.
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. on Monday, March 24 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. on Monday, March 31
*Certificate dispenser is available.
Sovereign debt is a financial liability a sovereign state owes to various creditors. A sovereign state is a political entity represented by a centralized government with supreme and legitimate authority over the territory. In a broader sense, government, public, and national debt are often used interchangeably with the term sovereign debt.
Sovereign debt matters because it gives a government policy options to improve people’s welfare by enabling it to provide public services when revenues fall short of expenditure needs. However, mismanaged sovereign debt can cause problems that affect people’s lives over generations. Public policy professionals must know that sovereign debt has significant economic, political, and social ramifications, which require public policy and legitimacy considerations.
Sovereigns’ debt restructuring challenges [caption id="attachment_51067" align="alignright" width="300"] Designed by studiogstock / Freepik[/caption]Globally, sovereign debt has been at an all-time high since 2020. At the end of 2023, the debt level reached US$98 trillion, or 94% of global GDP. On average, in 2023, the public debt-to-GDP ratio rose in emerging markets and developing economies, while it slightly declined in advanced economies except for the United States.
Some developing nations are grappling with debt restructuring challenges, which are complicated by the increasing presence of non-traditional bilateral creditors, such as China, and international bondholders. According to the World Bank, China owned US$181 billion of the US$6.2 trillion of the total external debt owed by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at the end of 2022.
Among low-income countries (LICs), eleven countries are assessed as being in debt distress, meaning that the debtor cannot meet its financial obligations and must resort to debt restructuring, and 24 countries with a high risk of debt distress as of October 2024 as categorized by the IMF. Of the eleven debt-distressed countries, Lao P.D.R., Djibouti, and Zimbabwe owe a disproportionately large share of their public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) debt to China of 55%, 51%, and 38%, respectively.
China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)China has become the world’s largest bilateral lender to LMICs, and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provoked criticism from parts of the Western world with an unfounded “debt-trap diplomacy” narrative. The BRI is a global infrastructure development strategy China launched in 2013. However, increasing research has evidenced such a narrative as a myth. Brautigam characterizes the Chinese debt-trap diplomacy narrative as a meme spreading out of a “negativity bias” based on fear, especially in the United States, about China’s possible global dominance.
Despite the BRI’s strategic rhetoric, China’s lending spree was driven by economic motivation rather than geopolitical goals. Jones and Hameiri interpret the BRI’s true intention as an approach to stimulating “external demand for Chinese goods, services, and capital” and characterize it as “externalizing domestic problems” of overcapacities, diminishing returns, and excessive indebtedness.
Furthermore, at a micro level, the BRI’s early stage was driven by the commercial motives of actors in China facing unfavorable domestic business prospects. Problems for both recipient countries and China emerged as lending grew rapidly. China’s fragmented governance regime vis-à-vis the BRI may have resulted in a lack of coordination and caused project failure in some cases. It can be characterized as a double-edged debt trap for lenders and borrowers.
Euphoria, a bubble, and a bustBorrowing enables a state or commercial actor to increase its possession of various resources beyond its current holdings to help generate future value, income, and wealth. However, overborrowing and excessive indebtedness tend to occur in a state of euphoria for future wealth, creating a bubble that ends with a bust. Reinhart and Rogoff warn that human nature does not change and repeat the same mistake by believing “financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now.” Such human nature leads to what they call the this-time-is-different syndrome.
[caption id="attachment_51070" align="alignright" width="300"] Designed by rawpixel.com / Freepik[/caption]China’s lending spree at the early stages of the BRI may indicate euphoria on the lender and borrower fronts. One question is why the BRI's intention to externalize domestic problems ended up with the same overlending and excessive indebtedness outside China. It could be another case of this time-is-different syndrome.
History tells us that economic logic eventually overrides geopolitical and commercial motives. Here, “economic logic” refers to the market forces of supply and demand that either drive or collapse individual actors’ economic activities, while “commercial motives” are the driving factors that push commercial actors to maximize their profits. The cost of failed geopolitical and commercial attempts ultimately falls on someone’s shoulders. Therefore, ensuring debt sustainability and adhering to economic logic is crucial.
History of debt restructuringDebtor countries’ payment difficulties have been addressed by an informal yet established forum called the Paris Club of 22 permanent members of mostly advanced Western nations since 1956. Debtor countries needing debt relief can request Paris Club members to discuss a debt restructuring, with the condition that debtor countries have an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported program committed to restoring their economic and financial soundness.
Paris Club debt restructuring for LICs evolves progressively under the treatment categories with increased concessionality, typically repayment period extension and reduced interest payments, in favor of debtor countries. Despite creditors’ efforts to address LICs’ debt problems by offering increasingly favorable terms, many debtor countries suffered heavy debt burdens. Paris Club creditors eventually realized that protracted rescheduling was due to the problem with the ability to pay debt or “solvency,” not liquidity.
Against this backdrop, the IMF and World Bank launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative in 1996. The Initiative aims to assist eligible countries in reducing their heavy debt burden to sustainable levels in stages as a coordinated action by official bilateral and multilateral creditors.
In the context of the HIPC Initiative, Paris Club creditors agreed in 1996 to raise the level of debt cancellation to 80% and in 1999 up to 90% or more. In 2005, G8 Heads of States proposed and put into action the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) as a debt relief initiative calling for the 100% cancellation of the claims of the IMF, the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group, and the African Development Fund (AfDF). The MDRI enabled a complete cancelation of multilateral debt with the cost borne by the shareholders, even though multilateral creditors are conventionally granted the de facto preferred creditor status, which allows them to get paid before other creditors. Western creditors eventually lost their financial claims on many debt-distressed HIPCs by the mid-2000s.
LMICs’ PPG long-term debt owed to private creditors has more than tripled since the early 2010s, reaching US$2.0 trillion at the end of 2023. The growing presence of private creditors has resulted from abundant liquidity in the global financial markets since the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This liquidity has allowed LMICs to expand their market-based financing by issuing bonds or borrowing from commercial banks.
The fundamental challenge of sovereign debt restructuring in the developing world is not China but how to equitably address unsustainable debt owed to multiple categories of creditors. Nevertheless, as the world's largest bilateral lender to LMICs, China faces challenges in dealing with some sovereign borrowers in debt distress under the BRI.
China’s role in the global sovereign debt landscapeChina can alleviate the burden on borrowers who disproportionately owe significant debt to China and prevent trapping itself in unpaid debts. China’s policy decision will determine whether it can avoid the same mistake that Western creditors made of eventually losing all financial claims.
The current debt distress was triggered by a series of challenges due to the pandemic and regional conflicts, which hampered the effective utilization of fiscal resources to address such adversities. One long-term concern is the vicious cycle in which vulnerabilities to climate change prolong and exacerbate the existing debt distress.
[caption id="attachment_51068" align="alignright" width="300"] Designed by Zirconicusso / Freepik[/caption]Amid an increasingly popular discourse on climate action and growing concerns over the BRI’s negative environmental impacts, China began to promote “eco-sustainability” as early as 2015. Recently, President Xi Jinping announced “promoting green development” as one of the eight major steps China will take to support the joint pursuit of high-quality BRI cooperation at the third Belt and Road Forum in October 2023.
China’s considerate approach is key to achieving the dual goals of mitigating LMICs’ debt distress and vulnerabilities to climate change by applying a climate-centered approach toward sustainable socio-economic development. China can contribute to creating better global debt governance, which should go hand in hand with global environmental governance.
This blog post is a shortened, updated, and supplemented version of the article “China’s role in sovereign debt restructuring” published in the peer-reviewed academic journal China International Strategy Review (Springer) on June 19, 2024. It discusses the nature of debt distress facing low- and middle-income countries and suggests the role China could play in mitigating such countries’ difficulties in paying their debts.
1. Withdrawal from a bank account
The tuition for the spring semester AY2025 will be withdrawn from your bank account on Tuesday, May 27. Please be sure to credit enough amount to your account by Monday, May 26.
The amount of the tuition for the spring semester AY2025 is as follows.
Graduate students (Professional Masters programs): 267,900 yen Graduate students (Ph.D. programs): 260,400 yen
2. To students who have applied for tuition exemption
If you receive an exemption for half the amount or do not get an exemption, the payment due date will be announced in late July 2025 on UTAS and UTokyo website. After you check the notice, please credit your account with the corresponding amount by the due date.
3. Issuing a receipt
If you would like to issue a tuition receipt, you can apply for it online through UTAS. For more details, please refer to the UTAS manual for students which is available on UTAS. Please note that receipts will only be issued after Wednesday, June 4.
UTAS *When you access to UTAS, your UTokyo account’s ID and password are required.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Japanese. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
希望者は下記ページを参照のうえ、本部奨学厚生課奨学チームにお申し込みください。
【募集する奨学金】
・公益財団法人 佐藤奨学会 ※3月31日〆切
・公益財団法人 尚志社 ※3月31日〆切
・公益財団法人 旭硝子財団 （博士課程）※3月31日〆切
This notification is for -Those who are going to work as TA -Those who are considering to apply for TA positions.
1. Maximum working hours(1) Maximum working hours depend on credits of the course
-Course with 1 credit: 21 hours -Course with 2 credits: 42 hours -Course with 4 credits: 70 hours
(2) Courses listed in Table 1 or Table 2 are different as follows
-Courses listed in Table 1: 112 hours -Courses listed in Table 2: 70 hours
Please refer to Table 1 and 2 here.
(3) Note that some courses may differ from the rules above. Please confirm with the lecturer.
2. TA’s salary per hour(1) TA’s salary per hour depends on the course you are enrolled in.
- Master’s/professional master’s degree students: 1,380 yen per hour - Doctoral students: 1,590 yen per hour
(2) For duties adjunct to the courses listed on Table 1―which requires advanced skills―salary is as below.
- Master’s/professional master’s degree students: 1,590 yen per hour - Doctoral students: 1,800 yen per hour
TA appointed to the courses listed on Table 1 shall be called a Teaching Fellow.
3. To apply for TAWhen a lecturer calls for TA, recruitment notice will be posted on student bulletin board.
4. Application procedure to become TAProcedures by both lecturers and students are required. When a lecturer completes the procedure, student will receive an email from GraSPP Office. Please follow the instructions written in the email and complete your procedure as soon as possible.
5. University-wide Training for TAs ※2025/3/18 UPDATED Starting from the 2025 academic year, graduate students who wish to serve as TAs are required to complete the university-wide training. Please refer to the attached PDF and website below. https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/students/classes/ta.html