Essay contest
Thursday, 20 July 2017
Japan Foreign Trade Council (JFTC) is sponsoring the JFTC Essay Competition 2017 to encourage students, young researchers and business people to express their opinions on matters of national and international importance. This year's topic for the essay is: 'The Ideal Future Free Trade System- Tasks and Solutions'.
Anyone can apply for the essay competition, regardless of nationality or age.
The essay should include such issues as:
a. What advantages are people around the world gaining through free trade, and, to the contrary, what are the disadvantages?
b. What kinds of measures are conceivable in order to further increase the advantages while reducing the disadvantages?
c. In addition, what should ‘those concerned’ do in order to achieve these measures?
In addition to responding the above questions, the essay writer needs to present arguments for what an ideal free trade system should look like in the future. In particular, essays which include analyses and suggestions about the part played by shosha companies are welcome.
The contest offers one Grand Prize of ten lac yen and three Prizes for Excellence worth two lac yen each.
The award winners from other than Japan will be provided with a round-trip air ticket to Tokyo, Japan to attend the award ceremony to be held on January 5, 2018.
The essay should be in English (2,000-4,000 words) or Japanese (5,000-10,000 characters). Each essay must be accompanied by an essay summary of no more than 400 words in English/ 1,000 Japanese characters.
Deadline for submission of the essay is September 8, 2017 at 24:00 (JST). For details, readers may visit http://www.jftc.or.jp/english/discourse/requirements/index.html.