Asian willingness to cooperate

Asian willingness to cooperate

Jeerawat Na Thalang, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok

Are Japan and China ready to work together and build on an
idea that has been floating around since the 1990s by becoming
the anchor for an East Asian community? If such a community were
to follow the pattern of the European Union, cooperation would
likely start with a small core of countries, namely the ASEAN
nations along with Japan, China and South Korea.

But given the never-ending political bickering among the
latter three countries, the question remains whether Japan and
China can work together to become a much-needed engine to push
for further integration. The comfort level of those three
countries is nowhere near that of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations.

While tensions exist among ASEAN countries, especially in the
cultural sphere, as witnessed among Thailand and its immediate
neighbors, Southeast Asian nations nevertheless manage to turn
pages and move on, focusing on what works.

At a recent seminar entitled Toward an East Asian Community,
organized by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Saranrom
Institute of Foreign Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, panelists
agreed that the concept of an East Asian community has been
gaining momentum in recent years.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad first floated
the idea of an East Asian Economic Caucus in the mid-1990s, but
the idea was shot down by a number of countries, including Japan,
on the grounds that the grouping would exclude countries like the
United States and Australia, in part at least on racial grounds.
But such attitudes, based on regionalism, were altered in the
aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Dennis McNamara of
Georgetown University told the seminar.

The definition of security has expanded from the traditional
sense of the word to include non-military aspects, such as food
and economic wellbeing, said McNamara.

He noted that Washington is banking on the idea that an East
Asian community, or regionalism in general, will help enhance
overall security.

Participants in the seminar pointed to the Chiang Mai
Initiative launched in May 2000, which helped pave the way for
further monetary integration in East Asia. Under this initiative,
ASEAN, Japan, China and South Korea agreed to form a regional
lender-of-last-resort system based on a regional swap arrangement
involving central banks worth up to US$40 billion (Bt1.66
trillion) to prevent another currency collapse like the one that
sparked the economic crisis of 1997.

Japanese relations with ASEAN have gone beyond economic
cooperation over the past few decades. For instance, the Japanese
government has played a crucial role in pushing for democratic
reform in Burma.

However, Japan tends to be more passive towards the concept of
an East Asian community. Ito Kenichi, president and chief
executive of the Japan Forum on International Relations, told the
seminar that this attitude is partly attributable to the countrys
reluctance to take the initiative in anything that might be
associated with the memory of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity
Sphere advocated by Japan during World War II.

Meanwhile, China in recent years has been under mounting
pressure to dispel the "China threat" fears among ASEAN countries
triggered over the past decade by its fast-growing economy.
Mindful of ASEAN's worries of a possible disruption of the
grouping's own economic growth, China has tried to upgrade its
long-term political and economic relations with ASEAN through a
bold free-trade agreement (FTA) scheme.

At the ASEAN-China summit in November 2001, former Chinese
premier Zhu Rongji proposed the creation of an FTA between China
and ASEAN within 10 years.

Economic integration, however, is much easier than political
and security integration, especially when the interests of each
country are diverse. For instance, some East Asian countries
prefer to see the U.S. play the role of regional peace guarantor,
while others fear the influence that comes with U.S. presence.

Other panelists said China and Japan are going to have to come
to terms with their past before they can jointly play a role in
spearheading regionalism.

For an indicator of the lingering feelings of hatred from
China towards Japan, rooted in the Japanese occupation of the
1930s, the recent atmosphere in a Beijing stadium during the
Asian Cup soccer final between China and Japan should serve.

Chinese audience members booed Japanese football players when
the latter sang their national anthem, suggesting that at the
people-to-people level, Asian countries still have a long way to
go before this chapter can be closed.