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.