Bigger steps toward accelerating Asian integration

Bigger steps toward accelerating Asian integration

Eric Teo Chu Cheow,
China Daily,
Asia News Network,
Beijing

The recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit
held in Vientiane, Laos on November 28-30, could have broken new
ground in Asian integration and community-building. Optimism was
high following the conclusion of the 10th ASEAN Summit, as well
as the back-to-back summit meetings between ASEAN and its Asian-
Pacific partners, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK),
India, Australia and New Zealand. India's increasing role in
Asian integration was of particular significance.

Equally significant was the holding of the second High-Level
Conference on Asian Economic Integration, held in Tokyo in mid-
November 2004, organized by the New Delhi-based Research
Information System (RIS) of Non-Aligned Countries. The RIS-
organized and Sasakawa Peace Foundation-sponsored meeting was the
second in a series, which began in New Delhi last autumn. The
third conference is scheduled to be held in Beijing next year.
The Chinese partner in this series of conferences is the
Development Research Centre of the State Council.

This series of conferences, actively pioneered by New Delhi-
based RIS, clearly involves India in East Asian integration.
India wants to be part of the first stage of this integration,
which could be officially launched as early as next November in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. India has pledged to fully contribute to
Asia's economic co-operation and integration, ranging from energy
and financial co-operation to IT and trade. It has insisted on
how Asia's tremendous financial assets (in terms of forex
reserves) could be effectively used to enhance Asia's bargaining
power on the world stage with other established or emerging
entities, such as the European Union (EU) and North America Free
Trade Area (NAFTA), or even the emerging groupings in Latin
America, the Middle East or Africa.

Regionalism is on the rise and East Asia should not be left
out of this global trend. India knows that it would have to
primarily obtain the tacit consent of Japan and China to join the
future East Asian community, after having successfully wooed
ASEAN. In Tokyo, India also signalled the birth of a "new India"
and its new mentality of openness and regionalism. As an
indication of this new thinking, four young parliamentarians from
India's four biggest political parties attended the conference to
highlight India's "new" outlook in terms of business, trade,
investment and integration. The Indians also insisted that their
"open economic policy" is now irreversible as all political
parties fully share this goal. According to them, this should
encourage East Asia to embrace India within its future community,
which the Indians have dubbed "JACIK" or the "Japan, ASEAN,
China, India and the Republic of Korea" grouping.

This idea of "JACIK" appears to have also made some progress
in an official sense at the ASEAN Vientiane Summit. Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh attended the ASEAN-India Summit and had
an invaluable occasion to informally meet his counterparts from
China and Japan. Singh, famous for his liberal stance in economic
management, reiterated the crucial importance of East Asian
integration to India and vice versa, and pitched India's "new
thinking" to his Asian counterpart as "an irreversible process,"
which should also help develop East Asian regionalism.

On their end, ASEAN leaders formalized their intention to work
even more closely with China and India, in order to ensure their
own prosperity and greater global influence.

Of particular significance was the speech to ASEAN business
leaders by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who called
for greater ASEAN integration with China and India. This official
acknowledgement of Beijing's and New Delhi's growing clout and
importance to ASEAN was significant, as ASEAN in fact completed
negotiating its schedule of liberalization of goods within the
future ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) last month. The two
partners should now be able to meet their FTA schedule by 2010.
On the other hand, India's future place within East Asia appears
to have "taken a big step forward."

In fact, ASEAN is currently negotiating a FTA with India, just
as Indian Prime Minister Singh declared in Vientiane that trade
between India and ASEAN should more than double to US$30 billion
by 2007.

ASEAN, after pledging to accelerate its own development of an
ASEAN Economic Community five years earlier than scheduled, also
decided at the summit to begin FTA negotiations with Japan and
the ROK next year, giving further impetus to the "ASEAN+3"
process, just as Chinese, Japanese and ROK leaders also met at
summit level in Vientiane to strengthen Northeast Asian co-
operation, notably in energy security and resolving the nuclear
issue on the Korean Peninsula through the six-party talks
mechanism.

The strengthening of the Northeast Asian pillar in "ASEAN+3"
is always deemed crucial for the success of any future pan-East
Asian regional framework. For the first time, ASEAN also invited
Australia and New Zealand to the summit, as ASEAN prepares to
begin negotiating FTAs with both Canberra and Wellington next
year, which could now hope to belong to the future Asian
grouping.

Finally, the concept of an Asian economic bloc got a major
boost at the Vientiane summit. Philippine President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo called on ASEAN to "embrace China, Japan, the
ROK and India." Such an economic bloc, according to Arroyo, could
"hold its own" in future negotiations with the United States,
Europe or other emerging economic entities. This led to a crucial
decision to organize an East Asian Summit (EAS) in Kuala Lumpur
next year, when Malaysia takes over the chairmanship of ASEAN.

An ASEAN consensus on an EAS was reached after Indonesia
accepted the idea to transform the "ASEAN+3" framework into an
EAS, with the possible addition of India, Australia and New
Zealand, thus forging a long-term Asian economic, social,
cultural and political community.

But the EAS framework should remain open and not be exclusive.
Pragmatically, it should not be guided by feelings of "Asian
nationalism," but instead, seek to improve co-operation with the
United States and the EU in a global partnership. The Vientiane
summit has taken the first step forward towards building a three
billion-strong East Asian community, and may ultimately be
remembered for this "monumental Asian step forward."