China's WTO entry a wake-up call for ASEAN: Incoming WTO chief
China's WTO entry a wake-up call for ASEAN: Incoming WTO chief
Bernice Han, Agence France-Presse, Singapore
China's World Trade Organization entry is a reminder for Southeast Asian countries to continue with economic reforms or risk being left behind in the global marketplace, incoming WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi said Tuesday.
Supachai, speaking at the one-day Institute of Southeast Asian Studies regional forum, said he saw "China's entry as more or less as a wake up call" for the region's countries to implement economic reforms as quickly as possible.
Such reforms would allow Southeast Asian countries to forge closer economic partnerships with the world's most populous country fast emerging as an important export market, said Supachai.
Closer economic partnerships with Beijing would mean the region "will be less dependent on outside trading forces in major trading areas around the world," Supachai said.
While China is still a long way off from overtaking the United States as the region's most important export market, preparing the groundwork for closer cooperation will ready the region for its inevitable growing clout.
"China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have increasingly become important trade partners," said Zhang Yunling, a director of Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
According to Wang Gungwu, a director at the East Asian Institute based here, China also has a role to play if its relationship with Southeast Asia is to flourish.
"For there to be genuine cooperation between China and Southeast Asia, the following conditions must exist," said Wang.
"Firstly, Chinese strategists must shift their mindset and acknowledge that Southeast Asia, among all the four major regions that it borders, offers the greatest security for China, but only if it is prosperous and stable," he said.
Hence, it was in Beijing's interests to help the region return to its trajectory prior to the 1997-1998 financial crisis, said Wang.
And the signals coming from China were looking promising for the region.
"There are signs that recognition has come to the authorities in Beijing, and this should be encourages," said Wang.
Southeast Asia, for its part, also had to try to overcome its history of suspicion towards China, he said.
"The region needs to reconsider carefully if its recent heritage of fear and suspicion is still justified," Wang said.
"If that kind of thinking continues, or if there is evidence that suspicions are indeed justified, then obviously cooperation will be long time coming, if ever," he said.
With Japan's influence waning in the region as Tokyo grapples with the country's deepening economic problems, both China and the region would need to cooperate more than ever should a crisis erupts, experts said.
The dialogue between the two therefore had to be "increasingly open and frank," said Wang