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