Land rows overshadow APEC meeting

Land rows overshadow APEC meeting

By Richard Ingham

HONG KONG (AFP): Sovereignty disputes that arc from Northeast Asia to the South China Sea, coupled to fears of resurgent nationalism, make a troubling backcloth for the upcoming APEC summit in the Philippines.

Since APEC last met in Osaka a year ago, ugly squabbles have developed among the leading Asian members of an organization that loves to boast how it runs on friendly, neighborly consensus. China has fallen out with Japan over the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Tokyo is at loggerheads with Seoul over the Tokdo-Takeshima archipelago.

Beijing in March staged military exercises near Taiwan, including live missile firings off its two key ports, in a bid to intimidate the Taiwanese presidential elections.

And four members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum -- Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan -- are still jousting over who owns the reputedly mineral-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. A fifth claimant is Vietnam, which has applied to join APEC.

"It's not been a good year," commented Jean-Philippe Beja of France's Center for Studies on Contemporary China, a Hong Kong- based research organization.

That's an agreement shared by Kwan Chi-hung, senior economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, who says the tension seems to have sharpened regional perception that China is a potential menace.

"Some people now view China as a threat in the long run, not just militarily but also as an economic power," Kwan said. "A trend of shifting investment has become clear in recent months, from ASEAN to China. Some countries may view China as a threat rather than an opportunity."

ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

APEC is a loose grouping of 18 economies, including Canada, the United States and Chile, that is aiming to forge free trade among its members by 2020 at the latest.

Analysts agree that China's saber-rattling towards Taiwan had been a disastrous mistake by Beijing.

Washington, which sent the U.S. Navy to protect the Chinese Nationalist island, quickly reasserted its role as guarantor of regional security. The U.S.-Japanese security treaty, which was under threat from public hostility, was revived with hardly a murmur.

Beja said, however, that a potentially bigger source of alarm in the region was Japan.

China, he contended, was getting a bad press: it had backed off on threatening Taiwan, concluded its series of nuclear tests, and had been far less aggressive on the Diaoyu-Senkaku dispute than Chinese activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"On the other hand, there has been a resurgence of Japanese arrogance, which is being particularly felt in (South) Korea. Last year, the Japanese government embarked on a period of humble reflection on World War II, but this has all ended with (Prime Minister Ryutaro) Hashimoto."

Growlings and rumblings on the strategic front are unlikely to be heard in public at the APEC summit at Subic Bay on Nov. 25, which will be preceded by ministerial talks in Manila next week. "Consensus and trumpeting the glory of the region are the norm," said Beja.

Even so, China will be under pressure to show good faith, analysts said. It has to show by market-opening measures that it is a good member of APEC and anchored in its commitment to free trade and an open economy that will help guarantee regional stability.

"They have to show they are committed to a multilateral regime," said Kwok-chiu Fong, associate director of the Center for Economic Research at Hong Kong University.

He noted that the APEC summit takes place in the runup to a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Singapore. China is negotiating to join that forum but has run into U.S. insistence that its economy become more transparent and less hedged with subsidies and import tariffs.