Growing China Clout
Tue Nov 30, 2004 04:06 AM ET
By John Ruwitch
VIENTIANE (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wooed southeast Asia on Tuesday a day after regional giant China signed a landmark deal with ASEAN to create an open Asian market of 1.8 billion people by 2015.
Officials from the 10-member Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN) and Tokyo said tariff-cutting talks on their Japan-ASEAN trade zone would start in April and be wrapped up in two years.
"We were very, very stimulated by China's initiative," a Japanese official told reporters at the summit in the sleepy Laos capital. "We want to make it speedy not because of China, but because this sort of negotiation needs impetus."
ASEAN's free trade deal with China is due to be phased in from 2010, and its deal with Japan by 2012.
South Korea, one of the three North Asian guests at the annual summit of ASEAN -- which includes Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar -- is pressing for a piece of the action, now increasingly driven by China's expanding economic and political clout.
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