Japan, Australia ‘Test’ Asean With Economic Plans (Update1)
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By Daniel Ten Kate and Shamim Adam
Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Japan and Australia pushed competing visions for forming an East Asian bloc during a summit of 16 Asian nations in Thailand, plans that differ on the role played by the U.S.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is meeting today with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea, India and New Zealand. His idea for an “Asia-Pacific Community” explicitly includes the U.S. and India.
Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took power last month, will put forth a “long-term vision” for an “East Asian Community,” foreign ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told reporters today. Japan will “closely discuss and coordinate” with the U.S., Kodama said yesterday without elaborating.
“Both Japan and Australia proposed bigger communities, which is a test for us,” Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said today in a weekly interview on state-run Channel 9. “Asean must be firmly integrated when we enter a bigger community.”
Countries included in the group will benefit from trade in a region approaching half of the world’s population and a quarter of global gross domestic product.
The U.S. signed a friendship accord with Asean in July to bolster ties with an area that contains sea lanes vital to world trade, as well as coal, oil and other commodities. China is “positive and open” to the establishment of an “East Asian community,” Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said on Oct. 21.
Existing Groups
Both Japan and Australia’s proposals would build on existing regional groupings. Those include the 10-member Asean, the 16-member East Asia Summit that also meets today in Thailand and the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation bloc set to meet next month in Singapore.
Hatoyama, who came to office Sept. 16, said in a speech at the United Nations a week later that he would strive to create an East Asian community similar to the European Union. The goal was seen as potentially excluding the U.S. after he published an opinion article in the New York Times in August arguing that “the era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end.”
Asian Cooperation
Hatoyama, who during his campaign promised to create a more equal partnership with the U.S., said he wanted to promote Asian cooperation in free trade agreements, finance, currency, energy, environment and disaster relief.
Rudd’s Asia-Pacific Community would include the U.S., Japan, China, India, Indonesia and “the other states of our region,” he said in a speech last year. Its purpose would be to cooperate on economic, political and security matters and dispel notions that a conflict in Asia may be inevitable, he said at the time.
Southeast Asian countries are “on track” to eliminate tariffs on most goods traded within the region by the beginning of 2010, Asean said in a statement yesterday. The group aims to form a free-trade area by Jan. 1 that would remove tariffs on more than 87 percent of imports, part of its efforts to create an economic zone modeled after the EU, without a common currency, by 2015.
Besides Thailand, which holds Asean’s rotating chairmanship, the group includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. |
