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Japan and the East Asian Community - Weekly editorial

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In Brief

This week Kyung-tae Lee urges that regional leaders stop the talking and get on with establishing an East Asian Community (EAC). While doing so might be a little more complicated than it sounds, it does appear that the momentum is gathering to take the next steps in the evolution of Asian and Pacific regional architecture.

On Wednesday in Tokyo at a high-powered Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored meeting, Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, spoke of his determination to re-position Japanese policy towards open and strategic engagement in building an EAC.

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This requires, he said, opening up Japanese markets and exchange in ways to which only lip-service had been paid in the past. He linked the task of building an East Asian Community to strengthening dialogues with the United States, across the Pacific. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, in an adjunct meeting, declared this task among the top priorities of the Hatoyama administration this year, not a goal for the distant future.

Lee argues that the priority in moving forward with the EAC lies in looking at Asia’s impact beyond the region itself.The conventional reasoning that an EAC will bring common prosperity and peace within the region is one but only one, aspect of the way East Asia needs to get its act together. The role of an EAC needs to be framed in a global context. East Asia needs a coherent voice in global affairs if it is to make the contributions it needs to global prosperity and peace. East Asia is deeply integrated with the global economy. The world’s economic power has been shifting to East Asia and the pace of this shift has accelerated during the global economic crisis. East Asia is therefore loaded with increasing responsibility for leading the sustainable and balanced growth of the world economy. In this context, he concludes, East Asia must fulfil its responsibility by maintaining its own economic dynamism as well as more active participation in setting the global economic order. The economic dynamism of the region depends, he concludes, upon the institutionalisation of East Asian economic cooperation. And in order to secure a stronger voice in global forums, East Asia needs to organise so that it effectively draws together a collective position on how to govern the world economy in the post-crisis era. Just how to go about doing this is the question on which there needs to be a great deal more dialogue throughout the region. The natural grouping on which an EAC could be based, the consensus in the Tokyo meeting seemed to be, is the East Asian Summit (EAS or ASEAN+6) group.

A crucial question is whether the United States should be invited to join the enterprise. No step forward in consolidating East Asian regionalism can be taken without consideration of trans-Pacific economic and political security interests and the US interest is welcome. But the US is not a natural fit in the economic integration agenda that East Asia needs to work up in detail within EAS and US participation within EAS itself would be awkward logistically. Which is where Australian Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community idea comes into play. If, and as, EAC moves forward it makes good sense to tie its development in tandem with entrenching a comprehensive (Asia Pacific Community) dialogue between Asia and the United States (and probably Russia). And that is where there would seem to be a great deal of complementarity between Mr Hatoyama’s and Mr Rudd’s thinking about the evolution of regional architecture. In the coming weeks we shall post contributions from top analysts from across the region on these and related issues.

2 responses to “Japan and the East Asian Community – Weekly editorial”

  1. With all respect, Asia and East Asia do not need to be US centric.

    They can live by their own as a region.

    They have enough weight and strength to be equal with EU or the US.

    They need to think and act as a region, not a handicap.

    It is interesting but not always helpful to naturally link to the US when people discuss about Asia, or East Asia.

    People should not always live in the past. They need to look into the future.

    Further, it is especially unhelpful for outsiders to tell Asia or East Asia what they should do for their own affairs.

  2. I am a simple retired Australian fascinated by the historical changes occurring in our time.

    Lincoln Fung has a good point.
    I suggest Australia needs to be more imaginative participating in the new Asia with China’s rise.
    Prof Ross Garnaut made the comment on slowTV “China as a great Power” and the implications of being an ascendant Civilizational State.

    The new East Asia Architecture will be negotiated by China and the rest (Japan, Korea and Asean) to mitigate return to a “Middle Kingdom Tributary System”.
    The era of ascendant US Naval power will follow the sunset of the British Navy thus changing the power equation in our region.

    We can no longer leverage US hegemony to progress our interests in the region.
    Japan and Korea calibrate their economic benefits derived from a China oriented market and the future economic pull of the US and the EU.
    Of course, military security is another dimension to consider.
    Will India play it’s historical role in the region when it was a cultural well spring?

    The future rise of China is not pre-ordained nor the continued US hegemony.
    But the rise of China seems more likely and the decline of the US to a peer amongst equals fits historical trends.

    Whatever the case, Australia has to adapt and progress its position as a meaningful player in the region to capture economic growth.
    We need to do the same.

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