Author: Amitendu Palit, ISAS, NUS
Asia’s dense web of trade networks has intensified further in this year. Two major regional trade agreements came into force from January 1, 2010. The first of these was the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA). The second, also an FTA, but taking the form of a free trade agreement rather than a free trade area, now governs relations between India and ASEAN (IAFTA). Unfortunately for India, poor preparation for this agreement means that it will lose some of the profit that it might ordinarily have gained from this agreement.
What are the basic details of each agreement? Read more…
Author: Roger Huang, Lingnan University
Myanmar (Burma) is at an important juncture this year as its first election in twenty years approaches.
Well known for its charismatic opposition leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the ruling, military-dominated State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), it comes as no real surprise that a series of recently announced electoral laws would effectively prevent Suu Kyi and other political dissidents from participating in the upcoming election. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
From the 1994 Bogor goals to today, ‘opening to the outside world’ is a history of economic success for APEC governments. Most traditional border barriers to trade have been reduced to negligible rates while policy development in APEC working groups has helped to make trade cheaper, easier and faster. Encouraged rather than compelled by the APEC process, these reforms helped the Asia Pacific become the most successful region in the global economy.
The host of the APEC summit in 2009, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, recommended we declare victory over APEC’s Bogor goals and move on, despite not every goal being fully met. Read more…
Author: Daryl Morini, University of Queensland
Within Australia, Prime Minister Rudd’s call for an Asia-Pacific Community (APC) has recently been muted by a number of setbacks. Indonesia and Singapore have reacted in a highly qualified way to the proposal, and, at times, have veered close to outright rejection. The initiative also seems imperilled by recent tensions between Beijing and Canberra over the Stern Hu trial. Finally, the APC has been placed in jeopardy by increasing US-China tensions concerning the Copenhagen climate negotiations, Chinese trade policies and the Obama administration’s continued arms sales to Taiwan. In this context, how urgent is the implementation of the APC?
There are three main challenges that risk delaying the fulfilment of the APC: regional sceptics, the counter-challenge of the East Asian Community, and the ambivalent role of China. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
The Hatoyama administration’s handling of the road toll issue is illustrative of its handling of policy issues in general and the nature of the policy-making process under the current DPJ government.
Firstly, the dual structure of party-government policy-making remains entrenched. The DPJ is supposed to stay out of policy-making, but constant intervention by Secretary-General Ozawa is maintaining an LDP-style dual structure of party-cabinet government and is blocking the transition to a cabinet-centred system, which was the DPJ plan. Instead of the LDP’s PARC, the power of the party in policy-making is concentrated in Ozawa’s hands. Read more…
Many, many people throughout Asia and the Pacific will be saddened to learn that Dr Hadi Soesastro died at 5am Jakarta time this morning (4 May 2010). Last Friday was his 65th birthday. Hadi was the inspiration of much that is good in Indonesia’s policies towards her neighbours in the region and in the cooperative arrangements that have been built in Southeast Asia, within East Asia and across Asia and the Pacific.
From CSIS in Jakarta, of which he was the distinguished Executive Director for many years, he provided the intellectual foundations for Indonesia’s positive regional and global engagements. In the contest of noble against less noble ideas, he was among the most noble and gracious of contestants. After this Forum was established, he naturally became one of its most influential contributors. He never rested in the search for the Holy Grail. In the past year, despite his illness, he seized the moment in defining the way forward for Indonesia, and other Asian players (among which he always included Australia), in global governance through the G20 and continued to work on this mission until his death.
There wasn’t a major constructive initiative in regional economic cooperation over the last several decades in which Hadi did not play a key role, in his quiet, persuasive, unassuming but decisive way. He was one of Indonesia’s finest sons. And we all claim him as our own – because he was, in so very many ways.
Peter Drysdale
Author: Masahiro Kawai and Michael Pomerleano, ADBI
In response to the global financial crisis, the international financial community established the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The FSB aims to address vulnerabilities and develop and implement strong regulatory, supervisory and other policies in the interest of financial stability.
The FSB mandate is sweeping. Read more…
Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, CFR
On Sunday, China and India enlarged their seats at the top table of international relations. As part of a general increase in capital, rich countries agreed to give up 3.1 percentage points of voting shares in the World Bank and to give China, India, and other emerging economies greater voting power. The Bretton Woods table is hardly the only one that matters in international relations. But the agreement makes China the number three shareholder in the Bank, while India—at number seven—now has greater voting power than Russia, Canada, Australia, Italy, and Saudi Arabia. That’s an arresting fact. And when you combine it with the decision taken at last year’s Pittsburgh G20 meeting to supplant the G8 with the more inclusive G20, the trendline becomes clearer still. China and India are sitting at the top table.
The choices this raises for China are a subject for another occasion. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary General of ASEAN and a distinguished former foreign minister of Thailand, in this week’s essay from the lead in the latest issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly, describes ASEAN as ‘a working diplomatic sculpture’.
ASEAN should see no challenge in ideas that are emerging about the evolution of regional economic architecture, in the form of an East Asian Community, suggested by Japan’s Prime Minister Hatoyama or an Asia Pacific Community, proposed by Australia’s Prime Minister Rudd. These ideas, he argues, are evidence of the continuing and central importance of ASEAN to East Asia and the entire region. Read more…
Author: Surin Pitsuwan, ASEAN Secretary-General
During his visit to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat in Jakarta on 4 March 2010, Kofi Anan, former United Nations Secretary General, commended ASEAN for having regained its profile in the international arena. This profile is something that needs to be nurtured further.
The world wants ASEAN to achieve, and become even more successful, so that it has one less region to worry about. Last October there was an appeal for China and East Asia to pull the world away from the economic crisis. Read more…
Author: John Hemmings, RUSI
East Asia is dominated by the security triangle between the US, Japan and China. The US-Japan Alliance has greater aggregated economic and military might, but has been relatively static in recent years. Simultaneously, Chinese economic and military power is growing exponentially. In this context, growing Sino-Japanese political ties seem to indicate that Japan is considering its options.
Is a realignment in the security triangle taking place or are these developments merely cosmetic? Read more…
Author: Reginald Little
The question of whether the 21st century world is to be governed by (Western) enlightenment values or (Chinese) Confucian values is a critical one. Unfortunately, in making judgments about China, the majority of analysts have failed to appreciate the speed of China’s rise and have neglected to take into account the power of Confucian values.
Australia’s Reserve Bank and Defence Department exemplify this lack of clear-sighted judgment. Read more…
