Author: Christopher Findlay, Adelaide University

Balanced, inclusive, sustainable and knowledge-based – these are the dimensions of growth which APEC is talking about. Put their first letters together and you get BISK.

This agenda comes out of a number of forces for change, including the response to the global financial crisis, the concerns which have been raised about the distribution of the benefits of growth within economies (and between them), the intersection of these developments with the climate change debate, and the twittering rate of technological change in the digital world. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Ann Henderson-Sellers, Macquarie University

On February 18th 2010, Yvo de Boer announced his July departure from his position as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Mr de Boer has been the leader of the UNFCCC Secretariat since 2006, managing the organisational underpinnings of the efforts to bring together the world’s nations to forge an agreement to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

That his position was one of great stress was painfully demonstrated, in December 2007, when he left the final session of the 13th Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC (COP 13) in Bali in tears, following negative comments about the Secretariat’s handling of arrangements.   Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Yiping Huang, Peking University and ANU

The global financial crisis could mark the beginning of the end for the US dollar’s dominance over the global economy.

But the US dollar will not leave the global stage in the foreseeable future. It will remain one of the world’s most important currencies for many years to come. But the difficulties in maintaining the US dollar’s role as a global reserve currency are large, and are best characterised by the ‘Triffin Dilemma’. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrew Elek

The intense climate change negotiations in Copenhagen are over. The outcome is a useful step forward, but many difficult issues still need to be agreed upon among global governments, with no international framework for enforcing any binding agreement on who will bear the many, unknown costs of adjustment.

The messy UN process, involving over 190 governments, is not likely to agree on what needs to be done. Eyes are turning to the G20, with some expecting G20 leaders to negotiate the next steps.

The G20 can contribute to the task of limiting global warming. But G20 leaders should look before they leap into negotiation over climate change or anything else. They might well pause to think of the future of the new forum – and the many other issues to address in the years immediately ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Razeen Sally, ECIPE

The EU views China with a combination of awe, ignorance, fear, confusion and ambition. It is awed by China’s rise. It is largely ignorant of China. Real knowledge of China, and Asia more generally, is pathetic in Brussels, as it is in all European capitals with the partial exception of London. European sophisticates constantly disparage American insularity, but knowledge of Asia is far superior inside the Beltway, and in think tanks and universities in the United States, than it is anywhere in Europe. Ignorance mixed with arrogance is not an American preserve; it is found in abundance on the Old Continent, as any visit to a Parisian intellectual salon will reveal.

Then there is fear of China, especially when relations with it are viewed in militaristic, zero-sum terms. Perhaps that reflects an atavistic French world-view. And confusion reigns, for the EU, being a non-nation-state hybrid, has no foreign policy towards China and is often undermined by the foreign policies of its big three member-states (UK, France and Germany). Last, despite these drawbacks, the EU’s ambition is to be a privileged interlocutor and at the top table with China. That reflects the EU’s self-image as a ‘power’ in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Rajiv Kumar

I write this from a freezing Beijing where I am ensconced in a well-heated deluxe room of the Lakeview Hotel at Peking University. The campus, which I had first visited in 1996, has been transformed since: It has reportedly received generous capital infusions of at least $100 million on several occasions during the last 15 years. I met a number of senior foreign academics who are attached to Peking and Tsinghua universities, whose infrastructure and quality of faculty are improving continuously. As an academic, I admit to feeling most envious of my Chinese counterparts.

But the real bonus of being here has been to find an answer to the question, how is China able to flood global markets with cheap exports without any evident infringement of WTO norms? The related issue is China’s ability to push up investment levels to historically unprecedented levels. These investment levels have been used to expand the manufacturing base, and China has emerged as the second largest exporter after Germany. It is building up huge modern infrastructure capacities, which some would argue may be relatively overdeveloped, given China’s current income levels. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrew Elek on behalf of the Australian Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (AUSPECC)

On December 4-5, 2009, the Australian Government convened a ‘one-and-a-half track conference’ of prominent government officials, academics and opinion makers. In this week’s digest, Peter Drysdale reports on the meeting which discussed the form an Asia Pacific community might take and the role of existing forums (including APEC) within evolving regional institutional architecture.

Drysdale and Hadi Soesastro have made a useful recommendation for how Prime Minister Rudd’s proposal, could be advanced by a council of the leaders of the G20 members of APEC, together with India. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrew Elek

In a new study, titled The Doha Round: ‘Death-Defying Agenda’ or ‘Don’t Do it Again’?, Stuart Harbinson examines the origins of the Doha Round in 2001 and its painfully slow progress in missing deadline after deadline since the original date set for completion of 2005.

Recounting the frustrations of seeking a simultaneous resolution on many matters, Harbinson points out that, ‘[f]inding a static point of equilibrium across a range of complex issues was a virtually impossible task.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Drysdale

Prime Minister Rudd’s prominence in the Copenhagen meeting on climate change has not stopped the political process in Australia from staggering decisively backward from the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in Australia, as the rest of the world inches towards an international agreement to cut carbon output. Although it’s unlikely that Copenhagen will produce that agreement, the announcement last week of US targets and Chinese initiatives in addition to the participation of both President Obama and Prime Minister Wen in the meeting enhances the prospect of movement towards one. Stephen Howes, in this week’s lead, notes that many in Australia, including the stalling forces in the opposition, argue that we should ‘wait for Copenhagen’ before legislating an emissions trading scheme. This approach, he suggests, though apparently grounded in hard-nosed realism, is naïve. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Drysdale

This year has seen a remarkable change in the world economic order, with the establishment of the G20 as the premium international forum for dialogue on international economic and related issues. The significance of this change in global arrangements is yet to be fully absorbed. So far there have been three G20 meetings — in Washington, London, and Pittsburgh. The next will take place in June in Toronto. In November the G20 goes to Seoul.

The meeting in Seoul symbolises the shift in the structure of world economic power towards Asia. SaKong Il, who writes this week’s lead for us, will coordinate Korea’s hosting of the Summit in Seoul as special adviser to President Lee Muyng-bak. As Dr SaKong says, since its inception in the mid-1970s, the G7 acted as if it were the informal global steering committee for global economic and financial issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Mohamed Ariff, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research

International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes in Europe now are similar to those implemented in Asia a decade ago, but there are important differences in approach. These are largely attributable to the valuable lessons that the IMF learned from its experience in Asia.

Hungary, Iceland, Latvia and Ukraine were among the 15 recipients of IMF help this time around, between November last year and May this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Andrew Elek

The meetings of APEC ministers and leaders during the week to November 15, set the scene for pursuing a post-Bogor agenda in APEC, working alongside other forums and institutions, including the G20 and the multilateral development banks. A breakfast meeting led to a realistic approach to the Copenhagen meetings on climate change. That informal gathering may come to be seen as the first in an annual sequence of meetings where APEC leaders who are part of the G20 help shape a common approach to global issues.

The declaration of economic leaders was a businesslike, to some unexciting, summary of the highlights of APEC’s ongoing efforts. That reflects the maturity of the APEC process – there is no need for grand new initiatives each year. There was much more to the week than its low-key press and the traditional photo opportunity and declarations. It was an efficient opportunity for many bilateral discussions of pressing matters, while speeches to the CEO summit allowed leaders and ministers to set out their vision for future cooperation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Suman Bery, NCAER

The concept of Asia has ever been fluid and elusive, for outsiders as much as within the region. The Romans invented the name to refer to the lands beyond the Mediterranean explored by Alexander. Asia Minor, Rome’s ‘near abroad’, is current day Anatolia in Turkey.

In the medieval era, it would have been more appropriate to talk in terms of Muslim, Chinese and Indian spheres of influence rather than a common Asian consciousness. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Peter Drysdale

This week’s lead is from Ambassador Richard Woolcott, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s special envoy on developing the Asia Pacific Community concept. Woolcott’s piece is also featured in the second issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly (EAFQ) [pdf]. In the first issue of EAFQ, I noted that there was no effective and collective Asian response to the global financial crisis. Its regional structures were still not up to the task of effective global participation. Much in the last six months has changed the drivers of regional initiative on the global stage, as the essays by Young, Soesastro and Dobson in this issue of EAFQ make clear. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Richard Woolcott, PM’s special envoy to develop the APC

Why did Kevin Rudd put the proposal for an Asia Pacific Community forward in the first place, on behalf of Australia?

What is Rudd’s actual proposal, given that although the broad objective is clear, he is still developing his ideas on the detail of the arrangements he would want to pursue?

Read the rest of this entry »