Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Jusuf Wanadi, CSIS, Jakarta
The sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) will be held in Bali in November, marked by the participation of two new members, Russia and the US.
The EAS is a pan-Asian dialogue forum on broad strategic, political and economic issues with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in East Asia. Read more…
Author: Tan See Seng, RSIS
The Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) will convene on 19 November in Bali, with the US and Russia as full members.
Yet doubts remain over the Summit’s prospects as a high-impact forum, and its likely contributions to East Asia’s peace and prosperity. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
The sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) will take place on 19 November in Bali, with its newest members — the US and Russia — breathing new life into the forum.
While the Summit’s original objective of serving as a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues remains important, the US and Russia’s inclusion has now opened an opportunity for greater geopolitical security dialogue. Read more…
Author: Corey Wallace, University of Auckland
Public debate surrounding Japan’s proposed entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) remains as heated and confused as ever.
The rhetoric is far-ranging: while some maintain that Japan risks being permanently left behind economically should it fail to negotiate entry into the TPP, others suggest that Japan’s government is agreeing to effectively cede sovereignty and sacrifice its agricultural sector for the sake of diplomatic cordiality. No one really knows what the TPP will mean for Japan, but little recognition is given to this fact. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
Whatever is done to re-position Asian regional architecture, it needs to take account of Asia’s new role in global economic governance.
It needs to attend to the implications of Asia’s rise for political and security affairs. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
The Japanese government’s new policy reform plan, Basic Policy and Action Plan for the Revitalisation of Our Country’s Food and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, (published 25 October) does little to promote agricultural trade liberalisation.
While containing a number of reform proposals designed to expand the scale of farming and facilitate agricultural land transfers, the plan fails to address the most important issue of all: reducing direct income subsidies to small-scale farms. Read more…
Author: Wang Yong, Peking University
The upcoming G20 Summit in Cannes will undoubtedly attract the world’s attention, as many look to see whether the G20 can play a positive role in the global economic recovery.
And while searching for an effective solution to the crisis, the world will also focus on China, asking whether it might become a responsible ‘leadership state’ in an emerging global governance structure like the G20. The answer, it seems, is that based on its own interests, China is choosing to become a responsible contributor to global governance and wants to become part of the solution to the current global crisis. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
In 1996, President Clinton told a joint sitting of the Australian Parliament that ‘the way [China] defines its greatness for the future will help decide whether the next century is one of conflict or cooperation’.
Fifteen years on, China’s trajectory has unmistakably lived up to Clinton’s expectations of ‘greatness’. Read more…
Authors: Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe, FDI, James Brazier and Lilit Gevorgyan, IHS Global Insight
Since the Central Asian republics attained independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Pakistan has entertained serious ambitions of cultivating and strengthening relations with Central Asia.
Unfortunately, strategic myopia has skewed Pakistan’s focus towards securing influence in Afghanistan, limiting its success at building inroads into Central Asia. Read more…
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
With no clear leader and few strong incentives for deep integration, Asian cooperation for the foreseeable future is likely to be intergovernmental, with little pooling of sovereignty to create supranational institutions or agree common rules and disciplines.
As Asia’s weight in the world economy grows, however, its interests will also be served by a strong commitment to global institutions. Read more…
Author: Takashi Terada, Waseda University
ASEAN’s function is often described as being limited to a ‘talk shop’ that merely provides venues where ministers and leaders from larger states join together to exchange views on regional security and economic issues.
So long as the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’ — which informally stipulates non-intervention, non-binding and consensus-based decision-making approaches to regional cooperation — is maintained, ASEAN’s major role will not go beyond hosting the ‘talk shop’. Yet the talk shop’s value could be enhanced if delegates discussed the hard issues, regardless of whether any binding obligations ensued. Read more…
Author: Rodolfo C Severino, ISEAS
On 23 July, the ASEAN Regional Forum ministerial meeting will convene for the 18th time.
Like previous gatherings, the ARF foreign ministers (27 of them) will meet a few days after the annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. Read more…
Author: Evan A Feigenbaum, CFR
For more than a decade, creating multilateral forums has rivalled badminton as the leading indoor sport of Asian academics, think tanks and governments.
And the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as proposals multiply and Asians organise themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
In mid-November 2011, Indonesia will host the Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS).
Based on the Kuala Lumpur Declaration 2005, this year’s Summit will continue to be a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues to promote ‘common security, common prosperity, and common stability.’ Read more…
Author: Amitav Acharya, Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada and American University
It is bad enough that Canada is absent in Asia. But what’s worse is that nobody in Asia seems to care.
In a recent op-ed, Joseph Caron (Canada’s former ambassador to China and Japan and former High Commissioner to India) and David Emerson (former Canadian Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister) wrote: ‘Canada remains on the fringes of [Asia’s] remarkable transformation, whether diplomatic engagement, trade, foreign investment or educational or cultural exchanges. We risk being left behind.’