China and the enlarged East Asia Summit: the makings of an Asia Pacific Community?

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a non-prescriptive vision of the Asia Pacific Community while speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat in Jakarta on 13 June 2008. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Henry Makeham, ACYD

There is still uncertainty surrounding China’s future economic, political and strategic intentions in the Asia Pacific.

Recognising a fundamental paradigm shift in the region, then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on 4 June 2008 his intention ‘to begin the conversation about where we need to go’ to strengthen regional cooperation in the Asia Pacific via the idea of an Asia Pacific Community (APC). Read more…

Implications of tax treaty arbitration for an Asia Pacific community

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, left, with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the Official Opening of the Pacific Forum, Auckland, New Zealand, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. New Zealand is the only country with which Australia has an arbitration provision contained in a tax treaty. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Micah Burch, University of Sydney

Much was made (in tax treaty circles, at least) three years ago when the OECD included in its model tax treaty a provision requiring arbitration.

The controversial provision (Article 25(5) of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (2003)) requires states to arbitrate tax disputes arising under the treaty if they remain unresolved after two years of negotiation between the competent authorities. While arbitration is a generally accepted facet of international commercial dispute resolution worldwide, dispute resolution under bilateral tax treaties is relatively undeveloped. Read more…

ASEAN’s talk shop function and US engagement

The recent series of ASEAN foreign ministers’ meetings, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) held in Bali last month, proved that ASEAN’s talk shop function is still of some value. (Photo: AAP)

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…

Beyond the devastation in Japan

A man rides through the aftermath of the Tsunami, Earthquake and Nuclear Crisis. The country faces a massive challenge to rebuild its infrastructure. Will its Asia Pacific neighbours help out? (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale

The horror and devastation of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan continue to stun people all over the world — nowhere more so than in Japan itself, of course, where continuing anxiety is mixed with the numbness that such tragedies suffuse over the human psychology.

This is an awful period for the nation, picking itself up after being partially flattened. It is a period of helpless acceptance of loss. It is a period of struggling to find reasons where there are none. Read more…

Australia: a country racked by division and drift

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivers her victory speech after been given the numbers to form the new government at Parliament House in Canberra on September 7, 2010. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Andrew MacIntyre, ANU

Australia continues to enjoy markedly better economic performance than most other wealthy countries. But problems are accumulating.

The 2010 federal election yielded a hamstrung, minority government. Neither of the major parties shows any real appetite for large-scale policy reform. Read more…

How novel is the Asia Pacific community?

Kevin Rudd delivers the opening address of the Asia Pacific community conference. (Photo: The Daily Telegraph)

Author: Deepak Nair

Australia’s recent proposal for an Asia-Pacific Community (APC) is fostering some positive debate. By generating some ‘big picture’ thinking about Asia’s future, it also helps to reaffirm the importance of international institutions in solving security dilemmas.

The proposal also stresses to ASEAN elites that their current centrality to the process of ‘architecture-building’ is not beyond challenge. In many ways, the APC concept embodies regional cooperation with a new urgency. Read more…

From Asia-Pacific to Asia?

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Author: Anthony Milner, ANU and University of Melbourne

Speaking at the Asialink/Asia Society National Forum last week, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd welcomed ASEAN’s desire to encourage deeper United States and Russian engagement in the evolving regional architecture. Mr. Rudd also noted the suggestion that these states meet with the current members of the East Asia Summit (ASEAN, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand). ‘This is what we are seeking’, he said, ‘engagement in a cooperative institution of all of the key players in the region.’

Does this suggest that Australia will now be giving less attention to advocating their Asia-Pacific vision for the region, and will work more closely with East Asian or Asian regionalism?  The distinction matters. Read more…

Japan and the East Asian Community – Weekly editorial

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, right, is greeted by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at a hotel in Tokyo on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. (Photo: AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

Author: Peter Drysdale

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. Read more…

Where is the East Asian Community going?

George Yeo Yong-Boon, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, during the session, 'Towards an East Asian Community?' at the Annual Meeting 2010 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 30, 2010. (Photo: World Economic Forum)

Author: Kyung-Tae Lee, KITA

In 2000, the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG) recommended to both the leaders of the 10 ASEAN member states, and the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea that an East Asian Community (EAC) be established. Since then, intra-regional trade and investment has expanded rapidly. But this deeper economic integration, which is a key component for building an East Asian Community, has been driven not by the leaders of the countries concerned, but rather by market players.

Where does this leave the vision of an EAC, and what have regional leaders done about it? Put bluntly, the actions of East Asian leaders have been disappointing.

Read more…

Where is the U.S. in Asia’s future?

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (R) chats with Chinese President Hu Jintao (L) at the start of a state dinner at the Great Hall of the People on November 17, 2009 in Beijing. (Photo: Getty Images)

Author: Claude Barfield, AEI

Recently, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Philip Levy and I published an International Economic Outlook, entitled ‘Tales of the South Pacific: President Obama and the Transpacific Partnership.’ In this analysis, we made the case for the Obama administration to move with dispatch in asserting U.S. leadership in the construction of a new Asian economic architecture that would be broad and inclusive. And we argued that the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) agreement was an ideal vehicle through which to achieve this goal.

Since then, bolder moves by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have increased the urgency for the Obama administration to advance a strategic vision of the U.S. role in a nascent Asian economic architecture. Read more…

Thinking about the Asia Pacific Community

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Authors: Hadi Soesastro (CSIS, Jakarta) and Peter Drysdale (ANU, Canberra)

The idea that regional architecture in Asia and the Pacific is not up to the tasks it now needs to serve has been around for some time. It has been inspired in part by worries about the untidiness in the competing structures — across the Pacific, of APEC, and within East Asia, of ASEAN +3 and the East Asia Summit (EAS). There has also been a hankering after ‘robust’ regional institutions modelled on the arrangements in Europe or North America, however unsuited they are to Asia Pacific circumstances.

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What is different about the thinking that led to Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community proposal is that these worries are incidental to its main strategic motivation. Read more…

Asia Pacific socio-economic regional architecture: Beyond FTAs and ‘Business As Usual’

Thailand's Prime Minsister Abhisit Vejjajiva indicates to Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, right, as Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, second from right, and China's Premier Wen Jiabao, third from right,  stand with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, left, at Cha-am, Thailand on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009. (Photo: AP Photo)

Author: Luke Nottage, Australian Network for Japanese Law

Imagine a transnational regime with these institutional features:

  • Virtually free trade in goods and services, including a ‘mutual recognition’ system whereby compliance with regulatory requirements in one jurisdiction (such as qualifications to practice law or requirements when offering securities) basically means exemption from compliance with regulations in the other jurisdiction. And for sensitive areas, such as food safety, there is a trans-national regulator.

  • Virtually free movement of capital, underpinned by private sector and governmental initiatives. Read more…