The first high-profile East Asia Summit (EAS) has come to an end after Japan, China and other ASEAN member states got what they wanted and compromised with one another on other issues.
During negotiations leading up to the summit, Japan, Singapore and Indonesia successfully increased the summit's membership to include Australia, New Zealand and India in order to dilute China's influence. However, the US' absence from the meeting has secured China's role. Although the member states of ASEAN are less influential on political and economic fronts, they will continue to play their "normative" role in regulating political and economic integration in the region. In future, any country hoping to participate will have to first obey the principles established by ASEAN, including pledging not to use military force or interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, a guideline to which the US has refused to conform. In addition, any nation intending to be included in the EAS must sign an agreement to become a dialog partner of ASEAN and be regarded as an active player in political and economic affairs. That is why some members are questioning whether Russia is qualified to seek full EAS membership.
Therefore, we can only wonder if the EAS was intended to provide regional superpowers such as the US and Japan, and rising powers such as China with a platform to mitigate mutual differences, or if it was taking the first step toward stronger political and economic cooperation and a distinct framework for an "East Asian Community." Moreover, "exclusiveness" is a major characteristic of the regionalism that has placed Taiwan in a disadvantageous position. Clearly, any organizations based on the participation of East Asian nations have ignored the existence of Taiwan. Thus, we have to wonder what kind of impact it will have on cross-strait relations.
Although the EAS has yet to discuss anything substantial, a new framework for regional integration in East Asia has already come into play. The EAS did not actually successfully replace "ASEAN plus three" as it was designed to. Instead it has developed into something that can complement the existence of ASEAN. By including more members, the EAS stresses the importance of non-trade agendas such as regional security and political cooperation, while "ASEAN plus three" is directed at enhancing economic and trade integration in East Asia in addition to the progress it has made in stabilizing financial markets and ensuring energy security. However, we should observe how these two parallel organizations exert their influence, although they have both developed a distinctive mechanism, different from that of the EU and the North-American model.
In the future, a nation intending to host the EAS must be a member of ASEAN, and the EAS will be held immediately after the ASEAN summit. Next year's EAS will be held in the Philippines rather than in China, which had been extremely eager to host such an important gathering. This arrangement was clearly designed to quell a growing sense of unease that ASEAN was losing its dominant regional role. This also indicates that members are looking warily at an increasingly influential China.
Although the EAS has transformed into a new mechanism for dialogue, it still cannot alter the current situation in which nations are "talking regionally but acting bilaterally." Signing bilateral free-trade pacts is still the favored policy of many members. In addition to signing well-publicized deals with Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, China is seeking free-trade deals with more nations. Currently 27 nations have signed free-trade pacts with China.
Unlike the three major economies -- the US, the EU and Japan -- China has not adopted a "dual track strategy" when dealing with trading systems such as the WHO and free trade agreements (FTA.) That is, China tries to emphasize the importance of both the WTO and FTAs. China's future economic and trade policy is likely to lean toward regionalism or signing FTAs with more nations.
Many believe that the US will react fiercely to growing East Asian regionalism. Therefore, it is understandable that the US will seek to enhance the functionality of APEC, whose members are spread geographically across the Asia-Pacific, in order to dilute the regional character of the EAS. Besides, by signing bilateral or multilateral FTAs with East Asian nations, the US can still weaken the momentum of regionalism in East Asia. This is a policy that the US will probably take into account. In addition to signing FTAs with Singapore and Australia, the US also intends to hold talks with Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. It is also rumored that the US is interested in inking a FTA with South Korea.
While pushing to become a full member of the EAS, Russia attended the EAS as an observer this time, as its qualifications remain controversial. It is likely, therefore, that it will adopt a new policy toward strengthening economic and trade relations with East Asian nations in the future. These are the threats and opportunities that a nascent East Asian regionalism can bring about.
Apart from facing up to the reality of international politics and calmly analyzing the political climate in East Asia, Taiwan has to continue to strive for domestic political and economic reform, and use its increased marginalization in international affairs to its benefit. If Taiwan intends to break fresh ground in the face of this new wave of regionalism, it should at least seek to downplay the impact of any regionalism and try to grasp its "advantages." Perhaps, trying to understand where Taiwan's advantages lie -- such as the role the nation can play in the East Asian economic and trading systems as well as the cross-strait economic relationship -- is the best strategy we can adopt.
Honigmann Hong is an associate research fellow at the Division of International Affairs of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.
TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG
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