APEC’s 16th Summit was held in Lima, Peru, last month. Without a question, the Taiwanese public and media were most interested in the meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and former vice president Lien Chan (連戰). Given the way China and Taiwan had tried avoiding each other at previous APEC meetings, the Lien-Hu meeting could be viewed as the first official and positive dealing between the two countries under the APEC framework.
The meeting also received positive recognition from APEC members. After this year’s APEC ministerial meeting, Australia and Peru announced they would be joining the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPSEP), also known as P4 and Trans Pac.
Unfortunately for Taiwan, this move will have a longlasting impact on its attempts at regional integration.
P4, with its members New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei, is the only free-trade agreement (FTA) with members from both sides of the Pacific and the only one between Asian and American countries. This agreement came into force in 2006 and is different from most FTAs, which are exclusionary in nature.
The P4 clearly stipulates that APEC members and other like-minded economies can join the agreement under the condition that other members agree to their accession. The P4 also clearly states that it covers a wide range of areas while also being an open and flexible platform. Especially after Sept. 22, when the US announced it would take part in negotiations on the expansion of the P4, the body gained much more importance and will likely make other countries willing to join.
In other words, after the US, Australia and Peru join the negotiations, the P4 could very well expand to include seven countries. There are reports that Vietnam is also thinking about taking part in the upcoming round of talks on increasing the number of P4 member states. Other interested APEC members have until March, when the talks are scheduled to begin, to express their interest in joining.
The expansion of the P4 is also important because it will add new variables to the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region and because of the impact it could have and the changes it may bring about. After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, ASEAN has been at the heart of regional economic integration with developments such as ASEAN Plus One, Plus Three and Plus Six gradually evolving and expanding, and with the East Asia Summit being held each year since 2005.
This was the first time the US, a major economic partner for East Asian countries, was so distant from East Asia, as it was excluded from the core of ASEAN’s integration system.
While on the surface the US may have appeared pleased to see regional integration in East Asia, it began to worry it might continue to be excluded from the East Asia summit and its regional structure. Starting in 2006, Washington adopted a series of actions, including its strong advocacy of a “Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific Region” (FTAAP) at APEC 2006 and its public promotion of the transformation of APEC into an “Asia-Pacific Economic Community.”
The US also sent a special envoy to ASEAN and gave Australia’s recent proposals for the creation of an “Asia-Pacific Community” tacit recognition.
It is by no means a coincidence, therefore, that the US has decided to take part in negotiations for an expanded P4. This decision is built on specific strategic plans for the region. As early as March, the US took part in negotiations on financial liberalization within the P4.
In addition, the expansion of the P4 could become a crucial turning point for the US in terms of a regional, strategic response to East Asian regionalism, as the P4 could grow to include seven countries. The US has ratified FTAs with Chile, Singapore, Australia and Peru, in addition to Canada and Mexico (through NAFTA), all of which could seek access to P4 through US membership.
Sooner or later, countries that have FTAs with the US could also become part of the expansion of the P4. For the US, the P4 will suddenly become a strategic link to the Asia-Pacific. It could then use this link to create a new economic sphere for itself, giving it new economic impetus and the power to control developments of the global economic and trading system.
When this happens, the strategic environment for regional integration in the Asia-Pacific will undergo substantial qualitative changes. It is questionable how many breakthroughs will be made in terms of East Asian integration when China and Japan start vying for power, and it will also be worth paying attention to how ASEAN, which has long relied on the US market, will react.
Johnny C. Chiang is director of the Department of International Affairs at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS