Flaws in ASEAN’s economic integration plans are being exposed as some members struggle to adapt to a massive free-trade deal with China, as the US and EU opt to pursue pacts with individual states.
Grand plans for the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015 are likely to be a key topic when ASEAN leaders hold their annual summit next week in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.
However, wide development gaps within the region, entrenched domestic interests and the perennial distraction of Myanmar’s failure to embrace democracy continue to weigh down the group’s activities and global ties, analysts say.
The integration concept goes beyond freeing up trade — it also includes physical connectivity through better rail and air links and the unhampered movement of people and capital in the 10-member bloc.
However, soon after a giant free-trade agreement (FTA) between ASEAN and China went into effect this year, the region’s biggest member, Indonesia, under pressure from domestic industries, said it wanted some terms renegotiated.
The EU had also ditched earlier plans to negotiate an FTA collectively with ASEAN, and instead launched separate talks with individual countries — an option also favored by the US.
Hank Lim, a senior research fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), said the main reason the EU and the US do not want to negotiate a regional pact is the group’s vastly differing levels of economic development.
“It is impossible to negotiate a high-quality FTA with the ASEAN 10 collectively,” Lim said.
Alongside Indonesia and Vietnam, ASEAN’s eclectic membership also includes Singapore, whose US$35,000 per capita income and gleaming skyscrapers are a stark contrast to poverty-ridden Laos and largely agricultural Cambodia.
The group’s other members are Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand — making a collection of emerging democracies and monarchies, and a military dictatorship in the form of Myanmar.
Diplomatic sources also admit that negotiating individual trade deals will allow Western countries to avoid the awkwardness involved in doing deals with a group that has international pariah Myanmar in its ranks.
Former ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino said that tearing down tariff barriers on intra-ASEAN trade is on track, at least on paper.
However, he said in an opinion piece published in Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper last week that there are other things that need to be done for integration to be broad-based and effective.
These include the “building of transportation and telecommunications infrastructure and the dismantling of the political, economic and technical obstacles to the efficient flow of goods, services, people and ideas across the region.”
He expressed hope that the leaders meeting in Vietnam “will give impetus” to the integration process.
Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said ASEAN’s target of establishing an economic community by 2015 is a “stretch goal.”
“Indonesia’s well documented anxieties over the impact of the China-ASEAN FTA expose the limitations of the regional approach to economic integration, namely entering into less well defined regional agreements that allow countries to opt in or out,” Bower said.
“The legally binding approach of the US and Europe does ensure that countries go through a legal and governance process before entering agreements,” he said. “If China doesn’t manage the situation with Indonesia and other concerned ASEAN countries well, it could take on political baggage. The same risk exists for the US.”
Severino, who heads the ASEAN Studies Center at the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said integrating regional economies requires a mindset change across a range of sectors.
“This would entail a change in the outlooks of the governments, the business sector and the public at large — from narrowly national to broadly regional,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS