Summer School 2007 Final Report
GSAPS, Waseda University ,4006R016 Kamemura Hidetoshi
Regional Integration in East Asia ~ Its Road Ahead ~Forward
As Summer School 2007 was held, students from Korea, China and Japan came
together and had an intensive discussion and lecture sessions for three weeks. Fromthat experience, each of us learned new perspectives, different ideas, and each country’s
unique situation and logic. Although it was discussion among students, it can be said
that there were many moments of clash of national interests. Each student is somehow
the representative of each country and when discussing any issue over regional matter
every one of us could not help but thinking of its own national interests. This is like a
projection of real relationship among these three nations. But one thing was different,
we were at least frank and honest in speaking out and we never hesitated to express ourown minds since we are not diplomats yet. Of course there were so many calculations
involved but students gathered in this occasion were all frank, earnest and beyond any
entanglement. That was our merit to have a discussion of this kind and under suchcondition we could talk about any issues freely and frankly. Therefore this Summer
School 2007 sessions were personally very productive and meaningful. I am sure thatevery student broadened his/her mind and realized many unknown ideas andperspectives from each other, and on that ground, this project was really successful andcan be the pilot model for the future successions.
From this meaningful experience, I also learned some new and not so new ideas,
and here in this paper I would like to summarize some of the ideas discussed in theclass and argue the possibility/impossibility of regional integration in this region. Thisis done in the style of feeding back and there are three main issues to point out; Korean
perspective on “Asia(East Asia)”, China and Korea’s image on Japan, and FTA strategy
of Japan.

11. Why do Koreans Think of Only Korea, Japan, and China by “Asia (East Asia)” ?
First, when discussing what “Asia” means in the class, it became surprisingly clear thatto Korean students, “Asia” means Korea, Japan and China only. There is no othercountries involved. On the other hand, to Japanese and Chinese, Asia is much more
broader concept including ASEAN countries, India, and sometimes even Russia.
Naturally, therefore, when talking about East Asian Community, for Koreans, it meant
Japan-Korea-China community. For Japanese, it could be ASEAN + 6 (Japan, Korea,
China, India, Australia, NZ), or for Chinese, it could mean ASEAN + 3 (Japan, Korea,
China) or possibly including Russia too. As is seen already in the real international
arena, there are calculations involved behind this each countries’ conceptualization on“Asia”, or “East Asia”. For Japan and China, as Chinese national status rises with its
economic growth, it is obvious that Japan wants East Asian Community to be more
inclusive to eventually hedge Chinese factors, therefore invites India, Australia, and NZ.
Whereas, China, big enough for itself in terms of its population and/or area, doesn’t
seem to be happy about complicating the community by inviting “irrelevant” countries,
and rather fully confident in limiting its membership to the minimum numbers ofcountries since she is the major actor in this area already.
This similar surmisation is running behind the Korean theorists too. According to
the Korean students, for Korean, East Asia (even Asia) means only Korea, Japan, andChina and they keep having strong motivation for that and common understanding why
it should remain so. One Korean student insisted that those three countries are strongly
connected in terms of its history, culture, and social customs. Although she didn’t gofurther details about what they actually are, I assume that by cultural similarity among
these three countries, Confucianism, Chinese character, use of chopsticks etc. can be thecandidates. However, in general, the customs, religions, social norms, even history –these are arguably varied among Asians and this recognition is widely beholden by
many. Although some argue there is something called “Asian value”, we’d never be surewhat it really is. Rather, we should admit and pride that Asia is such a diversified area
in any sense ― for example its cultures, customs, languages, religions, norms, andeven political systems, and that’s why it is so vibrant and energetic place. This diversity
in Asia is indeed the source of prosperity economically and dynamism culturally.
Without cultural, social homogeneity in this region, people can easily trip to thedifferent world and enjoy the variant life to the full extent while it can also become themoment to realize its own culture and uniqueness of his/her society shoring up
redundant nationalism. Therefore if our fundamental recognition on this region is based2

on its heterogeneity, not homogeneity, then, the task forwarding the regional
integration in the future would become tougher and tougher because integration can be
only achievable under the common goal or aim with somehow shared history and social
backgrounds. This is clear from the experience of Europe. Europe is widely considered
the great union under its Christendom and Christian history. Christian custom andculture have been more or less ingrained in each society and becoming a loose binding
force. Further, as Schuman Declaration in 1950 clearly stated, the major aim forcreating European Union was to prevent another devastating World War in Europe. i If
this same principle is to be applicable to the East Asia, under what aim should East
Asian Community be created? To prevent another atrocious war once taken place in thisregion? Or to compete with two world major powers – namely U.S. and EU? From theeconomic point of view, the answer is yes. We surely don’t want another financial crisisin this region. But other than that, do the countries in this region have strong enoughmotivation for creating the regional integration giving up some portion of its
sovereignty? From the sessions I participated in, it seemed unlikely and countries lookhesitant. Each student either from China or Korea did not also seem willing to give up
his/her sovereignty just for the sake of regional integration. Rather, China seemed tosome extent reluctant for the regionalism talk as Chinese scholars criticized the firstdraft of East Asian Community Charter drafted by Japanese scholars as “too early to
discuss”. Koreans as well, to them, the talk of East Asian Community is to be done
only within the context of how to maximize his own political clout in this region having
been suffocated between two major powers – Japan and China. In contrast, Japanhimself is also no exception from political calculation. Although the idea East Asian
Community itself is proposed by the former PM Koizumi, if Japan limits its core
members to Japan, Korea, China only, it would be easily foreseeable that the future
super power and Japan’s realistic major “rival” - China would take its driving initiativein this region and Japan’s political influence would be significantly diminished.
Therefore in order not to let it happen, Japan is insisting to include India, Australia and
NZ in addition to ASEAN countries. However, there is resounding question remains;what is the aim of creating East Asian Community then? If each country fears with eachother and suspicious about them, what is the point of creating such a superficial
From the packet provided by Prof. Takeo Suami in the class. Schuman Declaration
states the aim of creating community is to safeguard world peace and in order to achieveit, especially in Europe, Germany and France have to come together first. “World peacecannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to thedangers which threaten it.” “The coming together with of the nations of Europe requires
the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany. Any action taken mustin the first place concern these two countries.”i3

community?

For Japan, it should not be the means to shackle the rising China out of

the fear of economic as well as political and military regional super power, which China
seems to be becoming straight ahead. Surely, due to China’s precarious military status
and its opaqueness embedded in the one party dominant political system, there exist
fears among neighboring countries, not only Japan, about its intention and capability.
As a consequence, some policy makers in Japan understandably might try to utilize
East Asian Community as a way to bottle-cap China’s possible military might. This ismainly because of its still vivid memory of 1989 Tiananmen incident and its top-downpolitical characteristic in the time of contingencies. As long as China remains one-party
rule, and ambiguous about her security strategy, this booming worrisome byneighboring countries would not go away anytime soon. Same thing can be said toJapan too, and to which I am going to turn in the next paragraph.

2. China and Korea’s Skepticism Toward Japan : Why Is It So Persistent?
Japan invaded Asia. Japan colonized Korea and killed many innocent Chinese people
during the war. This is unescapable fact. Japanese people, most of them, haveabsolutely no intention to deny this fact. This is so needless to adduce even any public
survey to demonstrate. However, the skepticism toward Japan or Japanese
re-militarism has been so persistent and even became a major source of the teetering
relationships among these three countries. Some call it “historical issue”. Others sayjust “history card” in terms of its savvy diplomatic context.

Whatever its realcharacteristic of the problem may be, the question then is, why does this historical issue
remain so strong that it can even hamper the future relationship between Japan and
Korea, China? Why does bad image on Japanese held by Korean and Chinese remain so
persistent and keep impeding the real friendship among them? From the discussion wehad, there seems to have three points to be factored in; the domestic situation in Korea
and China, Japan’s attitude, the lack of supra-national opportunities for the mutual
understanding.
First, domestic situation in Korea and China. According to Asia Barometer, asurvey done annually by professor Inoguchi, Sonoda and others, Chinese and Korean
perceptions on Japan are both over 3.5 in 2006 survey, indicating their public opinion
toward Japan’s influence is somewhere between “neither good nor bad” to “rather bad”.
In contrast, Japanese perceptions toward China and Korea are both around 3, whichsignifies that among Japanese there seems no specific good or bad image against these4

two countries. This suggests that Chinese and Korean people have relatively bad image
on Japanese than Japanese have on them. Why is it so? One thing that can be thoughtof is that in Korean case, there is political or national culture that considers everything
related to Japan as vicious residues of the time of colonization which was, considered bymany, the time of the national shame. Therefore, Korean politicians, if they want to win
the election, have to take stance of anti-Japanese posture in terms of his/her foreign
policy. Even national media, out of the fear of being labeled as an expatriate, tend to beharsh on Japanese matters. Moreover, it was not so long ago when the official banningof Japanese pop culture to Korea was finally lifted off. In other words, Japanese cultural
influence was for a long time considered something to be kept from and therefore should
be banned as a national policy. These are the potential Korean domestic factors to keep
fostering the bad image on Japan even after 60 years since the war ended. However,there can also remain the never-be-forgotten fact that these political cultures and bad
public sentiments toward Japan have been solidly based on Japan’s atrocities during
the war.
As for China’s domestic circumstance, in terms of its bad perception toward Japan,
it can have arguably many factors to be thought of. Some claim China’s too muchnationalistic education is the major source of the public not-so-good image against
Japan. Others point out that even after nearly 60 years have passed the war memory is
still so vivid that they can not forgive Japanese yet. Then what is the real cause for sucha bad and persistent perception toward Japan by Chinese? Although this could be thestill remaining mystery, most likely, nationalistic tendency and Japanese atrocious war
memory seem to be intertwined and interplaying, thus constantly creating hostile
image against Japan. To stop this bad trend, Chinese government may need to makeefforts to show not only war time Japan but also afterward peaceful Japan to his public.
Despite its technological advancement, under the state-controlled media, it is true that
there still remains a question about how much Chinese people can receive informationfrom the independent news source and know the variety of views, not just the
propaganda of Chinese Communist Party. Actually the fact that there are still some
Chinese people who believe Japan hasn’t apologized yet sheds the doubt about thesituation of how information is distributed in China. Moreover, freedom in academia
seems still under the control. When discussing supra-national history, in order to dig
and find the historical truth, and ultimately to share the results, freedom in academia is
indispensable and needs to be secured as soon and much as possible. Otherwise there
would be no consensus on historical issue between two countries.
Japan, needless to say, himself can be also the possible cause for such a bad

5reputation among neighboring countries. During the intensive courses, Korean students,
in particular, repeatedly showed emotional suspicion toward Japan even 6 decades
passed after the war. To them the recent law which mentions about around Japan
contingencies and some ministers’ unnecessary remarks look very much evidence thatJapan is still dangerous and therefore should remain the target to keep watchingcarefully. When they showed the strong skepticism to Japan, I often explained 60 yearsof peaceful Japan’s path and existence of article 9 in constitution and thus Japan atpresent is different from what it used to be 60 years ago.

Further, Japan keeps

spending only 1% of total GDP on military budget to mainly comply with its
self-defense-only policy. In my impression, those who expressed disgust against Japanand its militarism seemed not so aware of these facts. However, Japan can also makefurther efforts in order not to create misleading message to the neighboring countries
especially in the realm of ministers’ precautions about utterance and PR strategy of its
peaceful intention.
To promote the understanding of Japan’s benign intention and win the trust among
Korean and Chinese people, it is indispensable to create more opportunities to talk witheach other and in so doing contributing to the deeper mutual understanding. The
program like this Summer School is one idea and many others like this should be
implemented and conducted either by official initiative or private project. This also has
to be done through more than two countries’ cooperations, it can not be done only by one
country. Therefore, in the phase of planning such activities, two countries or three
countries’ understanding and cooperation have to be realized. To create that cooperative
atmosphere in East Asian region, first we need to share the common goal – to promotemutual understanding. The idea of creating East Asian Community might be in too
early stage, however, under such ultimate context and vision, it is no harm to promoteand further the reciprocal understanding and retrieve mutual trust among Japan,
Korea, and China. Therefore we should first aim at scaling up the mutual
understanding by creating more opportunities for supra-national communications andevents.

3. FTA as a Driving Force for the Regional Integration.

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As Urata points out, there are tremendous benefits for Japan to create East Asia FTA. ii
By East Asia FTA, it usually means Japan-Korea-China trilateral FTA. However, ofcourse there are also some concerns hampering smooth negotiation. For example, forJapan, some agricultural sectors such as rice, sugar, butter, konnyaku potato areespecially under the heavy protectionism and set still high tariffs. If Japan lowered
those tariffs and open up those agricultural markets to the international competition,
Chinese cheap counterparts would eat up Japanese market and Japan’s agriculture as
an industry might eventually die out. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries, this kind of situation is the worst scenario and therefore must be
prevented at any cost, considering his food security, environmental preservation, andstable employment opportunities. It is true that Japan is a country so scarce of natural
resources and due to its limitation of land, very weak in producing agricultural products.
In terms of its competency, as a result, there would be no way for Japanese agriculture
to combat with other foreign countries’ cheap products backed by its vast land andbig-company-like style of management. Therefore lifting tariffs on these agricultural
products completely might be, understandably, of great concern for Japan to secure its
steady and safe food supply and self-sufficient system for survival as a nation.
When it comes to the agricultural sector in liberalization talk, Japan is not the only
country who has great problem on that. On WTO arena as well, for example, theaverage tariff-rate for agricultural products for the countries like Norway, Korea,
Switzerland and the EU are comparatively high – 124%, 62%, 51%, and 20%
respectively – compared with Japan’s 12%. (OECD 1999, qtd in. Urata ibid).
Furthermore, unfortunately in case of this trilateral FTA picture, there lies
non-economical factor such as historical issue stagnating its FTA negotiations. As
Chinese economic tenure gains its strength and more steering power to this region, it islikely to exacerbate the rivalry competition with Japan and fierce political or/and
economic friction might occur under the circumstance in which the bid for the leadingrole in terms of political, economic and even military clout in this region is up for grabs
All in all, however, it can be agreed that we surely do not want another financial
crisis in this region and every nation now is realizing the urgent need to protect its
financial system by creating solid and strong region-wide financial fortification. One
challenge for that may be the introduction of common currency. If we missed thisUrata Shujiro, “Japan’s FTA Strategy and Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific”, in Charles
E. Morrison and Eduardo Pedrosa eds., An APEC Trade Agenda? ; The Political
Economy of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, pp.99-126.
ii

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opportunity due to the narrow-minded nationalism of each nation, we would never beable to create a stable financial system resilient and strong enough to compete withthose of EU and U.S. major big powers. Therefore, by first creating regional FTA, weshould gradually but constantly enforce regional economic integration.

Conclusion
In order to achieve the sound, healthy regional integration, we still have many obstacles
to tackle. Nevertheless, as a final vision on this region gradually demarcated in terms of
its financial or/and security stability, this on-going direction toward more integrated
formulation must not be understood as a necessarily wrong way to go. Rather this could
be the only, and most effective way, as a region, to survive for the lasting future.
As a major and unique characteristic of the problem lying across this region,
historical issue may be singled out. This problem seems so persistent and socomplicated, as already mentioned above, that there looks no exit for the complete
settlement. This may be so simply because history is always something inevitablycomplicated and allows many different interpretations by countries or even amongindividuals. Especially when it comes to the war history, it involves many known andunknown factors, therefore it can not, or should not be defined by just single term or
simple view. As Kitaoka, a member of co-study group of Japan-China joint history,
states, imposing one single historical view on others by any means is sheerly“totalitarian”.iii Having kept it in mind, I would like to suggest to put historical issues
aside to the hands of historians, not politicians, once for all, and let politicians work on
what they are supposed to do – building a good relationship with neighbors. As amature ideal relationship between countries, it is imperative to foster the attitude to“agree to disagree”. Between countries, even if there is unsolvable problem hanging
among them, it is important to keep having regular meetings and talks, and thus do not
let just a single issue hamper the whole relation between countries.

Kitaoka Shin’ichi, “Japan-China Joint History Research Committee Finally
Launched”, Forum on Foreign Affairs, May 2007, No. 226. pp.14-20.
iii

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