EAST ASIA INSIGHTSTOWARD COMMUNITY BUILDING
Japan Center for International Exchange

No. 1 | January 2006

The ASEAN+3 and East Asia Summit:
A Two-Tiered Approach to Community Building
Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior Fellow, JCIEOn December 14, 2005, two days after the annual ASEAN+3 Summit, the ten ASEAN countries, Australia, China,India, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand convened for thehistoric ﬁrst East Asia Summit. This issue of East Asia Insights traces the background of the two summits and analyzes the future path for East Asia community building.

The Path to an East Asia Summit
The idea for an East Asia Summit has grown out ofASEAN+3 cooperation. The ASEAN+3 Summit waslaunched in 1997 as an informal meeting among leaders in ASEAN, China, Japan, and Korea, and it has since
become an annual meeting held in tandem with theASEAN Summit. Various regional cooperative initiatives have emerged from the ASEAN+3 framework, andits members have produced several documents that arekey to regional community building. The most important of these is the 2001 report of the East Asian Vision
Group, titled “Towards an East Asian Community: Region of Peace, Prosperity and Progress,” which recommended the establishment of an East Asia Summit.
After this report was released, some ASEAN leaders suggested that community building could advance
best through the ASEAN+3 framework, and thus theASEAN+3 Summit could simply be converted into anEast Asia Summit. Under this proposal, the thirteen
ASEAN+3 members would chair the summit on a rotating basis. Other ASEAN leaders, however, contended that an expanded forum would dilute the voices ofASEAN nations, which are much weaker entities thantheir Northeast Asian partners. ASEAN members subsequently decided to continue the ASEAN+3 Summit
and to hold a separate East Asia Summit.
Japan’s Stance on the East Asia Summit
In its discussions with ASEAN, Japan stressed the importance of developing a clear concept of an East AsiaSummit and proposed a two-tiered approach that draws
on the strengths of both ASEAN+3 and important regional partners. As ASEAN+3 is a critical element ofEast Asia community building, Japanese ofﬁcials believethat its integrity must not be compromised solely forthe sake of a wider membership. Instead, they argued
that ASEAN+3 should be at the core of East Asia community building, with an expanded regional forum likethe East Asia Summit—featuring participation by countries like Australia, New Zealand, and India—forming
an inclusive and complementary element of regional
integration.
It is clear that East Asian countries today do notpossess the conditions necessary for creating a regional
community similar to the European Union. The key
question facing East Asia, therefore, is not how to deﬁne
the community’s membership but how to create a ﬁtting venue that promotes functional cooperation in theregion. Ideally, this venue would advance political andeconomic maturity in East Asian countries, while focusing on strengthening regional integrity as a part of thecommunity-building process.
The Japanese government considers it logical to foster closer links not just among ASEAN+3 nations but
also with other countries in the region that can play apositive role in promoting functional cooperation. In
addition, Japan’s belief in universal values such as human rights and representative democracy means that it
has a strong interest in building closer links with othercountries in the region that share those same beliefs.

Nature of Community Building
Taking Japan’s input into account, ASEAN establishedthree criteria for participation in the East Asia Summit.
First, participant countries must sign the ASEAN Treatyof Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Second, they must bea formal dialogue partner of ASEAN. Third, they must

have substantive cooperative relations with ASEAN. Australia, India, and New Zealand, having fulﬁlled these criteria, joined the summit as full participants.
There is always the danger that building an exclusivecommunity that shuts out important partners could create a “fortress Asia.” Japan and other countries like Indonesia and Singapore believe that a more open regionalism that promotes functional cooperation is in East
Asia’s best interest. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi articulated the need for an open and transparent approach to regional cooperation during a speechin Singapore in January 2002. Meanwhile, conscious ofASEAN nations’ colonial history and their justiﬁed concern about regional hegemony, Japanese ofﬁcials haveadvocated that ASEAN countries should have ownershipof the East Asia Summit and serve as its host.
These key elements were echoed in the declarations
issued after the two summits. The ASEAN+3 Summit
Declaration states that “the ASEAN Plus Three process
will continue to be the main vehicle in [realizing an East
Asian community] with ASEAN as the driving force
and with the active participation of the ASEAN Plus
Three countries in order to promote a sense of sharedownership.” The Kuala Lumpur Declaration from theEast Asia Summit afﬁrms that this new forum “… could
play a signiﬁcant role in [regional] community building …” It also states that “… the East Asia Summit will
be an open, inclusive, transparent and outward-looking
forum in which we strive to strengthen global norms
and universally recognized values with ASEAN as thedriving force working in partnership with the otherparticipants of the East Asia Summit.”

The Way Forward
Although there was no clear language in the Kuala
Lumpur Declaration indicating as much, the East Asia
Summit will be held annually, with the second meetingscheduled to take place in 2006 in the Philippines. As
East Asia looks ahead, it needs to think collectively about
the kind of functional cooperation that can help build astronger and more inclusive regional community. Within this context, ASEAN+3 nations declared in Decemberthat they should prepare another joint statement on East
Asian cooperation in 2007, the tenth anniversary of theASEAN+3 process. Hopefully this declaration will serve
as a roadmap for regional community building.

At this juncture, only limited functional cooperation
exists in the region. The 2007 joint declaration thus willneed to outline precise methods for strengthening cooperation. For example, the declaration could expand
existing and anticipated bilateral free trade agreements
into a multilateral context. It may be an opportunity
to lay out methods for further economic cooperation
on intraregional investment, ﬁnancial and economic
cooperation, energy and the environment, and crossborder movement of labor. The declaration might address the enormous economic disparities and varying
governance standards between the various countries ofEast Asia. It could initiate regional security cooperation
through joint projects that address piracy, terrorism,
and nuclear proliferation. Moreover, it might addresshuman security threats such as communicable diseases
and natural disasters.
The two-tiered approach to community building—with the ASEAN+3 Summit at the core and theEast Asia Summit playing a supportive role—appears
to have been accepted in principle by the participantsin the two summit meetings. Yet, emerging issues concerning the East Asia Summit’s membership may complicate future community-building efforts.
For example, the Russian Federation, which attended the opening of the December summit, has been
seeking admission to the forum as a full participant.
Currently, Russia meets two of the three criteria forparticipation: it has signed the TAC, and it is a formal
dialogue partner of ASEAN. The admission of Russia asa full member, however, could shift the summit’s focus
away from that of a regional forum to an international
one. Russia’s admission may suggest that other partners
that have a much more substantive relationship with
East Asia, such as the United States, should be invited
as full participants as well. This issue needs careful examination by all the nations concerned, as it has thepotential to change not only the nature of the summit
but also the future orientation of the East Asia community-building process.

Hitoshi Tanaka was Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairsof Japan until August 2005. He is currently a Senior Fellow at JCIE.

East Asia Insights
East Asia Insights is an occasional newsletter focusing on East Asia community building
from the Japanese perspective.
Published by: Tadashi Yamamoto, President, JCIE
Please direct any comments or questions to eainsights@jcie.or.jp.
Japan Center for International Exchange
www.jcie.or.jp

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No. 1 | January 2006© 2006 Japan Center for International Exchange2