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June 22, 2005

How East Asians Can Coexist and Prosper (2)By KINOSHITA ToshihikoCommunity Spirit
What are the aims of the East Asia Community? And what sort of relationship will it have withcountries outside the region? Official talks within the region are yet to be held regarding matterssuch as these, leaving each country with its own individual image of how things will take shape.
Although the countries involved agree on the need for a functional approach, all other areas
remain as yet undecided. There have been a number of research findings and opinions put
forward by opinion leaders in the region and various national think tanks, but there can be little
doubt that the success of this project will come down to how well Japan and China get alongwith one another.
What do the ASEAN member countries think of the air of economic cohesion tainted by politicaltension that marks the relationship between Japan and China, the two giants of East Asia?
According to K. Kesavapany, director of the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies (ISEAS),“Rivalry, if not excessive, over ASEAN initiatives between Japan and China is not necessarily abad thing for ASEAN. The ASEAN member countries will not forget Japan’s major contribution
to the development of the ASEAN economy so far and its powerful support at the time of thecurrency crisis. We expect great things from Japan in the future too. However, Japan’s response
to issues such as the opening up of agricultural and service markets has been too slow, to thepoint of being unreasonable. It was only after China began to reach out to ASEAN countries thatJapan started to address ASEAN issues seriously and as a matter or urgency.” In addition tohoping for direct investment from Japanese companies to be directed towards them rather thanbeing poured mostly into China, the ASEAN member countries may be observing some degreeof improvement in the political relationship between Japan and China after the meeting ofJapan’s Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and China’s President Hu Jintao during theAsia-African Summit in late April.
What does the United States think about this project? There has been little fierce opposition
from the United States government such as that shown in response to the EAEC project in theearly 1990s. This is due to the fact that the European Union and NAFTA already exist (with theUnited States also aiming to develop NAFTA into the FTAA, a free trade agreement covering theentire American continent) and the fact that the US government hopes to rely on the cooperationof East Asian countries to handle trouble in Iraq and combat terrorism. Nevertheless, not a small
number of American officials and people do not hide their concerns over possibilities such as the1East Asia Community being developed at China’s pace in the future and the interests of theUnited States or its companies suffering as a result of the emergence of the community. TheUnited States itself already has a free trade agreement with Singapore and is in the process of
forming similar agreements with Thailand and Malaysia.
Protecting Humanity
The road that Japan ought to follow is surely clear. Japan needs to dedicate itself to the creationof a rational East Asian Community that is open to the rest of the world, whilst at the same time
maintaining its trusting relationship with the United States. Based on the understanding that theprocess of developing regional cooperation is irreversible and the realization that East Asia is
made up of countries with different cultures, political systems, religions, and languages and atdiffering stages of development, it is clear that it will be a progressive process and that it will
also be necessary to take less-developed smaller regions into special consideration. It will be
Japan's role to ensure that this is made known in other areas, the United States in particular,
which is something that China is unable to do at the current time.
The image I have of the East Asia Community is as follows. Even if it proves impossible tocreate a vision for the community around the core concepts of democracy and liberalism, assome Asians wish to realize, due to the existence of the socialist member countries such as
China, Vietnam, and Laos, the aim should be to create a healthy civil society that ensures thatthe universal principal of protecting humanity. This, combined with the development of asystematic framework to strengthen cooperation in areas such as economic integration, currency,environment, energy, and food supplies (or, as I name it, “regional public goods”) and anemphasis on the leading role played by ASEAN, will cut down on elements of instability in theregion and enable us to coexist in peace.
(This is the text of an article by Mr. KINOSHITA Toshihiko, Professor of Waseda
University and Member of the Council on East Asian Community, which originallyappeared in the June 2005 issue of “The Japan Journal.”)2