The 29th Policy Plenary Meeting on“Positions of the United States and Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) in an East AsianCommunity”
October 15, 2008
The 29th Policy Plenary Meeting of the Council on East Asian Community (CEAC)
was held on October 15 at the conference room of the Japan Forum on International
Relations to discuss ʺPositions of the United State and Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC) in an East Asian Community Building.ʺ Dr. JIMBO Ken, Member of CEAC andAssociate Professor of Keio University, Dr. YAMAZAWA Ippei, Member of CEAC andProfessor Emeritus of Hitotsubashi University, made keynote reports respectively, whichwere followed by an active exchange of views among Members of CEAC.
Dr. JIMBO stated, ʺIn the process of building an East Asian Community, the UnitedStates was originally concerned about the rise of China and the delay of democratization ofAsian countries. The US strongly denounced the concept of East Asia Economic Caucus
which was proposed by then‐Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad in 1990
as the one dividing the Pacific. However, after the establishment of ASEAN+3 in 1997 andEast Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005, the US changed its position into a wait‐and‐see attitude
and taken the stance of ʺneither block nor welcomeʺ towards an East Asian Community.
Multilateralism has the two dimensions for the US, multilateralism in a literal sense such as
the United Nations, APEC and Six Party Talks, and multilateralism in which bilateralrelations with various countries are linked altogether. Now, because of the efforts by Japanand Singapore, the US has started to welcome the progress of regional cooperation in East
Asia on the condition that the ʺopennessʺ of East Asia can be guaranteed. The US has
defined itself as a Pacific country and envisaged regional security in which China and India
are included as insiders. The US has also presented its concept of institutionalizing the Six
Party Talks to a Northeast Asian security mechanism.ʺ
Dr. YAMAZAWA stated, ʺThe Unites States has participated in APEC since its

inception in 1989 and been very much interested in the Asian economy. She took aninitiative in the trade and investment liberalization in the Asia Pacific region at the first
APEC Leaders’ Meeting in Seattle in 1993. It developed to the Bogor Declaration in 1994,
Osaka Action Agenda in 1995, and Manila Action Plan in 1996, but only a little has beenachieved through APEC’s Concerted Unilateral Liberalization to the dismay of the UnitedStates. Since the Asian financial crisis, bilateral and plurilateral FTAs have mushroomed
and movements towards an East Asian Community have been accelerated, while theUnited States has expressed concerns about the discrimination against the American firms.
While APEC itself has turned to a realistic approach focusing on facilitation and economicand technical cooperation, the United States has recently resumed her initiative for theAPEC liberalization through her proposal of FTAAP (Asia Pacific FTA) in 2006 and US
Trade Representative Suzan Schwab’s expression of the intention to start the negotiationfor joining P4 (an initiative for making FTA within APEC by four countries, that is, Brunei,
Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore) last September. Although it has caused puzzlement insome parts of East Asia, we should welcome it in order to secure the US interest and its
engagement in Asia because now the WTO/DDA has got stumbled. It will help building anEast Asian Community as well.ʺ
In response to the above reports, 17 member of CEAC joined in an active exchangeof views on the topic.