February 17, 2015

Assessing the APT Summits 2014 from thePerspective of Community Building in East Asia
By KIKUCHI Yona
A series of ASEAN related summit meeting was held in Naypyidaw in Myanmar last November.
While ASEAN related summit meetings have come to be covered by the Japanese media on a regularbasis every year, most of the coverage tends to be negative and fragmentary, focusing only onpolitical antagonism between Japan and China. And details and outcomes of the meetings havebarely been reported. However, since its inception, this series of summit meeting including theASEAN+3 (APT) summit meeting in particular have been convened based on the agreement among
heads of states of the countries concerned that the meetings be held as "the main vehicle" with aview to achieving a long-term goal of establishing an East Asia community. If not evaluated fromthis viewpoint, the significance of the meetings would be overlooked. Therefore, in my capacity as
Executive Secretary of CEAC, who has been keeping up on the moves of the APT summit meetings,I would like to make an assessment on the outcomes and the issues of this year's APT summit
meeting and to make some comments on how the meeting should be in the future.

Firstly, as for the major outcome of the meetings, as a follow-up to the Report of the East Asia
Vision Group II (EAVGII) submitted in 2012, each head of state, based upon the recommendations
contained in the Report, made reference to areas of cooperation to be pursued and its desirable
direction. From Japan, responding to the recommendation in the Report, Prime Minister ABE
proposed to contribute especially to cooperation in the area of higher education and betterment ofpublic health service. EAVGII Report has not so much exerted impact on general public as EAVGIReport, which clearly launched a vision of establishing an East Asian community, but instead
devised recommendations with regard to further enhance cooperation in such concrete areas as
economy and finance. As exemplified by the above Japan's case, in this series of summit meetings,
each state proposed to make concrete actions for regional cooperation in East Asia and this would bea great achievement for the promotion of regional cooperation in the future.

Secondly, on the other hand, it has been revealed that adequate response has not yet been made to
the formation of regional order of a new kind pursued by China. For example, as for the issue of the1South China Sea where China has conspicuously been gaining influence, even though solution by"rule of law" has been proposed, there is no sign of implementation. Besides, though not in the major
agenda in these summit meetings, a project of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which
China is trying to establish as a new type of banking institution in this area raises grave concern. For,in its establishment, almost half of the capital amount is to be invested by China, and there is aconcern that this institution would directly reflect intentions of China. However, as every member
country of ASEAN has already announced its intention to join in the institution, it is feared that nomember country of ASEAN could no more go against the intentions of China, thereby eventuallycreating negative effect on regional integration. These moves of China in an aim for the formation ofregional order would possibly trample on the principle of pursuing universal values to the effect that
East Asian integration should "support internationally shared values to achieve peace, stability,democracy and prosperity in the region" as dictated in the "Second Joint Statement on East Asia
Cooperation" adopted by the APT summit meeting in 2007.

Thus, as described above, in this series of APT summit meetings, while there is a clear
sign of progress in regional cooperation and integration, China's move toward the formation ofregional order, which are incompatible with universal values to be pursued in the region, has alsocome to the surface. Then, what should be the way Japan should take to respond to the current stateof affairs? One way might be that Japan should again develop a clear vision of regional community
based upon the principle of universal values, just as in 2004 when conflicting ideas began to surface
among countries concerned during the process of establishing East Asia Summit meeting, Japan
prepared "Issue Papers," displaying clearly how an East Asian community should be, which paved
the way for enhancing integration in this region. In so doing, we should reaffirm the basic principles
to be pursued in community building in this region and at the same time enhance cooperation in
specific areas, or so-called functional cooperation and promote integration in tandem with ASEAN,
thereby advancing confidence building and integration in this region.
(This is an English translation of the article written by Mr. KIKUCHI Yona, SeniorResearch Fellow of JFIR, which originally appeared on the e-forum “Hyakka-Somei” of
CEAC on December 12, 2014.)

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