Chinese Scholar Calls for Speeding up Cooperation in Asia-Pacific

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Chinese Scholar Calls for Speeding up Cooperation in Asia-Pacific

A Chinese scholar has called for speeding up regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, saying it is high time to translate various proposals for regional cooperation into reality.

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A Chinese scholar has called for speeding up regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, saying it is high time to translate various proposals for regional cooperation into reality.

Delivering a keynote speech at the "Regional Outlook Forum" held by Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies on Tuesday, Yang Jiemian, vice president of China's Shanghai Institute for International Study, said that new developments of regionalism in the other parts of the world indicate that if the Asia-Pacific Region did not speed up its regional integration, the region may well be marginalized amid severe global economic competition.

"We must fully understand the fundamental and rapid changes of our time and look ahead to plan a road map for multi-faceted cooperation," he emphasized.

Yang said that there is an absence of region-wide institutions in the Asia-Pacific region while in other regions there are the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, a free trade area in Americas planned to set up in 2005 and an All-Africa Single Market scheduled to emerge in the same year.

In terms of political and security cooperation, there does not exist any regional framework comparable to the NATO or the EU, he said, adding the pace of political and security regional cooperation seems much slower than the economic one.

"Lack of a regional architecture, Asia finds it very difficult to coordinate high political matters especially the security one," Yang told the audience of about 500 people.

On how to push forward regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, Yang stressed the needs to have strategic vision, to bring about leadership & partnership, to move beyond geostrategic consideration and to work for expansion of intra-regional and inter-regional cooperation on both governmental and non-governmental levels.

Yang said China does not want to become a superpower but hopes to be part of the regional community and China believes this is in its interest.

China will become stronger and remain reasonable and countries in the region can benefit from it, he said.

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