The leaders of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) meet in a trilateral summit in Fukuoka on Friday, December 13. The China-Japan-ROK trilateral summit is held in grim situation when the global financial crisis now appears to be spreading and penetrating East Asia. The leaders will exchange views and deliberate on policies to deal with the crisis.
This three-way summit is expected to further enhance trilateral cooperation among the three nations and play an increasingly vital, important role in promoting peace, stability and development in the Northeast Asia and East Asia regions.
During the 11th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held in Kuala Lumpur in 1997, the ASEAN members invited the leaders of China, Japan and ROK to attend the summit as observers, and set up the 10+3 framework (ASEAN + China + Japan + ROK) for East Asia, which became the main channel for regional cooperation after a decade of development.
Under the 10+3 framework, the Meeting of Leaders of China, Japan and ROK was launched in 1999, and it has played an active role in hastening to promote regional cooperation. With the “10+3” as the main channel, regional cooperation in East Asia has achieved positive progress with a decade of steady efforts, and conditions for its strategic upgrading been preliminarily provided to enrich its connotation for an all-round development.
On the part of China, after it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 2001, China soon began negotiations with the 10-member county ASEAN to set up a free trade area (FTA). The “early harvest” plan under the FTA commenced in January 2004 and, owing to follow-up growing bilateral ties, the plan had given a vital, main impetus for regional cooperation. The regional cooperation mode for peace, cooperation and cooperation, advocated by both sides and accepted extensively in and outside the region, has set a good, shining example for regional cooperation.
Moreover, China also worked actively on a project to spur sub-regional cooperation in the Greater Mekong Valley and development for the GMS North-South economic Corridor, opened the trans-Beibu Gulf economic zone and established the sub-regional development strategy.
Meanwhile, China has since 2001 sponsored nine consecutive Boao forums in south China's tropical Hainan province, which has become the premier platform for equal discussions and dialogues with a sole purpose of spurring regional cooperation in Asia. To date, China's strategy for regional cooperation has been extending to Australia & New Zealand and further to the central-south region of South America.
On the part of Japan, after signing of the EPA/FTA with Singapore and Mexico in 2002, it soon started with the strategy of rapidly engaging ASEAN and establishing a de facto East Asia common market in 2006, five years earlier than expected. In early 2008, Japan reached EPA bilateral agreements with the ASEAN and its nucleus countries as scheduled, inked a total of eight bilateral trade deals and established a free trade zone. And its strategic map began radiating to Australia & New Zealand, Central Asia and the Middle East, and it then launched ETA negotiations with the central-south region of South America and Switzerland.
As for ROK, after its EPA talks with Japan ran aground in November 2004, it focused its FTA strategy beyond the East Asia region, and launched talks with the United States, Canada, the European Union (EU), Mexico and India, which failed to make much progress. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama claimed during his presidential race to veto the free trade agreement with ROK, and the government of Lee Myung-bak was caught in a dilemma with its regional cooperation strategy.
In ROK today, its trade deficit has multiplied and foreign capital in the country fled, and stock market and foreign exchange markets declined due to the impact of the ongoing global financial crisis. All this is attributed to drawbacks in the wake of losing its geopolitics as the prop-up. So, it is high time now for ROK to re-enter or return to the East Asia region for strategic cooperation and to manage to stabilize its economic hinterland.
When global financial crisis is deepening and the world economy is about to be dragged into recession at present, China, Japan and ROK, as leading economic powers of the East Asia region, should step up their regional strategic dialogue and policy coordination to promote trade, investment and monetary & financial cooperation, and particularly viable and effective cooperation in environment protection, energy and natural disaster reduction and in the exchange and integration of human, financial and material resources, as well as knowledge, information and technology. Such cooperation and exchange will not only help patch up structural defects in regional cooperation but contribute in resolving intrinsic internal contradictions in East Asia and safeguard the shared space for development.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Liu Junhong, a research fellow at the Center of Japan Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations
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