“Over a decade has passed since
the first batch of the East Asia Vision Group reported its recommendations to
the leaders of the ASEAN+3 in 2001. We expect to review where the cooperation
of these 10+3 countries is now heading for the future,” Indonesia’s eminent
representative Jusuf Wanandi told Bali Daily prior to commencing the fourth
meeting of the East Asia Vision Group II in Badung on Thursday.
“We will report our meeting’s
latest recommendations to the 7th East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh this
November,” said Jusuf.
Among the Group’s most successful
implementations of the recommendations in 2001, was the financial mechanism to
prevent the reoccurrence of a monetary crisis like the one of 1997 by managing
regional short-term liquidity problems and facilitating the work of other
international financial arrangements and organizations like the International
Monetary Fund. The mechanism is known as the Chiang Mai Initiative and takes
the form of a multilateral currency swap arrangement among the 10 ASEAN
countries and three East Asian nations Japan, China and South Korea.
Starting off as a series of
bilateral currency swap arrangements, the initiative has developed
multilaterally into being worth around US$240 billion in total.
“It’s been regarded as our most
successful implementation, which we expect to further improve both in terms of
value and management,” said Jusuf, citing the urgency of not only looking at
further cooperation in finance, trade and politics, but also aspects of
society, culture, education, health, energy security, food security and
environment.
Thailand’s eminent representative
Suthad Setboonsarng further suggested: “Previously in 2001, we were just out of
the 1997 financial crisis, so our vision was a financial mechanism and so
forth. But looking forward, we have to look at the financial crisis in Europe,
and the US financial recovery as well.”
He highlighted the fact that the
whole Asia region was becoming a world leader in terms of economic size, and
thus the region’s role and responsibility had to be redefined.
“Eleven years ago, nobody foresaw
that China could be this big. Eleven years ago, nobody foresaw that this group
of 13 countries could be world leaders in economy. Now, we are in a very
different situation. Because we are big, what is our role and responsibility
for the world’s future?” Suthad said.
“So we are trying to find peace
in this process. Because if we allow every country to move at ease, the chance
is there will be a lot of economic conflicts, which then turns into political
conflicts. The question is how to come up with a kind of mechanism to work
together peacefully, not only among ourselves internally, but among the 13
countries and the rest of the world,” said Suthad.
He also pointed out that the East
Asia Community would always be a very open region, as opposed to the European
Union, which was very inward-looking, with almost 70 percent of trade among its
member countries.
China’s supporting expert, Wang
Yuzhu, agreed with the idea of building a harmonious regional environment for
all countries to grow.
“China believes that we should
build close relations with our immediate neighbors, including the ASEAN
countries, then evolve and expand. We may agree with being a power in East
Asia, but we don’t think we are already a power in the world, even in the
Asia-Pacific region.”
“Asian countries and European countries
are totally different. While EU members have many similarities in terms of
development, culture, history and so on, we Asians are very diverse, but yet we
are linked with the same target; we are chasing high standards and high-speed
prosperity. That means we should work together to build our regional market, to
make a better environment for international investment and regional
communication.”
“We understand the fear among
small countries of being dominated by a rising China. Our economic development
should be inclusive to ASEAN countries, which means we will change our
consumption and development model, so that we can import more things from other
countries and export our investment to other countries. That process has
already begun,” Wang said reassuringly.
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