Off Balance

Newsweek International
May 30, 2005

Japan seems to have had better luck when it comes to influencing regional initiatives such as the East Asian Community, a new regional grouping that brings together China, Japan and South Korea with the ASEAN countries. Observers credit Tokyo with successfully counterbalancing growing Chinese influence within the forum by bringing in Australia and New Zealand. The biggest trick of all for Japan, of course, will be balancing its own involvement in the East Asian Community with its deepening commitments to the United States, which has a record of skepticism about earlier attempts at regional integration that were deemed to be too explicitly anti-American. "If integration were to have some sort of anti-U.S. or pro-China direction, the U.S. probably wouldn't be very happy about that, and we'd probably have to rethink our approach," says Fukunari Kimura, an economics professor at Keio University. "But at the same time we really don't want to have bad relations with the Chinese. We have a lot of economic interests in China, after all."

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Facing India's Challenges

Manmohan Singh
The Asian Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2005

If a commitment to remain an open sciety is one of the pillars of India's nationhood, the other is our commitment to remain an open economy - one that guarentees freedom of enterprise, respects individual creativity, and mobilizes public investment for social infrastructure. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to suggest that these are the principles to which all countries will increasingly want to adhere.

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Asia Joins Hands for New Century

Yu Sui
China Daily
May 19, 2005

Today's Asian countries have the historic mission of joint development. Time is galloping on and the world is full of complexities, providing both good opportunities and severe challenges.

Asia is rich in natural and human resources. Accounting for one-third of the world's territory and half of the world's population, it is endowed with a long, rich heritage and splendid cultures. In the arena of world peace and development, Asia has a unique position.

Asia differs from country to country, but that is not an automatic minus. A five-point principle of peaceful co-existence, which has had a far-reaching impact, was born in this continent of multiple forms of social and political systems.

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Asia Needs to Create More of its own Growth

Guy de Jonquieres
The Financial Times
May 17, 2005

Eight years on, Asia's financial crisis seems a distant memory. Despite higher oil prices, growth has rebounded in many countries, private investment is gradually recovering, consumer confidence is strengthening and rising current account surpluses are swelling foreign exchange reserves.

However, the party could quickly end. The reason is that so much of east Asia's recovery, like its pre-crisis growth, has been export-led. Its main motor is exports to China, whose own growth depends significantly on markets in the US and Europe. That leaves the region uncomfortably exposed to external shocks.

The biggest threat is not from a re-pegging of the renminbi and other Asian currencies against the US dollar: most economies could absorb the competitive impact of any likely revaluation. The greater risks are, first, that simmering protectionist pressures will boil over in the US and Europe; and second, that east Asia will exhaust its capacity to fund the twin US deficits by acquiring US assets, so triggering a dollar collapse, soaring US interest rates and recession.

Asia needs to guard against those dangers. The best way to do so is to generate more of its own growth by stimulating domestic demand. That would be sensible in any case. It would strengthen both Asian and western economies and help reduce global imbalances. And the means to achieve it are at hand.

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Be a Role Model of Diversity and Depth

China Daily
May 17, 2005

An Asian identity that is confident and creative is beginning to develop. All nations have an interest in seeing greater political and economic integration on the continent, in seeing barriers to trade fall, and in seeing co-operation on critical issues like development and poverty alleviation. Such a mindset has helped brew many intra-regional and inter-regional organizations aimed at promoting co-operation on all fronts. It is hoped that this interdependence will be a powerful drive that can steer the continent towards success.

Only when Asians realize how fundamentally they rely on each other, and how much they need to continue to rely on each other in the global economy, can they come together in earnest to create a new, uniquely Asian identity.

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Warmly Welcome India into EAS

Ramkishen S. Rajan & Sunil Rangola
The Business Times
MAy 11, 2005

ASEAN has outlined three criteria as necessary conditions for attaining membership of the newly created East Asian Summit (EAS). First, the candidate country must have substantive relations with Asean. Second, it must be a full dialogue partner with Asean. Third, it must be a signatory to Asean's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). In addition to the three North Asian countries - China, Japan and South Korea (which together with Asean constitute the Asean Plus Three or APT framework) - India too has been invited to the inaugural EAS that will be held in Kuala Lumpur in December. While New Zealand is expected to be
invited as well once it signs the TAC (which it is willing to do), the inclusion of Australia in the EAS has hit a roadblock because of the reluctance of the John Howard government to make Australia a signatory to the TAC.

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Asia's Growing Role in Global Economy

David Burton
The Japan Times
May 14, 2005

The rapid growth of emerging market economies in Asia has been a notable feature of the global economy in recent years. This growth has been led most visibly by China and, increasingly, India, but several other Asian countries play an important and vibrant role as well. The strong performance of these economies, combined with the continued dynamism of the United States, has helped sustain worldwide expansion, offsetting continued sluggishness in Europe and Japan, where growth has remained sporadic despite progress in bank and corporate sector restructuring.

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One Asian Currency?

Michael Vatikiotis
The International Herald Tribune
May 13, 2005

Asian finance ministers took another step toward creating an Asian monetary fund on the fringes of this year's annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Istanbul in the first week of May.

Appropriately, they were meeting on the edge of Europe, for it is a kind of European-style financial union that proponents of closer cooperation in Asia are striving for

the move toward common financial arrangements is a confidence-building mechanism among Asia's rising powers. Although President Hu Jintao of China and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan could barely conceal their discomfort when they met in Jakarta at the end of April, it was all smiles and warm handshakes when Hu met with Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank in Manila a few days later.

The reason is that both China and Japan support the development of common financial and trading mechanisms, and Kuroda, formerly an influential official in Tokyo, is leading the charge from his new perch at the ADB.

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Is the IMF an Endangered Species in Asia?:

William Pesek Jr.
Bloomberg News
May 9, 2005

It's baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

The reference here is to the so-called ``Asian Monetary Fund.'' Such an animal was mulled during Asia's 1997-98 crisis and quickly died amid strong U.S. resistance to Asia creating a counterpoint to the International Monetary Fund.

Last week's meeting of the Asian Development Bank marked its resurrection. At least that was the scuttlebutt in the hallways and watering holes of Istanbul, where the ADB's annual confab was held this year.

Its creation could have major consequences for the global elites and the so-called ``Washington Consensus'' on how developing nations should go about raising living standards for their swelling and often poor populations.

The idea came up in September 1997, amid worsening crises in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. The IMF was holding its annual meeting in Hong Kong and Asia pushed the idea of an Asia- only bailout fund to provide assistance to economies with fewer strings attached than the IMF required. At the time, the IMF was demanding high interest rates and fiscal tightening, policies that worsened the crisis

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Courting India

The Asian Wall Street Journal
May 2, 2005

India has no shortage of international suitors these days, as visits by Chinese and Pakistani leaders highlighted over the past week. Amid all high level attention, perhaps the most consequential visitor will turn out to be Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who came courting at the end of last week.

It is not just India and Japan that stand to gain from stronger ties. An alliance between the two demicarcies could make a valuable contribution to stability in Asia.

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The New East Asia: The Shape of Things to Come

Kavi Chongkittavorn
The Nation, Thailand
May 2, 2005

ASEAN leaders agreed recently that the first East Asian Summit (EAS) will have a new beginning as a separate non-exclusive process from ASEAN plus three, which has been the preferred cooperative mechanism.

India has been invited to join the new forum as a founding member. As such, East Asia has incorporated the world’s largest democracy, which will inject much dynamism into the region. For the first time, all key Asian countries will be gathered under one roof.

In the past, India was shut out from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Asia Europe Meeting. With the EAS, India has been given the new identity of being part of East Asia.

Click here to read further: http://nationmultimedia.com/2005/05/02/opinion/index.php?news=opinion_17225284.html

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Another Call to the Big League


Shabori Ganguly
Daily Pioneer, India
May 2, 2005

With both China and Japan looking at a US$20 to 30 billion bilateral trade with India in the next five years, the strategic goal of making this contiguous region in Asia the economic powerhouse of the world is not without its fair share of merit. Incidentally, Mr Koizumi came to India after a quarter of a century and was visibly impressed by the development since. Even members of his delegation, many of whom were visiting New Delhi after a gap of four or five years, were fascinated by the change, including the swanky pollution-free cars on the Capital's roads.

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