1. Background
and Outline
The ASEAN+3 Summit (APT) was held on January
14th and the East Asia Summit (EAS) on the following day, January
15th, at Cebu Island, the Philippines. The ASEAN Summit was held
prior to these two summits on January 13th, while the ASEAN-Japan
Summit and the Summit Meeting of the People’s Republic of China,
Japan and the Republic of Korea were also held on 14th. Although
these meetings were originally scheduled to be held in December
of last year, the government of the Philippines suddenly announced
their postponement, due to a typhoon, just before convening the
summits and then rescheduled them for January.
APT, consisting of ASEAN countries, Japan, China
and Korea, had the first summit meeting in December, 1997, in
the midst of the Asian currency crisis. Since then, the APT meeting
has been held annually and has produced concrete progress towards
regional cooperation, such as the Chiang Mai Initiative. On the
other hand, EAS, which consists of 16 countries (India, Australia,
and New Zealand, in addition to the 13 countries of APT), was
held for the first time in December, 2005, followed by the second
meeting this time.
Given the situation that the two frameworks
of APT and EAS coexist, how regional cooperation will be developed
in Asia has been the center of attention. Because of the sudden
postponement of the summit meetings by the government of the Philippines,
concern spread about whether the momentum of regional cooperation
would be lost. However, all the leaders gathered in Cebu with
the exception of the absence of the Indonesian President from
EAS, and concrete outcomes, such as the adoption of the “Cebu Declaration
on East Asian Energy Security,” have been produced. Therefore,
the summits in Cebu can be positively evaluated. In any event,
it is indispensable to maintain the momentum of regional cooperation
and to promote concrete measures in various areas, thereby forming
a network of close regional cooperation.
2. Evaluation
(1) Concrete progress in the area of regional cooperation
Worthy of special mention as an outcome of
a series of meetings is the adoption of the “Cebu Declaration
on East Asian Energy Security” at EAS. In an East Asia which
continues to growth through a dynamic process of economic development,
a further rapid increase of demand for energy is expected in
the future. Therefore the necessity of regional cooperation
to spread energy-saving technology and to stably secure energy
is very high. In such circumstances, it deserves attention that
setting goals and formulating action plans, as well as encouraging
the use of biofuels and so on, were included in the adopted
declaration. In addition, its adoption at EAS means that the
declaration includes not only China but also India, which is
similarly achieving a rapid economic growth. So it can be thought
of as appropriate as a framework.
Focusing on Japan, Prime Minister ABE announced
that Japan will accept trainees and provide financial and technical
assistance in order to promote energy-saving technology and
biofuels, which was praised by other countries. Because this
initiative will be a great contribution to energy cooperation,
as Japanese, we should also highly evaluate such an active response
by the Japanese government.
Meanwhile, the other priority areas for cooperation
at EAS other than energy are education, natural disaster management,
avian influenza and finance, on which the start of concrete
cooperation was also mentioned. Equally, APT also paid attention
to the recent expansion of cooperation in the areas of women’s
issues, poverty alleviation, disaster management and minerals.
In this way, relationships of regional cooperation
in Asia are being concretely established in various areas. It
is imperative to continue to promote such developments steadily
into the future.
(2) The Relationship of APT and EAS
After the first meeting of EAS was held in
2005, its relationship with APT, which was already functioning
as a framework for regional cooperation, has been questioned.
In the declarations in 2005, it was recognized that APT would
“continue to be the main vehicle,” while EAS was expected to “play
a significant role.” Therefore, the strong impression was that
EAS would discuss community building from a broader viewpoint,
while APT would take the lead in concrete regional cooperation
measures. However, this time, while APT confirmed the direction
of the Second Joint Statement on East Asia Cooperation to be
adopted in the next Summit of APT, EAS showed a concrete picture
of regional cooperation by adopting the “Cebu Declaration on
East Asian Energy Security.” Therefore, it seems that the roles
of APT and EAS have been somewhat reversed.
With regard to the coexistence of two frameworks,
APT and EAS, some people insist that APT should serve as the
core framework if we take into consideration the achievements
of the APT and the geographical concept of “Asia.” On the other
hand, others argue that the framework of EAS would be beneficial
for Japan because more industrialized and democratic countries
are involved. However, if we look at the actual progress, it
would be no problem if we do not decide at this moment which
framework should be chosen.
It is true that a situation in which the framework
of regional cooperation is not decided would be difficult to
understand and pose a sort of uncertainty to the region. But,
conversely, such a situation would make it possible for realizable
measures to be taken in accordance with the features of APT
and EAS (or other regional frameworks such as APEC) in each
area of cooperation. Therefore, at least for the time being,
we can expect several frameworks to be formed in a multi-layered
way and to play complementary roles to each other.
Thus, the following two descriptions can both
be thought of as appropriate: that “APT is an essential part
of the evolving regional architecture, complementary to the
East Asia Summit and other regional fora,” in the Chairman’s Statement
of APT; as well as that “the EAS complements other existing regional
mechanisms, including the ASEAN dialogue process, the ASEAN+3
process, the ARF, and APEC in community building efforts,” in
the Chairman’s Statement of EAS.
(3) Evaluation on the role of NEAT
Another issue which should be noted from the
viewpoint of the Council of East Asian Community is that the
Chairman’s Statement of APT has referred to our activities in
one independent paragraph, saying “we also noted the Memorandum
No.3 on Policy Recommendations on Strengthening the Pillars
of East Asian Community Building, prepared by the Network of
East Asian Think Tanks (NEAT), which may form part of the stocktaking
of APT cooperation.” It can be said that a fair evaluation of
the role of NEAT in the process of the development of regional
cooperation in Asia is now being built. This makes us realize
again the importance of continuing active intellectual contributions
through NEAT.