While APEC and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) are stressing the significance of forming a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), Taiwan has been focusing too much on domestic conflicts. As an island nation heavily reliant on international trade, Taiwan needs to pay greater attention to the external environment. Because international relations can empower trade, Taiwan ought to place greater emphasis on the development of the neighboring community and identify the community to which Taiwan really belongs.
The concept of a community is related to the sharing of a common identity, culture, ideas, or beliefs. In this sense, there is at present no East Asian community, since East Asia is characterized by great cultural, ethnic and political diversity, unresolved conflicts and different visions of the future.
By comparison, because Europe is more culturally homogeneous than Asia, the challenges facing East Asia in the development of a regional community are greater than those faced by Europe in the post-war era. The fact that, even after half a century of integration, Europe still faces many challenges would indicate that the road ahead for East Asia, should it decide to go forward with building a community, is a long and difficult one.
Balanced by the natural law of demand and supply, the existing East Asian economic structure has been serving as a cornerstone of the global value chain. In order to prevent a repeat of the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis, countries in the region have realized the importance of regional collaboration.
The chain reaction in a regional scale is faster than that in the global scale because of the geographical factor. Therefore, a specific East Asian awareness motivated by the multilateral economic structure has emerged. The East Asian awareness is too significant to be ignored, and it has served as a driving force and paved the way for potentially constructing a future East Asian community.
The East Asian awareness shall lead to the concept of a voluntary East Asian community, which is a recent one. Its emergence has been observed with respect to the following factors.
The first factor is the development and deepening of regional integration efforts in Europe and the Americas, which have led to fears that East Asia may be excluded from these traditional markets. These fears indeed helped promote the idea of consolidating a market of its own.
The second factor is the growing economic integration and interdependence within the region, which have resulted in shared vulnerabilities to economic crisis, as demonstrated during the 1997 financial crisis. The crisis also served to promote the perception within the region that East Asia may not be able to rely on global institutions and outside countries to effectively assist them in difficult times.
The third factor is the consolidation of Southeast Asia under the umbrella of ASEAN, whose members have taken an active role, for the benefit of their own security and economic interests, in pursuing regional stability through community-building, through the ASEAN FTA, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Asia-Europe Meeting and finally through a potential ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea).
Last but not least is the emerging competition between Japan and China for leadership in this region. This has resulted from the rise of China as a major economic player, which has prompted both countries to seek opportunities of economic cooperation with ASEAN.
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