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.
An East Asian community playing a responsible role in the world would be desirable, as it would ensure peace and stability in the region, which in turn would help ensure continued economic development. It would also promote the competitiveness of Asian enterprises through the development of more efficient production networks and financial markets in the region.
These are objectives, however, that can also be met through a wider Asia-Pacific community that includes Australia, New Zealand and North America, among others. For this reason, the two major community-building efforts in the region, one based on ASEAN Plus Three, and the other through APEC, continue to exist alongside each other.
From the standpoint of an Asia-Pacific community, the East Asian concept would seem to exclude economies in the Pacific and the US. However, the fact is that East Asian economies have built strong economic ties with economies outside East Asia but within the Asia-Pacific region. The formation of an East Asian community as a result should be defined in a broader sense. The East Asian community ought to function as a building block or phase one for constructing a potential Asia-Pacific community.
Lacking common ethnic and cultural roots, an East Asian community can only emerge if East Asians come to share a common vision of the future and are satisfied with their respective roles within that common vision. The present situation is such that East Asia is still far from achieving such a vision.
There is much to resolve in Northeast Asia, including the relationships among Japan, China and South Korea and the resolution of issues in the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait.
ASEAN is able to serve as a focal point of community-building efforts, but has only limited capabilities to influence the resolution of issues in Northeast Asia.
Can political conflicts really be mitigated through economic incentives? The answer is positive. People tend to forget that conflicts usually have economic roots. The role of the East Asian community for that reason should be to meet the needs of the present generation in the region without compromising the needs of the future generation.
In short, sustainable economic development is the ultimate guideline defining the role of the East Asian community. Furthermore, locating the common vision via economic incentives should be the key to the eventual establishment of the East Asian community.
Should East Asian and Asia-Pacific communities be two competing paradigms? After all, the relationship between the two is more complementary than competitive.
The concept of "open regionalism" stressed over and over again by APEC should receive the same attention in East Asia. Regarding the concept, Asia-Pacific is an extended definition of East Asia through regional integration and with respect to open regionalism.
If ASEAN is the foundation of East Asian community, there is no reason why East Asian community cannot serve as the basis for constructing an Asia-Pacific community.
Seeking the common vision for East Asian integration through economic channels and harmonizing the tension between East Asia and Asia-Pacific perspectives would be a feasible mean of creating a win-win situation.
To which community should Taiwan belong? Taiwan should take part in and help build both communities. Community building is a sound paradigm to resolve present anomalies; however, non-exclusivity is the way to ensure successful community building.
Darson Chiu is an associate research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.
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