The 28th Asia-Pacific Roundtable that took place in Kuala Lumpur last month was attended by top officials from the 10 ASEAN countries as well as China.
In a keynote address delivered by Malaysian Minister of Defense Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that he “would like to express Malaysia’s strong commitment toward the recent Joint Declaration of the ASEAN Defense Ministers on Defense Cooperation toward a peaceful and prosperous ASEAN community.”
Recognizing that “Southeast Asian nations not only want to be independent, strong and economically vibrant, they also want peace, prosperity and predictability,” he said that their aim is “to have a region where nations respect each other while observing rules and norms, and where honor and dignity are manifested by peaceful intention, visionary policies and good leadership” and that they “aspire to a region where the strongest guarantees of peace and prosperity lie in nations working together — not against each other.”
The prime minister’s address made repeated mention of “the region,” which of course meant the Asia-Pacific region. The reason he so explicitly expressed strong hopes that interactions between nations in the region would be guided by peace, dignity and rules and norms was that one country in the region had been displaying behavior that caused him great concern.
Although Taiwan also belongs to the region, it was pushed aside from the Asia Pacific negotiating table a long time ago. In addition, the nation does not pose a threat to the peace of any country in the region, so when the Malaysian prime minister represented the 10 ASEAN nations in expressing his worries, it was pretty clear who his target was.
Najib’s father was Abdul Razak, Malaysia’s second prime minister, and the third prime minister, Hussein Onn, was his uncle. Perhaps it is this rare family background that made him say: “Imagine a world where institutions, rules and norms are ignored, forgotten or cast aside; in which countries with large economies and strong armies dominate, forcing the rest to accept the outcome. This would be a world where, in the words of the Greek historian Thucydides, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Some countries in the Asia-Pacific region have strong economies and a powerful military, and every attendant at the meeting knew what Najib was talking about: The new passports that China introduced on May 15, 2012, which include maps of the South China Sea “nine-dash line,” which has led to an increasingly intense sovereignty dispute between China on one hand and Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia on the other, as China adamantly rejects the suggestion that the issue should be submitted to an international institution for arbitration.
Do not forget that five years ago, many people in Taiwan made much of the suggestion that ASEAN Plus One — China — should create an Asian economy similar to that of the EU, and that the Asian Development Bank should issue an Asian currency. However, anyone with some knowledge of the background to the 1957 formation of the European Economic Community and its evolution clearly understands that ASEAN Plus One could never transform a free-trade agreement into a closely integrated economic entity. Furthermore, there were both economic and non-economic factors behind the EU’s decision to create the euro, which then led to increasingly closer integration.
When Taiwanese suggested that ASEAN Plus One, which had just started up, should establish an Asian currency, they revealed their shortsightedness and inability to gauge the nation’s strength. It was shortsighted because it displayed a complete lack of understanding of the evolution of the euro and of the nation’s strength, because, not being a member of ASEAN, Taiwan had neither the status nor the clout to bring forward such a suggestion.
Furthermore, there has never been any talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement, which comprises the US, Canada and Mexico, evolving into anything similar to the EU, which only serves to further highlight how preposterous the Taiwanese suggestions were.
Many in Taiwan are bewitched by the past, but today it can be seen how things turned out. This attitude is the same as what led to the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Can such mistakes really be lightly disregarded?
While the ASEAN Plus One will never develop into an Asian version of the EU and thus will not have a negative impact on the nation’s international competitiveness, it must also be acknowledged that China’s threat to Taiwan is much more serious than it is to the ASEAN nations. The question is what we should do about it.
Thucydides once said that it is human nature to detest those who go out of their way to please others, but to respect those who stand up straight. This applies to international relations as well as human interactions.
Yen Ching-chang was the Republic of China’s first representative to the WTO.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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