As China’s economy slows and growth in the developed world remains anemic, governments across Asia are working to keep their economies on an upward trajectory. In Sri Lanka, where I am prime minister, the challenge is to find a way to accelerate our already steady economic growth.
One thing is clear: We cannot expect the rest of the world to welcome our economic ambitions the way it once opened its arms to China’s rapid rise as an economic power or — in earlier decades — cheered on the growth of Japan and the so-called Asian Tigers, including South Korea.
Today, we Asians are witnessing, on an almost daily basis, fierce political assaults on the tools and policies that have helped lift hundreds of millions of our citizens out of poverty. Indeed, this year, free trade appears to be the scapegoat of choice among the world’s assorted populists and demagogues.
In the US’ presidential election campaign, for example, the leading hopefuls in both the Republican and Democratic primaries have questioned the wisdom of seeking greater openness in world trade. In Britain, euroskeptics campaigning for the country to leave the EU denigrate the benefits of the single European market. Elsewhere in Europe, populists are demanding that the drawbridges of trade be raised.
Open trade is under attack even in parts of Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had to drag some of his country’s special-interest groups kicking and screaming into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Similarly, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been unable to convince state governors to lower trade barriers within the country. And in Sri Lanka, the “economic and technology agreement” that my government recently planned to sign with India to bring about greater economic integration has come under ferocious political attack.
However, for the most part, Asia’s political leaders retain a positive view of the benefits of open trade. After all, much of the past four decades of robust growth can be attributed to the fact that world markets were receptive to Asian goods. All we needed to do to get our economies growing, it seemed, was to identify our comparative advantage, produce quality goods at competitive prices and then export as much as we could.
For decades, this model worked extraordinarily well and China, Japan, South Korea and the countries of Southeast Asia benefited greatly from it. Even today, with world trade in the doldrums, regional trade remains a key component of these countries’ growth strategies.
However, in South Asia we have been much slower to take advantage of the opportunities that can arise from more open trade — with regrettable consequences: The region is home to 44 percent of the world’s poorest people.
We have an obligation to try to use trade to lift our people out of poverty. However, with free trade rapidly becoming a global bugbear, the window for generating growth by tapping into world markets appears to be closing quickly. If trade is to become a key driver of growth in Sri Lanka or elsewhere in the region, we will most likely have to generate it ourselves — by transforming South Asia from one of the world’s least economically integrated regions into one of its most integrated.
Today, intra-regional trade accounts for only 5 percent of South Asia’s total trade, compared with 25 percent for the ASEAN. The vast untapped potential presents the region with an opportunity for growth that does not rely on the strength of the world economy.
Last year, the World Bank estimated that annual trade between India and Pakistan could jump from US$1 billion to US$10 billion — if tariffs and other barriers were slashed to the levels recommended by the WTO.
Tariffs and other needless restrictions hobble trade among all South Asian countries. These obstacles were supposed to be swept away with the establishment of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the largest of all the world’s regional trading blocs, with close to 2 billion people.
However, the SAARC’s reliance on bilateral negotiations has slowed the process to a crawl, keeping the region much poorer than it needs to be. If the SAARC is to succeed, a new multilateral mechanism for cooperation will be needed.
As climate change takes its toll, the stakes will only get higher. Our still largely agrarian countries, with much of their territory in low-lying coastal regions, are dangerously exposed to rising sea levels and violent weather. Receding Himalayan glaciers would disrupt the lives — and livelihoods — of about 600 million people in Pakistan, Nepal and northern India.
The political obstacles to effective action would be stiff. Indeed, there is political opposition to greater regional economic integration in every SAARC country. However, the scale of the challenges facing the region should impel all of the SAARC’s members toward greater cooperation.
It is time for the SAARC’s member governments to rise to the challenge. By working together, we can lay the foundations of a regional economy as dynamic as that of our neighbors to the east.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is prime minister of Sri Lanka.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under