CIAO DATE: 02/2008
Volume: 80, Issue: 2
Summer 2007
Understanding East Asian Cross-Regionalism: An Analytical Framework
Mireya Solís, Saori N. Katada
A key feature of East Asian FTA diplomacy remains unacknowledged and, therefore, unaccounted for: the activism displayed in seeking preferential trading relations with countries outside the region. While European and North American countries have also pursued cross-regional trade agreements (CRTAs), East Asia is unique in pursuing extra-regional partnerships before consolidating the regional trade integration process. This framework article identifies the common patterns and fundamental factors behind the East Asian governments' moves towards establishing CRTAs. After laying out the conventional arguments—ranging from the extra-regional market dependence, the region's security arrangements, and economic and political motives behind East Asia's extra-regional interests—the article introduces the novel concept of "leverage." This notion highlights how cross-regional and intra-regional FTA initiatives are intimately linked: East Asian countries frequently choose an extraregional FTA partner in order to break regional inertias that hinder integration, to win domestic battles, and to appropriate extra-regional negotiation modalities that they can use in their subsequent intra-regional FTA negotiations. The article concludes with a summary of the findings from the country cases, and the policy implications of East Asia's porous regionalism, with its heavy doses of cross-regional trade initiatives.
Forming a Cross-Regional Partnership: The South Korea-Chile FTA and its Implications
Sung-Hoon Park, Min Gyo Koo
CRTAs have become a main feature of South Korea's newly found enthusiasm for a multi-track FTA strategy. In this study, we examine the rise of South Korea's aggressive FTA initiatives, with a special focus on the first cross-Pacific FTA, namely the South Korea-Chile FTA, and draw implications for South Korea's other RTA initiatives. South Korea's motivations to pursue CRTAs are complex. These include economic, political and diplomatic/leverage motives. South Korea's policy departure from its long-standing support for the multilateral trading system began with its FTA negotiations with Chile, a country located on the opposite side of the globe. Aside from the South Korea-Chile FTA, South Korea has been negotiating a number of other CRTAs. Most importantly, South Korea and the US began to negotiate a bilateral FTA in June 2006, the successful conclusion of which will have significant economic and strategic repercussions not only for South Korea but also for its neighboring East Asian countries. The economic and strategic motivations of the political leadership, as well as the new bureaucratic balance of power centered on the Office of the Minister for Trade, have played a significant role in South Korea's dramatic rush toward RTAs. Although South Korea's pursuit of RTAs does not necessarily mean that it has completely abandoned the multilateral trading system, the policy departure is increasingly becoming obvious and significant.
The Japan-Mexico FTA: A Cross-Regional Step in the Path towards Asian Regionalism
Mireya Solís, Saori N. Katada
By most accounts, Japan and Mexico remain distant economic partners with only a modest volume of bilateral trade and foreign direct investment, and a large geographical and cultural gulf between them. By this depiction, the Japanese decision to negotiate with Mexico is puzzling if not downright nonsensical: Why would Japan invest so much political capital in the negotiation of a complex free trade agreement (FTA) with a nation accounting for such a minuscule share of its international economic exchange? Solís and Katada challenge this interpretation of Japan's second bilateral FTA ever, and demonstrate that far from being irrational or insignificant, the stakes involved in the Japan-Mexico FTA were very high, and that this crossregional initiative stands to exert powerful influence over the future evolution of Japan's shift towards economic regionalism. For a number of Japanese industries (automobiles, electronics and government procurement contractors) negotiating with Mexico was essential to level the playing field vis-à-vis their American and European rivals, which already enjoyed preferential access to the Mexican market based on their FTAs. For the Japanese trade bureaucrats, negotiations with Mexico offered an opportunity to tip the domestic balance in favour of an active FTA diplomacy, despite the opposition of the agricultural lobby. Negotiations with Mexico constituted a litmus test, both for the Japanese government and in the eyes of potential FTA partners in Asia, on whether Japan could offer a satisfactory liberalization package to prospective FTA partners to make these negotiations worthwhile.
Southeast Asian Cross-Regional FTAs: Origins, Motives and Aims
Stephen Hoadley
This article surveys the free trade agreement (FTA) initiatives of three governments: Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. It examines each in a search for motives, not only for negotiating FTAs within the region but also for reaching outside Asia to find negotiating partners. It finds that the presumption of economic gain as the primary motive must be qualified because the markets of many of the extra-regional partners are relatively small in Asian terms, and their trade and investment barriers are already amongst the lowest in the world. This is especially true of New Zealand and Chile, which nevertheless are becoming popular extra-regional partners for Asian governments. While the national and sectoral economic motives announced by the trade spokespeople for Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are acknowledged as predominant, this article goes beyond such declarations to explore the explicit and implicit diplomatic, political and bureaucratic aims that could account more fully for these trade negotiation initiatives. In accordance with the conceptual analysis presented by Solís and Katada in this issue of Pacific Affairs, the drivers of FTAs are grouped into three broad categories: 1) economic motives; 2) security and diplomatic motives; and 3) leverage motives. Seven hypotheses derived from these categories are employed to guide this survey of recent FTA initiatives by Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, and to explore their reasons for engaging with FTA partners both outside and within the Southeast Asian region.
China's Cross-Regional FTA Initiatives: Towards Comprehensive National Power
Stephen Hoadley, Jian Yang
This article surveys the recent initiation of free trade talks by China. Of particular interest are the motives driving this innovation, particularly as regards negotiations with distant rather than regional partners, known as cross-regional trade agreements or CRTAs. This investigation is guided by the conceptual analysis presented by Solís and Katada in this issue of Pacific Affairs. The authors find that the initiation of cross-regional preferential trading links allows the Chinese leadership to speed up economic development, to hedge against future trade diversion in other regions of the world, to pursue domestic reform at their own chosen pace, to develop negotiating expertise in a less tense political environment, and to advance core interests in foreign economic policy and security policy by validating the concept of a peaceful rise to power. China's recent pursuit of crossregional FTAs is thus significant not only for the economic benefits they promise but also for their enhancement of China's national power and capacity for international leadership without provoking conflict. As a supplement to China's diplomacy, crossregional FTA negotiations must be recognized as an important new element of China's long-term international strategy.
Governance and Democracy in Asia: Modernity and Identity in Asia Series. Edited by Takashi Inoguchi and Matthew Carlson.
Maxwell A. Cameron
Non-Traditional Security in Asia: Dilemmas in Securitization. Edited by Mely Caballero-Anthony, Ralf Emmers and Amitav Acharya.
David Capie
Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. By Aihwa Ong.
David Ley
Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia. Cold War International History Project Series. Edited by Priscilla Roberts.
James I. Matray
Where Empires Collided: Russian and Soviet Relations with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. By Michael Share.
Anna Belogurova
US-China Relations in the 21st Century: Power Transition and Peace. By Zhiqun Zhu.
Steven I. Levine
Congress and the U.S.-China Relationship, 1949 -1979. By Guangqiu Xu.
John F. Copper
Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. By Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen.
Yinghong Cheng
China Candid: The People on the People's Republic. By Sang Ye; Edited by Geremie R. Barme with Miriam Lang.
Michael Dutton
Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. By Theodore Huters.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University). By Takashi Yoshida.
James J. Orr
Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China. By Beth E. Notar.
Timothy S. Oakes
Japan's Security Policy and the ASEAN Regional Forum: The Search for Multilateral Security in the Asia-Pacific. By Takeshi Yuzawa.
Thomas Stow Wilkins
Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective. Edited by Takeyuki Tsuda.
Chikako Kashiwazaki
Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. By Ian Condry.
Marié Abe
Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations. By John Knight.
Paul Waley
Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan. By David R. Ambaras.
Robin O'Day
Tackling Japan's Fiscal Challenges: Strategies to Cope with High Public Debt and Population Aging. Edited by Keimei Kaizuka and Anne O. Krueger.
Jennifer Holt-Dwyer
In the Beginning, Woman was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist. By Hiratsuka Raicho; translated, with an introduction and notes, by Teruko Craig.
Jan Bardsley
Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women's Writing. Edited by Rebecca L. Copeland.
S. Yumiko Hulvey
Gendering Modern Japanese History: . Edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno.
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura
Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War. Letters to the Editor of the Asahi Shimbun. Expanded Edition. Edited by Frank Gibney; translated by Beth Cary; foreword by Samuel Yamashita.
Tsuneharu Gonnami
The Two Koreas and the Great Powers: . By Samuel S. Kim.
Timothy C. Lim
A Troubled Peace: US Policy and the Two Koreas. By Chae-jin Lee.
Gregg Brazinsky
Modern Korean Society: Its Development and Prospect. Edited by Hyuk-Rae Kim and Bok Song.
Nancy Abelmann
The Dwarf: Modern Korean Fiction. By Se-Hui Cho; translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton.
Janet Poole
India and Emerging Asia. Edited by R. R. Sharma.
Manish Thakur
Region, Culture and Politics in India. Edited by Rajendra Vora and Anne Feldhaus.
Subrata K. Mitra
Colonial and Post-Colonial Geographies of India. Edited by Saraswati Raju, M. Satish Kumar and Stuart Corbridge.
Ilona Moore
Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms and Genocide in Modern India. By Paul R. Brass.
Marie-Eve Reny
Sex Selective Abortion in India: Gender, Society and New Reproductive Technologies. Edited by Tulsi Patel.
Vibhuti Patel
Elementary Education for the Poorest and Other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalization. By Jyotsna Jha and Dhir Jhingran.
R. Sooryamoorthy
Untouchability in Rural India. By Ghanshyam Shah, Harsh Mander, Sukhadeo Thorat, Satish Deshpande, and Amita Baviskar.
Eleanor Zelliot
In the Name of Honor: A Memoir. By Mukhtar Mai with Marie-Therese Cuny; translated by Linda Coverdale.
Almas Zakiuddin
Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions. Edited by Cynthia Chou and Vincent Houben.
Jim A. Placzek
Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community: Insights from the Former ASEAN Secretary-General. By Rodolfo C. Severino.
Donald Crone
Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence. Edited by Duncan McCargo.
Fred R. von der Mehden
Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar). By Donald M. Seekins.
Robert H. Taylor
Pacific Futures. Edited by Michael Powles.
Michael Goldsmith
Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898. By Jean Barman and Bruce McIntyre Watson.
Mike Evans
Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia. By Regina Ganter.
John Burton