چکیده:
One of the key sets of questions underlying Asia Pacific economic cooperation over the last decade has been over the nature and form of the regional trade architecture that would gradually emerge from the turmoil of the Asia-Pacific "noodle bowl" of bilateral and plurilateral FTAs, and how that architecture would accommodate the separate impulses of East Asian and trans-Pacific economic integration.Calls for East Asian economic integration took center-stage in the wake of the East Asian economic crisis of 1997/98, and were quickly reflected in the proposal for an East Asian Free Trade Area (EAFTA) based on the ASEAN plus Three groups. The subsequent development of the so-called "ASEAN Plus One" FTAs both provided a feasible way forward in the absence of a politically viable basis for integration among the major Northeast Asian economies, and also entrenched the idea of East Asian economic integration as an "ASEAN-centered" process. Japan’s proposal for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA), based on an ASEAN plus Six groups of countries that comprised the then membership of the East Asian Summit (EAS), subsequently provided an alternative configuration for a region-wide trade bloc based on East Asia. Since then the EAFTA and CEPEA initiatives have moved forward in parallel, but no agreement has been reached to commence formal negotiations in either case. This paper has presented the state of play and future outlook for each of the three initiatives as they appeared at the time of the 2010 APEC leaders’ meeting. This has been followed by a discussion of developments in these initiatives in 2011, as well as possible implications for these initiatives of developments in other arenas.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"1. Introduction The trans-Pacific approach to regional economic integration, which appeared to have been eclipsed by the East Asian developments, was revived by the ABAC (APEC Business Advisory Council) proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), which after some initial hesitation was strongly endorsed by the United States at the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Hanoi in 2006.
2. Issues in the Evolution of East Asia’s Trade Architecture The ASEAN plus Three (APT) group, formed in the aftermath of the East Asian economic crisis and comprising the ten members of ASEAN plus China, Japan and Korea, remains one of two groupings whose agenda focuses on region-wide economic integration in East Asia.
Re-assessment of East Asia’s economic relationship with the United States was in turn linked to wider questions of the future role of the United States in East Asia, which had come into sharper focus in regional debates sparked by the proposals in 2008 and 2009 of Australia’s then Prime Minister Rudd for an Asia Pacific Community and by Japan’s then Prime Minister Hatoyama for an East Asian Community, with sharply divergent views being expressed even within the normally cohesive Singapore policy establishment (Tay 2010, Koh 2010).
4. Developments in 2011: Progress and Emerging Uncertainties By unambiguously endorsing the FTAAP as the eventual goal of regional economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, and by giving equal endorsement to EAFTA, CEPEA and TPP as avenues toward the achievement of that goal, the APEC leaders in their 2010 statement appeared to encourage the pursuit of each of these three initiatives, with the relative influence of each on the ultimate shape of the FTAAP likely to be dependent on the extent of progress made in each case."