ASEAN seeks to strengthen collaboration with Korea
‘Community building is very different from EU’
MANILA, the Philippines — The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is trying to step up cooperation with Korea, particularly in the fields of technology and innovation, the chief of an ASEAN think tank said.
“ASEAN is looking for cooperation, and Korea is a very important partner of ASEAN,” said professor Hidetoshi Nishimura, president of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).
“Korea has advanced technology in innovative areas. ASEAN is very fond of cooperation with Korea,” he added.
Nishimura noted that ASEAN has succeeded in eliminating tariffs nearly to zero to promote the free flow of goods among its member countries.
“Now, the target for ASEAN 2025 is non-tariff measures (NTM) that is a dramatic increase in ASEAN,” he said.
He pointed out that ASEAN dialogue partners such as Japan, China, New Zealand, South Korea and India have far more NTM.
He pointed out that more NTM doesn’t mean more protection, but trade barriers to the economy.
“Because society is sophisticated, we need regulations for safety. To normalize social matters, the government must strictly intro- duce new regulations so they are inevitably increasing along with the development of society,” he said.
“But the important thing is don’t burden trade partners with unnecessary costs when introducing new regulations. So the number of regulations does not mean an increase in costs.”
He said that in 2003 ASEAN declared it would complete the formation of the ASEAN community by 2020.
“But China produced a remarkable result in 2006 as its obligation to the WTO, so in 2006 ASEAN accelerated the goal (of the ASEAN community) from 2020 to 2015,” he said.
ASEAN established the ASEAN Economic Community, a common market, in 2016 to promote economic integration.
“That’s why ERIA was set up to support that kind of acceleration of integration in 2008. A lot of research and recommendations and adjustments were made.”
He said 20 researchers are working in the ERIA and dong 52 projects each year.
ERIA is an international research institute based in Jakarta. Since its founding in 2008, ERIA has been supporting the regional economic integration process among ASEAN member countries.
It serves as a leading economic think tank in the region and the Sherpa institution for the East Asia and ASEAN summit process. Its research and policy recommendations have influenced the policymaking process in the region.
Nishimura lauded China for making a great effort in domestic reforms.
“After that, there are some developing efforts and now the Chinese economy plays a very important part in the world economy,” he said.
“We are cooperating with Chinese specialists in policymaking, their recommendations and support with data to ERIA research in the economy,” he added.
He said his institute has shared ASEAN integration for the last 10 years with this year marking the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
He explained that ASEAN integration is quite different from the EU type from the aspect of community building.
He said ASEAN has developed under four stages during the last five decades.
According to him, ASEAN started with five countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand — in 1967 based on the mantra of “Don’t kill each other.” “At that time it was far-fetched to think about community building, but it was more like ‘Don’t hurt each other, don’t go to war among them’ that was the first stage of ASEAN community building,” he said.
The second stage began following the end of the Cold War in 1989. And the third stage was launched to cope with the Asian financial crisis in 1997.
“In order to cope with that crisis, ASEAN decided to begin community building,” Nishimura said.
“At that time the Cold War had ended. The regime is different, socialist countries, Islam to Buddhist to Hindu, a lot of cultures, religions, languages ... and the discrepancy of development,” he said.
“Nobody can imagine a community with that much of diversification. That was an unprecedented challenge. So the ASEAN community has been created in a different way than the monotype EU.” Under the fourth stage, ASEAN pushed for integration for community building with diversification.
“In order to do that, ASEAN has done it in an ASEAN way with ASEAN consensus. Everybody agreed and everybody did it through much discussion. This has drawn criticism for being too slow,” he said.