The Interpreter's ongoing debate over the Greens' foreign policy positions led me to look for examples of tripartisanship when it comes to Australia's engagement with Asia.

Here's one close to the heart of many Asia-watchers and engagers in Australia: all three parties — the Coalition, ALP and Greens — support greater commitment to 'Asian literacy' in Australia. Then-PM Rudd and Opposition Leader Abbott made this clear in their respective speeches to Asialink's National Forum on 'mapping our future in the Asian Century', as does this Greens policy initiative.

Of course, commitment and follow-through are not the same thing, as Michael Wesley noted in an earlier blog post.

Photo by Flickr user dawnzy58, used under a Creative Commons license. 

Thanks to Kien Choong for his question. Alas, I don't have any fully formed thoughts on it yet. 

One partial one, though, is that political parties that develop out of or closely associate themselves with particular social movements may be more constrained in their ability to 'move towards' the centre and become more pragmatic and flexible, as this could well alienate their traditional supporters. For the Greens, the fact that they only won 11.4% of the primary vote with a swing of 3.6% towards them in an election that seemed particularly favourable for them may make this tension even greater.

BTW, I agreed with the Greens' criticism of PM Rudd’s decision to dodge of the Dalai Lama and the manner of the dodging.

Photo by Flickr user najeebkhan2009, used under a Creative Commons license. 

Andrew Shearer's post on the Greens' foreign policy led me to dig a bit deeper. I chose to look at Greens' statements on Australia's relations with China and their trade policy positions in light of the fact that China is now our largest trading partner (accounting for about one-fifth of our total merchandise trade).

There has been, broadly speaking, support in the ALP and the Coalition for a pragmatic approach to both issues. Unsurprisingly, the Greens have a very different view.

On relations with the People's Republic of China, the Greens strongly criticised PM Rudd for dodging the Dalai Lama and officially objected to the invitation to President Hu Jintao to speak to the joint sitting of Parliament in 2003. Greens leader Bob Brown also questioned the moral legitimacy of Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics. 

On trade policy, the Greens policy platform calls for Australia to withdraw from existing bilateral trade agreements when possible and supports the abolition of the WTO, IMF and World Bank unless radical reform can democratise their governance. Alas, radical reform and international institutions rarely, if ever, go together.

Photo by Flickr user Roanish, used under a Creative Commons license.

Thanks to Shen Dingli for his provocative post on the PRC's claims in the South China Sea and Taiwan, and what role Australia can play.

As one would expect, it repeats the long-held PRC advice to Canberra that the best way for Australia to engage in Asia is to differentiate itself from the US – or at least, from PRC views of what the US is doing in Asia. This, of course, is at odds with the historical record that the ANZUS alliance has been a key plank for Australia's engagement with Asia, one that is growing longer and stronger with mounting Asian concerns about the PRC's power and assertiveness.

I agree with Shen Dingli that all claimants to the South China Sea 'should abide by The Code of Conduct in the South China Sea signed in 2002, which excludes the use of force'. If only there was such a code. What the PRC signed with the ten states of ASEAN in 2002 was a non-binding, non-enforceable Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

The last article of this declaration states: 'The Parties concerned reaffirm that the adoption of a code of conduct in the South China Sea would further promote peace and stability in the region and agree to work, on the basis of consensus, towards the eventual attainment of this objective.' Alas, eight years later, there is still no such Code of Conduct, with many observers in Southeast Asia questioning the PRC's commitment to negotiating one.

 Last month, I blogged on Taiwan’s plans to use the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China as the basis for seeking trade deals with other WTO members.

Singapore is the first WTO member brave enough to start exploring bilateral trade talks with Taiwan after the signing of ECFA. And it looks like the new government in the Philippines may be open to such talks as well, reversing the position of its predecessor. 

China's response to the joint statement between Singapore and Taiwan is open to interpretation.

Photo by Flickr user Jonathan_W, used under a Creative Commons license.

For the last three years, I have been involved in an on-off blog debate on the health of Australia-Japan relations and the Rudd Government's decision to escalate the whaling issue. A recent Japanese opinion poll on Australian views of Japan suggests Canberra's continued focus on whaling and the lack of sustained leadership attention on any other aspect of our most important partnership in Asia has had a detrimental effect.

The poll results show that a majority of Australians polled do not see Japan as a reliable partner, a complete reversal from the 2006 result and the worst ever result recorded by this regular poll. 

Rudd's attenuated prime ministership was bad for Australia-Japan relations and after 21 August, Prime Minister Gillard or Abbott should focus on repairing the damage done. Less talk about whales and more about the deepening economic and strategic relationship would be a start, as would dumping the dishonest if politically convenient claim that the dispute over whaling has had no spill-over effect into the relationship as a whole. 

Photo by Flickr user cfdls, used under a Creative Commons license.

I enjoyed the story Sam linked to concerning German bemusement about Kevin Rudd's sudden downfall. Last week, I was in Seoul and ran into very similar sentiments from senior government and ruling party people I met.

There was a clear sense that they firmly believed Rudd had been good for bilateral relations and that he and President Lee (who was almost toppled just months into his term) had built up a very good personal relationship based on a similar 'middle power' outlook.

Rudd and his government should be congratulated for forging stronger ties with South Korea, including the signing of a wide-ranging joint declaration on security and global cooperation and starting FTA negotiations with Australia's third largest export market. Hopefully Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott can build on this strong foundation after the upcoming election here.

If not, the sudden change of leadership in Australia could mean a loss of momentum with a key regional partner led by one of Asia's most impressive serving leaders. On this last point, here is the link to President Lee's keynote presentation at this year's Shangri-La Dialogue.

I was surprised to find that The Interpreter is being used to foment yet another face-saving myth about the ill-fated Asia-Pacific community initiative. In his reply to Andrew Shearer's post, Carl Ungerer claims 'even Andrew couldn't disagree with the fact that Rudd at most initiated that conversation.'

Well I certainly can and do disagree with this assertion. Prime Minister Rudd did not initiate 'that conversation' on regional architecture reform. Even Carl's own organisation notes this fact in the foreword to its July 2008 report on regional security architecture, by Bill Tow: 'ASPI had already commissioned a report on Asia-Pacific regional security architecture before the Prime Minister's proposal in early June for the establishment of an Asia-Pacific community by 2020.'

Long before Prime Minister Rudd surprised the region (and his own bureaucracy) with his Asia-Pacific Community speech and its 2020 timetable, regional leaders had been conversing about regional architectural reform and, since 2005, about the future place of the US and Russia in the newly formed East Asia Summit.

Ignoring this fact and claiming Rudd started the conversation is not only a myth but one that reinforces one of the fatal flaws of the initiative as a whole — its apparent (or at best unintended) arrogance that a then new government in Canberra, before even attending its first APEC or ASEAN post-ministerial meeting, was starting a conversation on regional architecture that had actually already been well advanced by others.

Last week, Taiwan became the second developed economy (after plucky New Zealand) to sign a free trade agreement with the People's Republic of China, the first such agreement between two North Asian economies.

Signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) is a victory for President Ma's approach to cross-strait relations and for a Taiwan economy that is already very dependent on trade and investment relations with China. In 2008, over 70% of outward-bound capital from Taiwan landed across the strait in China.

However, for Taiwan, this is not simply a commercial deal with its largest economic partner. President Ma's Administration sees the signing of ECFA, and the larger warming of cross-strait relations it represents, as a way of helping Taiwan engage more with the rest of the world and to increase Taiwan's 'international space'. Following this hopeful logic, the Ma Administration is hoping that ECFA acts as an opening for other WTO members to start trade negotiations with Taiwan.

So far, Taiwan has been largely frozen out of the shift to bilateral trade diplomacy of the last decade or so. Before ECFA, Taiwan had only signed FTAs with Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras (all part of the club of 23 countries that recognise the Republic of China [Taiwan] as a state).

This is where the gamble comes in.

Two wrongs don't make a right. They just make a bigger wrong!

The Rudd Government's cavalier anti-whaling policy and its decision today to try to take Japan to the International Court of Justice is proof positive of this maxim.

The first wrong committed was in the heated days of the 2007 campaign when the promise was made to take this action against a long-standing diplomatic and strategic partner. So far no other country has been willing to join the Rudd Government in this unilateral escalation; not even, it appears, New Zealand.

The second wrong is to now follow through with this bad promise at the same time as the International Whaling Commission is seeking a compromise to the whaling stand-off. Australia, like Japan, is now willfully isolating itself when it comes to international efforts to manage whaling.

It boggles the mind why the Rudd Government has chosen to live up to this bad promise when it has ditched other, sounder, policy promises. Ah, that is except if one remembers another maxim – expedient politics will trump sound policy, especially in election campaigns and especially when the government is doing badly in the polls. And all this promise requires is to be rude to a long-standing friend and to complicate diplomatic processes already in train to address the problem.

Photo by Flickr user Minette Layne, used under a Creative Commons license.

As with PM Rudd's ill-fated Asia-Pacific community initiative, many observers have found it hard to grasp what Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama's East Asian community is and what it would entail.

Last week, Hatoyama gave a full speech that helps clear some of the fog around the idea. Alas, this clearing again shows how different Hatoyama's vision is in scope, focus, means and origins to Rudd's APc. Hatoyama's vision is based on a cultural or civilizational view of Asia and its contrasts with the West:

I believe that one characteristic of Asians is that we do not perceive ourselves and others or humans and the environment in a western dualistic manner, but rather attach importance to the sameness between the two.

When it came to identifying the countries that are part of this future community, Hatoyama focused on China, South Korea, India and the countries of ASEAN:

From such perspectives, I have decided that Japan shall boldly advance liberalization of trade and economic partnerships with the countries of East Asia, centered on the Republic of Korea, China, and India, as well as the countries of ASEAN which historically have actively entered into free trade agreements and economic partnership agreements.

No mention is made of Australia and its trade negotiations with Japan.

Hatoyama's regionalism initiative is one that looks north and west towards the Asian continent, not east or south to the Pacific Ocean, as he notes in his conclusion:

It is incumbent upon Japan, which is located at the terminus of the Silk Road and flourished more than any other country by enjoying the blessings of a bountiful sea, to strive for a new departure in East Asia. These efforts represent a repayment made out of thousands of years of gratitude towards this region. As Prime Minister of Japan, I pledge to you that step by step I will make solid the path leading to an East Asian community.

The multinational investigation into the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan naval corvette, to which Australia contributed, has found the proverbial smoking gun with North Korea's fingerprints all over it. The question now is, how should South Korea, its security partners and North Korea's only ally, the People's Republic of China, react?

Unsurprisingly, most voices are calling on Seoul to continue to exercise restraint and not 'escalate' the situation (ie. to not respond militarily). While I am in general agreement with this call for cool heads, I worry that it could be misrepresenting the situation.

First of all, the DPRK's act of war has already escalated the situation at the cost of 46 South Korean navy officers' lives. Second, if the response to this act of aggression is simply an attempt to use the UN to impose more sanctions on the DPRK, with the PRC first running interference to limit the sanctions and then choosing not to impose them, this itself would be an act of escalation.

The same is true if the chosen response is a return to the moribund Six-Party Talks, a carrot Pyongyang has frequently dangled in front of the other participants before withdrawing it. Both of these weak responses would escalate the situation as they would send the message to Pyongyang that it got away with this brazen act with no real penalty.

I think four co-ordinated actions could help South Korea and its security partners find a response that doesn't escalate the situation directly but cannot be seen as weak passivity:

1. The US Congress could re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, undoing the damage of the last year of the Bush Administration when it came to managing the DPRK.
2. Push for sanctions in the UN on the DPRK that include a multinational monitoring panel reporting regularly on whether signatories are fulfilling their sanctions commitments.
3. Joint US-ROK anti-submarine warfare exercises in and around South Korea that other US allies with the appropriate capabilities could join.
4. Public pressure on the PRC to explain its response to the sinking of the Cheonan and the steps it has taken with its only ally, the DPRK.

Photo by Flickr user jcoterhals, used under a Creative Commons license.

In preparation for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC last month, the Pew Centre polled people in 47 countries about the greatest dangers facing the world today.

There are some really interesting differences across countries and regions. The 'spread of nukes' topped the list in the United States, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, while the Northeast Asian troika of Japan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China were united in their grave concern for pollution and the environment. These three neighbours were the most worried out of the 47 countries polled, even more than the Swedes. The PRC's results though are a bit skewed by the fact that it was the only country to ban the question about the danger of ethnic and religious hatred.

The timing and number of countries polled has a nice irony for Australia. We were not in the 47 countries polled by Pew, and Australia was one of the eight out of 47 national delegations at the Summit not to be led by their national leader.

Filling in for Pew, the 2009 Lowy Poll showed that when it came to perceived threats to Australia we had more in common with the United States and Israel. 69% of Australians felt that unfriendly countries gaining nuclear weapons was a critical threat, while only 52% opted for global warming (down from 66% the year before).

The Lowy Institute's own polling inside the PRC about threats to their own country is consistent with the Pew poll results. 76% of respondents to this Lowy poll felt environmental issues like climate change were a threat to China's security over the next decade. 58% plumped for internal separatists in China while only 52% opted for nuclear weapons held by other governments.

Photo by Flickr user KOREA.NET - Official page of the Republic of Korea's photostream, used under a Creative Commons licence.

Last year The Interpreter launched the Madeleine Albright Award for the use of symbol, stunt, prop, gesture or jest in international affairs.

A new Lowy Institute paper on the Patani Malay insurgency in Thailand's 'deep south' throws up a strong candidate for the award, even if it does stretch the international affairs criterion. Then-Prime Minister Thaksin's action, however, was a symbol, stunt, prop, gesture and jest all in one.

Quoting from page 57:

The dismissive manner in which the Thaksin Administration dealt with the conflict was further compounded by misplaced populist policies that did little more than further amplify the ignorance on the part of the Thai state of the challenges confronting it. This was demonstrated most profoundly in Thaksin’s bizarre move to drop millions of paper cranes from military transport as a ‘gesture’ of peace...

...Paradoxically, while this act boosted Thaksin’s popularity nationwide, it did virtually nothing to improve the relations between the Malay-Muslim south and the rest of the country, or the Thai state for that matter. A leading Thai-Muslim academic, Chaiwat Satha-anand, had already warned that Muslims would perceive Thaksin’s gesture of peace differently, cryptically drawing attention to the fact that the Qur’an in Sura 105 (‘al Feil´or ‘The Elephant’) that flocks of birds would be unleashed from the sky to strike at the enemy of Islam and flatten them like blades of grass. The irony would not be lost of Malay-Muslim minds.

Photo by Flickr user Terriko, used under a Creative Commons license.

International attention on piracy and its impacts on global shipping has shifted in the last couple of years from Southeast Asia to the Gulf of Aden and below. This shift seems justified both by the growth in the number of successful piracy attacks in and around the Gulf of Aden and the sharp and sustained fall-off in such incidents in Southeast Asia.

Figures from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) show piracy incidents in Southeast Asia peaked in 2000 at 242 (over half of the 469 recorded globally), while incidents off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden only accounted for 22 (less than 5% of the global total).

By 2009, the situation had reversed. Southeast Asia only accounted for 45 out of 406 incidents (11%), while the Gulf of Aden area accounted for 217 (53% of the global total). The 2009 figure for Southeast Asia is the lowest recorded by the Bureau since 1994.

It seems that domestic (particularly in Indonesia) and regional anti-piracy efforts are paying dividends in Southeast Asia, though the IMB's live piracy map covering incidents in 2010 suggests not all is well in Southeast Asia.

Photo by Flickr user greekadman, used under a Creative Commons license.

My thanks to Joel Rathus for his concern about the state of my nervous system, especially as we have never met. I can assure him that he is wrong and that my nerves are fine. As for Joel's substantive points:

• On the polling numbers, I did note in my original post the unfortunate change in the wording of the question and how that undercut the comparability across time. However, the shift in opinion from October 2007 to October 2009 is so stark I thought it worth noting. As for Joel's claim that the revised question about 'countries in the Pacific' could lead respondents to think of Hawaii as much as Australia, this would likely boost the latest poll numbers, making the sharp fall-off over time even more telling.
• As for the FTA negotiations, I wonder if Australian negotiators or previous negotiation partners with Japan would be so dismissive of MAFF. The tortured history of Japanese FTA negotiations do not seem to support the idea that MAFF is a secondary player. The populist politics down under against Japanese whaling simply adds more to the arsenal of those in Japan, in MAFF and beyond, not keen on a comprehensive trade deal with Australia.

As discussed at length on The Interpreter, Prime Minister Rudd's Asia-Pacific community idea has not found a very welcoming audience in Southeast Asia, with Singaporean voices being the most negative. In the last week, though, both Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong have spoken out on the issue of the US joining the East Asia Summit. 

While he was in India, Senior Minister Goh noted that it was likely the EAS could be widened to include the US and Russia. Foreign Minister Natalegawa was even more positive, arguing that Indonesia supports the participation of the US in this year's EAS meeting in Hanoi, that Indonesia supports US membership of the EAS and that this idea supports the idea of an Asia Pacific community. 

Since the beginning of the 2007 election campaign in Australia, I have been worried about Japan-Australia relations.

I thought long-standing differences between Tokyo and Canberra over Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean could come to dominate the public face of the relationship. I also worried that the actions of the new Rudd Government, and particularly the Prime Minister himself, would deepen Japanese concerns that Canberra would focus less on Japan and more on its neighbour and rival, the People's Republic of China.

The coming to power of the Hatoyama Government added to these concerns. It seems clear to me that under Koizumi, Abe and Aso, Australia's strategic importance to Japan increased due to these leaders' world views, world views that the senior people in the Hatoyama Government clearly do not share.

It is boilerplate for governments of countries with a history of strong relations to dismiss such worries and claim that disputes over peripheral issues like whaling do not harm the basis of the bilateral relationship regardless of how much they are played up for retail political gain by one side or the other. Such issues are presented as the proverbial storm in a tea cup (handle or no handle).

Four developments in the bilateral relationship since late 2007, affecting four important and different bases of relations, suggest the boilerplate in this case is wrong:

It's well known that the proposed Futenma Marine Air Station relocation is causing problems in the US-Japan alliance. The photo above, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows just why it needs to be moved.

Recently, six developments in Japan's newly dynamic politics suggest this hot button issue has a better chance of being solved, putting the crucial alliance relationship back on firmer ground:

1. The DPJ may no longer need to rely on the Social Democratic Party of Japan in the Upper House, as the DPJ may have been able to convince enough other Upper House members to cross the floor and join them.
2. The Social Democrats themselves are softening their 'all US bases out of Japan' rhetoric and are willing to consider alternate sites for Futenma.
3. In line with Prime Minister Hatoyama's pledge to solve the Futenma issue by May, his new Government is actively considering this relocation plan.
4. The DPJ's poll ratings across Japan are plummeting fast on the back of corruption scandals and discomfort over the Government's destabilising of the alliance with the US. This may make the DPJ more willing to push against local opposition to relocation plans within Okinawa.
5. The heaviest of the DPJ heavyweights, Ozawa Ichiro, has been one of the loudest voices against relocation. However, his chances of replacing Hatoyama have been seriously damaged by corruption scandals. Nearly 80% of people polled by Japan's leading newspaper, Yomiuri Shinbum, want Ozawa to resign. Solving Futenma could provide Hatoyama a nationally popular way to prove that he is not under Ozawa's thumb.
6. So far, the focus on Futenma has greatly limited public discussion and criticism in Japan of the escalating relocation costs from Japan to Guam, initially estimated at over US$6 billion. 

Successive Australian governments have taken comfort that global economic and strategic power is shifting to Asia and hence closer to Australia. (At times, they have also feared this shift – ie. the 2009 Defence White Paper.)

Over the past few months, though, I have been troubled by the idea that, while power is shifting to Asia, within Asia it is shifting away from Australia both geographically (to the north and west of the Asian landmass) and diplomatically, as our traditional partners in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia) lose relative power to Asian states we have weaker strategic ties with, such as China, India, Russia and Iran.

Anthony Bubalo and I have a piece in the next issue of The American Interest looking at how the idea of Asia is moving away from the traditional Australian view, and last Wednesday I discussed this issue at the Lowy Institute.

Adding to this theme, potentially big things are happening in the Arctic. A recent report by SIPRI's China research team looks at the PRC’s growing interest in the Northeast trade passage. Last summer, two German cargo ships made the first voyage through this passage that links Northeast Asia to Europe, while the Russians are planning to send its first shipment of oil through the Arctic to Japan this summer.

Russia has the world's biggest fleet of ice breakers and sees its vast Arctic territories as a new economic asset. The PRC is also investing more in ice breakers in the hope that the Northeast Passage may become a real passage for trade between Asia and Europe, one that is closer and geo-strategically less complicated than Asia's traditional maritime routes, which are closer to Australia.

Photo by Flickr user MarcelGermain, used under a Creative Commons license.

As often happens when I read Sam's posts, I paused, slightly confused. 

Are major bilateral relations really only an 'ephemeral' part of foreign policy for a self-described middle-power like Australia? Therefore, is Australian foreign and security policy also wilfully ephemeral due to the bipartisan commitment to the US alliance relationship as its cornerstone?

Isn't one of the main, if not the main, reasons why the APc initiative has failed to gather much official support outside Canberra because the Rudd Government did not first gain support for it from these major powers at the other end of these ephemeral relations? This is the point of the Indian (not Singaporean) commentator cited by Rowan Callick.

Reinforcing this point is the fact that the Hatoyama Government, which came to power more than a year after the initial APc speech, is pushing a very different regional initiative which it did not discuss with Canberra beforehand. Yet Japan is traditionally our least ephemeral relationship when it comes to regional institution-building.

Strikes me if you don't get your major relationships right, especially if you are a self-described middle power, your larger plans for new institutions and initiatives involving these potential partners could well falter. This is even more so if the other potential participants in your initiatives do not see the structural shifts or the best way to address them in the same manner as you.

Photo by Flickr user scroy65, used under a Creative Commons license.

One of the big questions to come out of the wash of the GFC is, will domestic (particularly consumer) consumption in the PRC expand significantly to help moderate global imbalances and provide a powerful new source of domestic and global demand while the traditional engines of global growth stay in neutral or first gear?

According to an insightful post on the new Caing blog in China, the answer is 'yes', particularly outside the major coastal cities. It also notes that currency appreciation would definitely help.

(NB. Caing is a new news venture featuring the editorial team that used to lead Caijing magazine).

Photo by Flickr user stoicviking, used under a Creative Commons license.

The new DPJ Government in Japan is having a rough time. It is plummeting in the polls, it just lost its finance minister while its new one has spooked jittery financial markets as well as his leader, and it is letting domestic and partisan politics have much too much sway in its alliance relationship with the US, the supposed cornerstone of Japan's foreign and security policy.

On one important front though, it is making progress. The Japanese Government recently decided to pass on to Seoul documents covering the practices of Japanese private firms 'employing' Korean workers in World War II.

This politically brave decision is consistent with the Hatoyama Government's push for Japan to seek better relations with the PRC and South Korea. If Tokyo continues in this vein, it should help South Korean president Lee Myung-bak's own efforts to forge better relations with Japan, relations that do not forget or ignore history but ones that are not trapped by unresolved historical grievances.

BTW, Peter Alford from The Australian – the only Australian newspaper correspondent in Japan — provides some useful insight into how the new DPJ Government is approaching the whaling issue.

Earlier today, Sam put up a link to Joseph Nye's sober argument that Washington should not risk damaging the US-Japan alliance by pushing the new (and still on training wheels) Hatoyama Government on the 'second order' Futenma issue, despite Hatoyama's reckless election promise to ditch a deal agreed upon by both governments after torturous negotiations a full three years before his campaign run. 

The Rudd Government faces a similar Tokyo challenge with a third (or fourth or fifth) order issue: the annual Government-supported Japanese whale hunt in the Southern Ocean.

So far, we have had the opposition, both the reliably sensationalist Greens and Greg Hunt of the Liberals, calling on the Government to limit commercial freedoms by banning planes commercially contracted to carry out reconnaissance for the Japanese whale hunt from using Australian airports. (I wonder how would this limitation on commercial freedom be imposed and monitored?)

Joel Rathus' piquant response to my latest post got me thinking beyond my regular concern that ASEAN voices demand centrality and then ask others to fund it. East Asia, if one could ever actually define this term, seems to have almost as many 'odd men out' as it does in.

Joel nominates Japan, the region's largest economy (in market exchange rate terms), investor and aid giver as one rather large odd man along with the Oceania pair, Australia and New Zealand. To this list of supposed outcasts, one can add the hefty and rising India (in the East Asia Summit and a supporter of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia [ERIA], owner of the Andaman islands, powerful civilizational force, over 1 billion people), the city-state of Singapore (in but not of South East Asia), alienated Taiwan (with a population larger than Australia), ignored Mongolia and the pariahs, Myanmar and the DPRK.

Then there is the whole question of whether the only global superpower, the US, is in or out. And if out, how far out? We also have the torturous membership question of continent-spanning Russia. And, of course, there is the region's newest state, Timor Leste, as well as PNG (a country that shares an island with Indonesia). Hmmm, maybe PNG, geographically speaking, has a better claim to being 'East Asian' than we do?

Who are the 'in men' left? the remaining eight ASEANs, South Korea and the PRC?

Given this conceptual mess, one that is greater than the alphabet soup of institutions it has spawned, I still think it is a good investment by Australia to put $1 million into ERIA to fund research into regional economic integration, especially given the long history of Australia-Japan cooperation in this area and the competing push for an East Asian Free Trade Agreement that excludes Australia, New Zealand and India.

Photo by Flickr user David Wulff, used under a Creative Commons license.

I would like to thank Richard Woolcott for responding to my views as a participant at the APc conference at Taronga, particularly since I have not had the chance to discuss the APc initiative with him yet.

Having organised and hosted conferences myself (though never on the scale or with the stunning harbour view of the APc one), I am also glad that Richard Woolcott judges the conference a success. I await the conference report to see where the government's APc initiative is heading, post-Taronga.

I would also like to nominate another recent Australian regionalism success, one that may have been lost in the build-up to the APc conference. At the APEC Summit in Singapore in November, Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that Australia would provide $1 million to the research institute associated with the East Asia Summit, ERIA (the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia), based in Jakarta at the ASEAN Secretariat.

This follows New Zealand's offer of NZ$100,000 for ERIA in June and India's US$1 million announced at the East Asia Summit meeting in Thailand. Japan provides the lion's share of funding to ERIA.

One of the weaknesses of the existing alphabet soup of regional organisations is in research capacity. ERIA is an attempt to address this problem among the East Asia Summit members and it is good news that Canberra is joining with Tokyo, Wellington, New Delhi and the ASEAN Secretariat in supporting this research institute and thereby helping strengthen the role of the EAS as well.

Carl Thayer writes in response to my post about the recent conference to discuss Prime Minister Rudd's Asia Pacific community (APc) proposal:

I do not think there is an official ASEAN position on the APc. It is clear that there is no ASEAN consensus on the idea because it has not been discussed as an agenda item at ASEAN foreign ministerial level. I wasn’t invited to the APc conference at Sydney but a discerning participant surely would have picked up national differences on the APc proposal. 

But I agree with Malcolm that the rough going the Prime Minister will face is mainly his own doing.The Australian media wasn't properly briefed when it was first launched.They thought it was all about an EU-type institution. One South Australian paper called it an Asian NATO! As far as I am aware there were no focus group discussions in Australia among strategic analysts, academics and the business community.

And don’t over-credit 'ASEAN' opposition to the idea. Singapore’s Barry Desker declared it 'dead in the water'. Surely Singapore must have been firing blanks.

Thanks, Carl, for your comments and I'm glad The Interpreter is playing the role of being the forum for critical analysis of the APc initiative.

They fall into two categories: one I was wrong about and one that surprises me.

Wrong: I thought the GFC would have a greater impact on the PRC and its hybrid economy. It now looks like Beijing will actually do as it promised its subjects – keep the GDP growth rate for 2009 at or above 8%. Congrats to the PRC and boo to me. Shows I should read more carefully the the publications that I edited for my own Lowy Institute program.

Surprised:  I am surprised how few foreign leaders visited Australia in 2009 (or, for that matter, since the first change of government in Australia since 1996), especially from the major regional powers that so exercise the Government when it comes to the APc and the Defence White Paper.

Photo by Flickr user Mori Yama, used under a Creative Commons license.

Over the last week, I have been consumed by discussion (or, more often, long and rambling monologues) around PM Rudd's Asia-Pacific community (APc) initiative and the question of Australia and regional institutions. I first attended the Asia-Pacific community conference here in Sydney and then I flew off to be part of the Australian delegation to the Australia-New Zealand-ASEAN dialogue in Kuala Lumpur.

It is not a week I would wish to repeat, but each gathering did emphasise two separate and serious problems for the APc and Australia's regionalist urges, which are brought out even more when one compares the run-up to APEC in 1989 to the APc initiative's short and so far largely unsuccessful existence.

The Sydney conference over the weekend (which the Lowy Institute was involved in) emphasised the first problem. Such government-funded conferences (and speechifying by leaders on big new foreign policy ideas like the APc) work best when preceeded by intense private diplomacy to gain concrete support for the idea before it is announced and then discussed.

For a country the size of Australia (not small but not big), located near but not in Asia, gaining prior support for your regional ideas from major Asian states with similar strategic outlooks (say Indonesia or Japan) is particularly advisable. This was the APEC story.

In the case of the APc, it seems that speechifying and conferencing are seen as feasible alternatives to intense diplomacy. Yet so far, no capital beyond Canberra has fully bought into the APc initiative, despite many sharing the geo-strategic concerns underpinning the idea. From the very beginning, the APc has been seriously undercut by bad policy planning and implementation in Canberra. This problem is growing, not diminishing.

Looking closely at Fergus' poll numbers on foreign takeovers by state-owned firms into Australia and into the People’s Republic of China, three things occur to me. One is good for China's integration into the world, one is bad for Western integration with China, and one is bad for Northeast Asian harmony and Prime Minister Hatoyama's dream of an East Asian community centred on Japan and the PRC.

On the good side, Chinese respondents seem genuinely more supportive than Australians of foreign state-owned firms investing in their homeland. When it comes to Singapore (note to Singapore Inc.), a majority of Chinese were in favour while a plurality was in favour of such investment from Canada (note to Alberta’s Heritage Fund).

In the case of the Australians we polled in 2008, majorities opposed investment of this type from each country listed as an option. Australians were the least cool towards state corporations from the UK, but even then 53% were opposed and only 43% were in favour. The US followed with 63% and 34% respectively. I wonder if this shows a warmer attitude in China towards foreign investment in general, or if it is simply that they are more familiar and in favour of state corporations?