Chiang Mai Inititative: now in Singapore

Despite its name and its origins lying in Thailand, the Chiang-Mai Initiative Multilateralization will have its surveillance mechanism, and the attendant secretariat, housed in Singapore.

For Thailand this is a bitter pill to swallow, as since 2000 (when the CMI begun), Thailand was the assumed country to house the secretariat. Political instability has cost Thailand dearly again, as this set-back is more than simply embarassing. Unlike the failure to successfully host the East Asian Summit in late 2008 (a farce that saw the EAS rescheduled four times), failure to win the secretariat will cost Thailand influence in the region. The secretariat would have attracted finance and central bank officials to Thailand, and been a site at which Thailand local officials could interact with the region more widely. Instead, Singapore has reinforced its position as a financial hub.

It will be interesting to see how the surveillance mechanism (so-called ASEAN-plus-three Macroeconomic Research Office or AMRO) will work, it is scheduled for activation in May of next year. Already Zheng Xiaosong, Director General of the International Department at China's Ministry of Finance has noted that, "we should prevent it [AMRO] from intervening in other countries' internal affairs, because the so-called monitoring function is, in other words, only a supervision or performance tracing role in order to provide necessary consultation to relevant countries," - suggesting that China still is - at best - disinterested in developing a rigorous surveillance mechanism, with all problems that brings with it.

Japan’s political vacuum, some thoughts.

The Yomiuri Shimbun has just released the results of its latest public opinion poll. Questions included “Do you support the DPJ”, and “who is the most suitable as Prime Minister.” Even though the DPJ (together with its coalition partners) holds a super-majority in Diet, and is therefore theoretically in a position to push through any and all reforms it sees fit, slipping popular support threatens to undermine the psychological basis for successful political leadership. Recall that former PM Koizumi’s ability to go over the head of his own party and directly appeal to the Japanese people was crucial to allowing his reforms to be successfully passed. Thus, the answers to the current polling questions are important in charting where the DPJ goes from here. The chart below summarizes the last six months; the blue line is “do not support Hatayama Cabinet.”

As you can see, the DPJ has fallen from a high of 75% support (red) to 33% and the blue line of “do not support” has gone from 17% to 56% - implying that most Japanese have gone from optimism to pessimism about this administration (see also here). That was certainly the feeling on the ground last month, but why?

The poll result supports Tobias Harris’s argument that the problem with the DPJ and its popularity is Hatoyama himself. In response to the question, “who is the most suitable as Prime Minister?”, Hatoyama name comes not first, but sixth. Indeed, even more bitterly for the DPJ, the opposition LDP Masazoe Yoichi comes first at 29%. This result gives Masazoe further ammunition in his struggle to become Leader of the Opposition against the incumbent Tanigaki. Hatayama even scored lower than his Foreign Minister Okada, Transport Minister Maehara, and Deputy Minister Kan but none exceeded 10% approval in any case.

There are various causes of this decline, but management of the Global Financial crisis seems not to be one of them. Rather domestic issues such as the corruption scandals plaguing the DPJ (focused mostly on Ozawa but Hatayama himself is also under scrutiny) are center stage. Problems relating to the relocation of the US military base at Futenma are also important, as is postal savings reform.

But overall the problem is a lack of “getting things done” – indeed 44% of Japanese cited this as the biggest problem of the Hatoyama administration. So rather than focusing on a project such as the East Asian Community which may or may not “succeed” (and how to even measure that), Hatayama’s next few months ought to focus on getting a clear success. Given his domestic situation, there are opportunities and risks for other countries wishing to cooperate with Japan, but overall Japan’s biggest contribution to East Asia will be to get its ship back in order.

Stern Hu: Limits of the evolution

Coming back to Australia I see how big the Stern Hu corruption charge is, and while no new information is presented here, I will chip in my three cents on China’s Law, Australian identity and the interaction between these two.

Chinese leadership subscribes to the rule by law, rather than the rule of law. The concept of individual rights versus the state is not well established and the basis of western law, that justice be done and be seen to be done is also a principle that has not yet penetrated China. Hence not allowing Australian representatives sit in on hearing as guaranteed under the Consular agreement of 1999.

More than this, China does not distinguish between the state and market in quite the same clear cut (if somewhat artificial manner) of the West. While at the same time, there exists an underlying fear that outsiders, and their even more contemptible Chinese proxies like Hu, will steal Chinese wealth. The first expression of these feelings in modern China might be traced back to the “Three Anti” and “Five Anti” movements of the early 1950s, which targeted westerns and made a ‘sin’ out of “stealing state economic information”.

These ‘old’ ideas seem to have survived in Chinese law. I suspect that the reason for this is the evolutionary nature of change, which allows atavistic traits to survive by dint off their highly infrequent lack of expression – a fact brought on by lack of challenges. For an evolutionary approach to improving Chinese law to work more and more intense interaction with the outside world is necessary – and this is coming. But at the same time, the Chinese side must be willing to let die those laws which do not pass the justice test. Without justice being done, and being seen to be done, it will hard for China and Australia to build a trusting relationship, a relationship pretty valuable to both sides and for the region more widely.

Lowy Linkage

Lowy Institute's Malcolm Cook and I had an exchange on the state of Japan-Australia relationship. Linkage here,

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2010/03/17/Japan-Australia-relations-Signs-of-damage.aspx

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2010/03/23/Japan-Australia-relations-just-fine.aspx

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2010/03/24/Australia-Japan-relations-are-not-fine.aspx

A good exchange of ideas, and informative for all and sundry. Hurrah.

Reflections on the JIIA Syposium on East Asian Community.

Yesterday (17^th) at Prince Hotel the Japan Institute for International Affairs convened a symposium on East Asian community. With the opening speech delivered by Hatoyama himself, and a promise to broadcast the entire proceedings both domestically within Japan and overseas, the event was quite high profile. I will discuss the significance of the symposium, and then reflect on some of the speeches and discussions.

Significance of the symposium:

The presenters themselves represented the cream of Asia’s Track II diplomacy. A point underlined by the fact, in addition to handshakes with the PM, Foreign Minister Okada will meet with the international academics after at dinner. Thus, the conclusions of the symposium will find a place (at least informally) in the policy-making process of Japan, and perhaps more broadly.

And interesting side point, there was a similar symposium at Aoyama Gaku-in on Friday (12^th) last week on East Asian community. This symposium was also populated with high level academics, such as Korea’s former Ambassador to the US Han Sungjun and China’s former Ambassador to France Wu Jianmin and Japan’s former Ambassador to the United Nations Taniguchi Makoto. There are simply too many high-level academics in Tokyo this week for sheer coincidence. This Friday meeting was a really by and for Japanese-only affair with most presentations in Japanese, although English translation was provided. Indeed, I was the only white person in the room who was not a presenter, suggesting that the outputs will only travel as far as Japan.

The nationality of the presenters at the JIIA symposium was also interesting and deliberate. First up, the representatives of Northeast Asia, Shiraishi Takashi (Japan), Gong Ro Myung (Korea), and Wang Li Zhou (China). With Hassan Wirajuda otherwise engaged, Tommy Koh (Singapore) was the only representative from Southeast Asia. Then came the ‘others’, TJ Pempel and Ezra Vogel (US), Rajiv Sikri (India) and Peter Drysdale (Australia). The consensus in the group of academics was clearly in favor of the East Asian Summit as opposed to the ASEAN+3, even Wang (China) was careful to note the value and significance of the 16 party grouping.

Hatoyama’s speech:

Hatoyama’s speech was good, but not ground breaking. That Hatoyama would chose to come (he was unable to come to the Friday meet at Aoyama) to this meeting is significant. It is a symbol that he continues to be interested in the EAc idea and is serious about promoting it. While no major policy shifts were announced, he did make clear his determination to “break open” Japan and pursue a kind of regionalism that will impact on Japan and the Japanese rather than an abstract elite level sort of regionalism. This implies a determination to trump local interests, particularly the agricultural lobby, in the pursuit of Japan’s greater economic and political interests in the region.

Panelist’s Discussions:

Shiraishi Takashi, is never bad to listen to. Shiraishi revealed that the Hatoyama administrations had recently approved of a plan to propose a regional scientific and technical community be established at the East Asia Summit. Another part of Japan’s efforts to lift the significance of the 16 party group and assert its leadership no doubt, but a valuable contribution no less. Shiraishi also identified the biggest problem of the East Asia Summit as the lack of any ‘big’ success. In contrast to the ASEAN Plus Three which will activate of the 24^th the Chiang Mai Initiatives, the EAS has managed only a series of moderate, non-headline grabbing initiatives such as the ERIA. I could not agree more.

Gong Ro-myung, put together a simple presentation focusing on one issue – regional security cooperation. Or more accurately, the lack there of. Gong stated that all the initiatives in East Asia on technical issues, economic and non-traditional security (pandemics, disaster relief, piracy etc) was not spilling over into cooperation in security. He contrasted this to the European experience, and urged the regional governments to let spill over occur. This idea is interesting because it suggests that security cooperation would be a nature occurring phenomena arising from other initiatives but that regional governments are actively preventing it. I imagine he was thinking about the North Korea issue, but this point is true to an extent also in Southeast Asia.

Tommy Koh, was challenged by Funabashi Yoichi (Asahi Shimbun) about the whether the ASEAN deserves to sit in the drivers seat of regional integration. Koh noted that the ASEAN position as driver is due to default, acknowledging that ASEAN not the best driver (ie hardly ideal) for integration but the only one that all were comfortable with.

ASEAN was also challenged by Vogel, who asked Koh is ASEAN was perhaps not up to the task of managing a real crisis (I think security is what he had in mind). In defending the honor for the ASEAN, Koh responded (revealing for first time apparently) by relaying a story about cyclone Nargis and Burma. In the aftermath of the cyclone, the military Junta in Burma initially turned down offers of international food aid, causing additional unnecessary hunger, disease and suffering for its people. ASEAN members confront the Burmese foreign minister (on Buddha’s birthday as the story goes) and demanded that he call his masters and tell them that Burma’s decision not to accept aid is harming the reputation of ASEAN, and that Burma must accept international aid. Like, in the event of Tsunami, ASEAN head of states were able to call each other immediately to coordinate response and help set up an international pledging conference.

While interesting, I do not think Tommy Koh’s response actually answered the question – or answered it indirectly. Managing cyclones and tsunami, which are both natural disasters, can be considered crisis management. But I feel the question was about security, and Koh’s deft side stepping of the issue merely re-enforced the view that ASEAN was in fact not up the task.

All in all, a highly interesting symposium. Thanks go to Yuzawa Takashi for setting up and the participants.