- Published on Wednesday, 21 November 2012 19:04
- Written by Bloomberg News
CHINA, Japan and South
Korea started talks on a free-trade agreement vital to an Asia-wide
deal in a move to forge closer economic ties even as they spar over
disputed islands.
The countries,
representing three of Asia’s four biggest economies, will hold the first
round of talks early next year, they said in a joint statement.
Those negotiations are
key to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a 16-nation
accord also announced on Tuesday that Southeast Asian countries called
“the world’s biggest regional free-trade deal.”
“The missing piece of
the jigsaw puzzle as far as Asia is concerned is the agreement among the
three Northeast Asian countries,” said John Ravenhill, a professor at
Canberra-based Australian National University. “The negotiations that
were supposed to have started between those three countries have been
put on hold because of the disputes over the South China Sea and other
islands.”
Competing visions for
an Asia-Pacific trade bloc reflect the struggle for dominance by
economic powers over a region that is increasingly a driver of global
growth.
US President Barack
Obama is seeking to expand trade ties with Asian nations and regain
economic influence among countries that are growing more reliant on
China in an area that contains sea lanes vital to world commerce.
Last week Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton welcomed China and other Asian nations to join
the 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that the US aims to
combine with other regional trade agreements to transform global
commerce. Thailand and Japan are interested in joining the talks, Ben
Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, said on Tuesday.
“They’re committed to
getting those negotiations concluded with an aim to doing so next year
so that they can complete that trade agreement,” he said in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia, after Obama met with leaders from countries involved in the
TPP talks.
The discussions on
trade proceeded even as China’s territorial disputes surfaced at five
days of meetings in Cambodia hosted by the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations that ended on Tuesday. Obama, who met with Japan’s Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao separately on
Tuesday, called the US-Japan military alliance the “cornerstone” of
regional security.
“With the increasing
severity of the security environment in East Asia, the importance of the
Japan-US alliance is increasing evermore,” Noda, who faces re-election
next month, said in a meeting with Obama. “I would like to proceed with
concrete cooperation to develop our alliance.” Bloomberg News
China has demanded
that Japan withdraw from its September purchase of islands known as
Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Anti-Japan protests have reduced
China sales at Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co.
“It’s not good, to be
honest,” Qin Gang, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told
reporters on Tuesday, referring to his country’s relationship with
Japan. “But the reason is not on China’s part.”
Wen downplayed the
disputes on Tuesday and urged leaders to focus on maintaining the peace
and stability that has underpinned Asia’s economic growth since World
War II, according to Fu Ying, China’s vice foreign minister. China has
been Asean’s largest trading partner since 2009.
“We do not want to
give overemphasis to the territorial disputes and the differences,” she
told reporters. “We do not think it’s a good idea to spread the sense of
tension in this region.”
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