Scholars prefer FTA to TPP for East Asian countries

The scholars of South Korea and Japan expressed opinion that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being pushed ahead by the United States and China will have an innate limitation of touching off confrontation between the two giants countries and is also feared to become a stumbling block for regional economic development in East Asia. 

The opinion was forwarded in the second East Asian Community Forum held at the International Studies Hall in Korea University on May 25-26. Concerned scholars from South Korea, Japan and China attended the forum. Matters concerning economic cooperation in East Asia are not confined only to economy but have close relationship with politics in the region, the scholars said about TPP. 

However, preferable forms of free trade agreement in East Asia were found to be different between Japan and China. China preferred a format of the ASEAN plus three (South Korea, Japan, China) while Japan wanted a format of the ASEAN plus six adding three more countries of India, Australia and New Zealand. 

In the meantime, Prof. Kang Sung-jin of Korea University said “the TPP, a multilateral trade agreement among the nations having wide disparities in economic capabilities, is forecast to be far more difficult to be formed than that of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), a bilateral format.” South Korea, Japan and China, three economic pillars in the region, are expected to go ahead for the tripartite FTA among themselves rather than the TPP, he forecast. 

Prof. Kim Ik-soo of Korea University also said “TPP is feared to cause a contest of strength between the U.S. and China amid the logic of check and balance. What is important for tripartite FTA among South Korea, Japan and China is to continue the negotiations steadily, though it takes a long time, without cease. 

The forum also dealt with nuclear security and scholars in the meeting emphasized the importance of Chinese role in the nuclear safety. The scholars also said that the regional cooperations for nuclear safety has become important since the accident of Fukushima atomic power plant last year. 

South Korea, Japan and China have different status concerning the nuclear capabilities. China is a full-fleldged nuclear power and Japan, though having no nuclear weapon, enjoys high nuclear status having nuclear reprocessing facility. But, South Korea has neither weapons nor reprocessing facilities. The three nations would be hard to have unified opinion on issue of nuclear safety due to different status. 

In connection with this, Prof. Kim Young-ho of the National Defense College said the three nations are needed to unify their opinion on nuclear safety first of all. They are asked to cooperate in the field of handling nuclear waste and their storage and to establish nuclear security education center, he further said. 

Kim Bong-hyun, deputy minister for multilateral and global affairs who took part as a South Korean representative in the 2012 Nuclear Summit held in Seoul last March, emphasized the importance of Chinese positive efforts for nuclear security, saying that China looked less positive on the matter during the summit last March.

He further said “the Seoul Summit was focused on peaceful use of nuclear power. However, in the next summit to be held in 2014 in the Netherlands, a heated discussion on nuclear security involving North Korea move to develop nuclear weapon should be made. For effective cooperation on the matter of nuclear security, a tripartite cooperative community among South Korea, Japan and China is asked to be formed.” 

The forum, held to commemorate 20th anniversary of normalizing diplomatic relationship between South Korea and China, was aimed at forecasting mutual relationship among the major countries in East Asia and new regional cooperative structure. The third forum will be held in Japan next year under a formula of holding it alternately among the three nations.

Choi Sun-hwa sun@theasian.asia