China Defeat Japan at ASEAN Diplomatic War

At the summit talk of ASEAN, (Association of South-East Asian Nations), held in Bali, Indonesia on October 7-8, China and Japan struck up a nerve war to spread out more of its influences on ASAEN. The diplomatic war ended up in favor with China, scoring a unanimous decision.

China has concluded a cooperative treaty, sort of a nonaggression pact, with the ASEAN countries, consenting to juice up its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) progression. Japan however, has not brought on any distinctive fruit from the talk.

October 8, the Japanese newspaper, Mainichi Shim bun, brought out some ASEAN countries their complaints saying, “Japan treats us inhospitably, coming round to the American obeying diplomacy.”

China, responded to ASEAN’s plan of merging south-east Asian countries into a one, united economic circle until 2020, coming to a mutual agreement to draw in their day of FTA conclusion.

China came out with their plan of economic support to Myanmar and Cambodia, also to carry out visa exemption services to travelers from Singapore and Brunei.

“The conclusion of the cooperative treaty with ASEAN proved our effort to treat ASEAN countries as our cooperation partner for the future,” remarked the Vice Foreign Minister of China, Wangii. “The relationship between China and ASEAN has faced up with the new phase.”

Giving out its enthusiasm for FTA conclusion between Korea, Japan and China at the summit talk, China also took a firm grip on the far-east Asian FTA discussion, analyzed one of the foreign affair researchers.

On the other hand, Japan, reasoned the overlapped contents between ASEAN cooperation treaty and Japan-U.S. Security Pact, ran through passive tactics. As for FTA, they reconfirmed their position, “We will carry it out as quickly as possible.”

ASEAN was founded in 1967, for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand for the purpose of keeping down south-east Asian countries’ turn-over to communism. Originally, it was created to protect these countries from the threat of China, but has instead, made the two sides into the most familiar relations.

parkwj@donga.com