Moving The Aec Beyond 2015

The ten Southeast Asian economies reached a milestone on 31 December 2015, when they announced the formation of an ASEAN Community. Although this includes three pillars - ASEAN Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community - it is the economic pillar that generates immense debate, due to its expected quantifiable benefits to member countries. This book, thus, focuses on the ASEAN Economic Community and seeks to explain the need for building domestic consensus within the member countries. It starts with an overview chapter describing the current achievements of the AEC. It then explores possible explanations for the achievements/non-achievements and offers a hypothesis on conflicting economic interests in a country as one possible explanation for gaps in implementation. This is because any form of economic liberalisation brings with it the winners and losers, thereby raising resistance to liberalization measures and slowing down the implementation process. The book includes six country chapters - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - that examine sources of domestic conflict/s in greater detail and depth. It also includes a regional chapter, co-authored by the ex-Secretary General of ASEAN, Mr Rodolfo Severino, that brings out the political nature of ASEAN economic cooperation since its inception in 1976.For ASEAN beyond 2015, the book articulates the need to obtain a strong domestic consensus that supports the integration initiatives of the AEC. This can be viewed as a way forward to accelerate and deepen integration within ASEAN. The book concludes with some suggestions on how each country can move towards achieving domestic consensus, based on the respective country level analysis.

Examines regional competition policy developments in South East Asia, exploring a broad range of related issues from diverse perspectives.

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement - the ASEAN FTA - was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of "e;Pivot to Asia"e;, was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization. This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues.

Institutional activities have remarkably transformed East Asia, a region once known for the absence of regionalism and regime-building efforts. Yet the dynamics of this Asian institutionalization have remained an understudied area of research. This book offers one of the first scholarly attempts to clarify what constitutes institutionalization in East Asia and to systematically trace the origins, discern the features, and analyze the prospects of ongoing institutionalization processes in the world’s most dynamic region. Institutionalizing East Asia comprises eight essays, grouped thematically into three sections. Part I considers East and Southeast Asia as focal points of inter-state exchanges and traces the institutionalization of inter-state cooperation first among the Southeast Asian states and then among those of the wider East Asia. Part II examines the institutionalization of regional collaboration in four domains: economy, security, natural disaster relief, and ethnic conflict management. Part III discusses the institutionalization dynamics at the sub-regional and inter-regional levels. The essays in this book offer a useful source of reference for scholars and researchers specializing in East Asia, regional architecture, and institution-building in international relations. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students interested in ASEAN, the drivers and limits of international cooperation, as well as the role of regional multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific region.

Provides the first systematic analysis of new Asian regionalism as a paradigm shift in international economic law.

The services sector plays an important role in ASEAN economies as it accounts for about half of the region's GDP and more than 45 per cent of its total employment. ASEAN aspires to deepen integration in the services sector in order to enhance the sector's contribution to economic development and growth in each country. Despite this, services liberalization has progressed slowly compared to goods liberalization both at the multilateral and the regional levels. Different regulatory mechanisms across countries have contributed to the slow pace of liberalization. Logistics is an important industry in the services sector. The integration of logistics is important for deepening economic integration in ASEAN as it facilitates the movement of goods, services and people within and across countries, among producers and from producers to consumers. In view of its importance, ASEAN has identified logistics as one of its priority integration sectors. It has also developed a Connectivity Master Plan and a Strategic Transport Plan, where logistics plays an important role. This book examines the current state of services liberalization in the ten ASEAN economies. It also assesses the FDI enabling environment and the extent of FDI liberalization in the logistics sector as well as the liberalization challenges encountered in each of the ASEAN economies. The book, thus, provides a comparative picture of services liberalization as well as the state of logistics liberalization and development in each of the ten ASEAN member countries. All these have important bearings on deepening ASEAN economic integration for 2025 and beyond.

The first 50 years of ASEAN integration has brought peace and prosperity to the Southeast Asian region, while the next 50 will undoubtedly be fraught with unprecedented challenges. Today ASEAN not only has to contend with its own internal challenges arising from the highly diverse political, economic and socio-cultural systems of its member countries, it also has to deal with external factors which include shifts in geostrategic balance, fraying global consensus on free trade, populism and xenophobia, climate change, digital revolutions and cybercrimes. Set against the above background, this edited collection considers some of the contemporary issues and challenges faced by ASEAN in its journey towards more cohesive and dynamic regional integration. Among the topics explored are ASEAN’s evolving partnerships with its key strategic partners including China and the United States on economic policies and strategies, educational systems and frameworks, migration and environmental threats.