Association Of Southeast Asian Nations Plus Research Articles

ASEAN and The Reform of Investor-State Dispute Settlement: Global Challenges and Regional Options

As a 10-country bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is poised to ascend to the fourth largest economy in the world by 2030.2 The ASEAN-centered framework premised on the ASEAN Economic Community and ‘ASEAN Plus Six’ free trade agreements (FTAs) has led to new Asian regionalism, which has galvanized paradigm shifts in the international order.3 This framework also culminated in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest trade pact by economic scale. Given ASEAN’s pivotal role in regional trade and security, recent Indo-Pacific strategies of major powers reinforce the importance of ASEAN centrality and ASEAN-led mechanisms.4 The legalization of ASEAN’s internal and external trade and investment pacts has transformed the ASEAN way, which conventionally denotes the code of conduct and the decision-making process based on consultations and consensus. Distinct from the European Union (EU), ASEAN has developed the approach of pragmatic incrementalism to enable structural flexibilities for binding rules, thus balancing soft and hard law obligations. Along with trade law, investment law forms an integral part of ASEAN’s legal architecture and is paramount to the sustainable growth of ASEAN developing countries. One of the most challenging issues in investment law is investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), which has encountered massive backlash.5 At the multilateral stage, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) entrusted Working Group III to discuss procedural reforms for ISDS under investment agreements.6 Asian States have yet to form a unified stance on reform proposals. However, in light of ongoing ISDS debates, ASEAN’s experience will provide valuable lessons for the Global South and enrich discussions about reforming investment legislation and treaties.

New Investment Rulemaking in Asia: Between Regionalism and Domestication

AbstractThe article analyses investment rulemaking in new Asian regionalism in the context of evolving national legislation and regional trade strategies. It argues that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) represent Asia's pragmatic incrementalism in reforming the investment regime. The process reinforces the relationship between international economic law and domestic investment laws. In tandem with transforming international investment agreements, ASEAN expedited investment and services trade, and established the modern investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. The RCEP further buttresses the ASEAN centrality in regional frameworks by consolidating ASEAN Plus One agreements. Yet, the RCEP's omission of ISDS reflects a distinct approach that may confront challenges to state-to-state proceedings and treaty shopping under overlapping pacts. Finally, the research sheds light on Asian countries' recent investment agreements and domestic dispute settlement that complement the liberal international order. These developments provide valuable models for developing countries and contribute to the understanding of global investment reforms from an Asian perspective.

COVID-19 Strengthens the Solidarity and Association of Southeast Asian Nations - Japan Cooperation

This article examines the initiatives of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Japan through the cooperation of Government to Government (G2G) and the Special ASEAN Summit to combat the pandemic collectively. The initial cooperation through the coordinated “Integrated Recovery Plan” has been very significant for the future of ASEAN and the resilience of a post-COVID-19 world by way of maintaining market stability in order to avoid the potential risk of economic recessions and public health emergencies. This synergism is seen as one of the best mechanisms to help ASEAN in ensuring socio-economic activities are restored and the welfare of about 600 million people is addressed. This research found that ASEAN Plus Three (APT) cooperation should formulate a Regional Recovery Plan and emphasize that the continuity of the supply chain should be maintained to ensure a smooth flow of food and medical supplies. Secondly, APT cooperation needs to be committed to the continuation of opening up markets, maintaining normal trade, services and investment flow in order to continue strengthening regional economic resilience. Thirdly, APT needs to formulate a plan that focuses not only on financial aspects (post-COVID-19 economic recovery) but also on social security networks, food security and education.

Age-Friendly Environments in ASEAN Plus Three: Case Studies from Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Promoting age-friendly environment is one of the appropriate approaches to support quality of life toward ageing populations. However, the information regarding age-friendly environments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three countries is still limited. This study aimed to survey the perceived age-friendly environments among ASEAN Plus Three older populations. The study employed cross-sectional quantitative research using multistage cluster sampling to select a sample of older adults in the capital cities of Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. The final sample was composed of 2171 older adults aged 55 years and over, including 140 Japanese, 510 Thai, 537 Malaysian, 487 Myanmarese, and 497 Vietnamese older adults. Data collection was conducted using a quantitative questionnaire with 20 items of perceived age-friendly environments with the rating scale based on the World Health Organization (WHO) standard. The score from the 20 items were analyzed and examined high-risk groups of “bad perception level” age-friendly environments using ordinal logistic regression. The research indicated the five highest inadequacies of age-friendly environments including: (1) participating in an emergency-response training session or drill which addressed the needs of older residents; (2) enrolling in any form of education or training, either formal or non-formal in any subject; (3) having opportunities for paid employment; (4) involvement in decision making about important political, economic and social issues in the community; and (5) having personal care or assistance needs met in the older adult’s home setting by government/private care services. Information regarding the inadequacy of age-friendliness by region was evidenced to guide policy makers in providing the right interventions towards older adults’ needs.

English and language-in-education policy in the ASEAN Plus Three Forum

The ASEAN Plus Three Forum is a regional forum that facilitates political, economic and educational cooperation between the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that are...

Access policy on English language education at the primary school level in the ASEAN Plus Three member states: motivations, challenges and future directions

With English becoming increasingly important for achieving success in twenty-first-century global competition, policies to introduce the language to primary school children have proliferated in Asia, including the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three member states. Although there have been attempts to evaluate English language-in-education policies at the primary school level in Asia, no cross-national study has systematically examined the issue in the context of ASEAN Plus Three member states: Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea. This article examines access policies on English language education at the primary school level in those member states. It outlines access policy from the language-in-education policy perspective and discusses the motivations underpinning it. It also analyses challenges to providing primary school children with access to English through scrutiny of literature. Finally, future directions in relation to policy and research are provided.

Regionalising resource security in the Asia-Pacific: the challenge of economic nationalism

In recent years, efforts to institutionalise resource security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region have intensified. Soaring world prices for minerals and energy have seen a range of resource security strategies launched—through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Plus Three, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the East Asia Summit—all of which aim to promote intergovernmental dialogue, policy coordination and the integration of regional resource markets. However, the practical achievements of these regional efforts have been limited, as none have advanced beyond dialogue activities to more formalised types of resource security cooperation. This article examines the dynamics of these abortive attempts to regionalise resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, arguing that economic nationalist resource policy preferences held by governments have acted as a major obstacle to cooperation. Through an analysis of national resource policy regimes and the outputs of recent cooperative efforts, it demonstrates how economic nationalism has encouraged inward-looking and sovereignty-conscious actions on the part of major resource players in the Asia-Pacific. As a result, intergovernmental resource cooperation has been limited to informal and voluntary ‘soft-law’ initiatives, which have not made a substantive contribution to the resource security of economies in the region.

Comment on “Politics of Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Cooperation”

Comment on “Politics of Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Cooperation”

ASEAN in 2010

As usual, 2010 was an extremely busy year for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Not only was this busyness reflected in the usual flurry of communiques, declarations, and statements emanating from the numerous summit meetings and ministerial gatherings throughout the year. It was also manifested in the innumerable meetings and cooperative activities among hundreds of officials, working groups, task forces, and non-state groups on a dizzying variety of subjects. These subjects ranged from political and security issues (traditional and nontraditional) and measures for regional economic integration to the environment, energy and climate change, drugand people-trafficking, education and health. They took place in a variety of ASEAN-centred and ASEAN-initiated frameworks and forums. These frameworks and forums included the ten-member ASEAN itself, ASEAN's cooperation with its ten Dialogue Partners (Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States), the twenty-seven-state ASEAN Regional Forum, and ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan, and South Korea), together and one at a time. The meetings and other activities also took place in the five-yearold East Asia Summit, again collectively and individually, now including Russia and the United States, as well as the ten ASEAN countries, the three Northeast Asian states, Australia, India, and New Zealand. Some of them produced practical agreements and decisions to take collective action. All served to build mutual understanding and confidence and, at the very least, promoted valuable contacts, networking, and even personal friendships. However, 2010 was also unprecedented in ASEAN's history. It was the first time that the period of the ASEAN chairmanship coincided with the calendar year. This was as prescribed in the new ASEAN Charter, which had gone into effect in December 2008. Thus, ASEAN operated under Vietnam's chairmanship

Regions in the world: The EU and East Asia as foreign policy actors

This article argues that multidimensional regional processes have an external projection that may be explained by their semi-liberal governance structures. It analyses the European Union (EU) and the East Asian grouping of countries, focussing on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the active participation of Japan, South Korea and the People's Republic of China within ASEAN Plus Three. Both regional processes have a multi-level external projection as seen in their links with key states (especially the United States), other regional processes, and global regimes like the UN and the G20. In both cases, one finds that public actors have to collaborate with private actors, although they do so in a restricted fashion and often using think tanks and elite public-private intellectual (track-2) actors. The comparative analysis concludes with some hypotheses regarding the consolidation of regional processes in the world.

Comment on “American Economic Relations with Asia”

Comment on “American Economic Relations with Asia”

Regionalism's multiple negotiations: ASEAN in East Asia

This article explains East Asian regionalism as the product of two sets of negotiations. The first negotiation is between East Asia on the one hand and global forces and structures on the other. The second negotiation is intra-regional and includes a critical negotiation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Southeast Asia and East/Northeast Asia, which also provides the primary focus of this article. This article details ASEAN's extensions into East Asian regionalism as part of interdependent efforts to adapt transitioning global and regional systems. Conceiving these regional negotiations to be not just economic and utilitarian but first and foremost normative, this article details the opportunities and dilemmas represented by ‘East Asia’ for ASEAN, ASEAN-Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia as a meaningful organizing principle. Dilemmas associated with the ASEAN Plus Three process, an East Asia free-trade area and the ASEAN Charter provide illustrations of East Asia's understood challenges for Southeast Asia in addition to the ways that Southeast Asian agencies have been shaping the form and content of recent East Asian efforts and also how regional-global and intra-ASEAN negotiations continue to provide key constraints.

Economic surveillance as a new mode of regional governance: contested knowledge and the politics of risk management in East Asia

Most critics argue that ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Plus Three regional surveillance is limited by its peer review process because governments reject external interference in matters of domestic economic management. This article suggests that surveillance's limits also arise because of a more fundamental conflict over how financial/economic risk is problematised. The governmentality framework and the East Asian experience reveal how the process of constituting economic/financial risk using disciplinary knowledge is inherently subjective and, consequently, political and open to contestation. In addition to the contested nature of disciplinary knowledge, three other phenomena—the prevalence of imitative behaviour in markets, the value of practical knowledge for governance and the problem of ‘ambiguous economics’—complicate surveillance and make it difficult for surveillance processes to deliver objective and neutral assessments, despite a genuine demand for them. In view of these realities, the ideal institutional form for surveillance appears to be a non-hierarchical setting in which dialogic interactions take centre stage, thereby allowing surveillance participants to debate assessments, offer reasons for adopting particular practices, exchange practical experiences and collectively work out responses to contested issues. However, these are precisely the features of the present surveillance structure that critics argue ought to be changed in favour of a more hierarchical mechanism. This article's analysis of surveillance using the governmentality framework leads to the counter-intuitive insight that surveillance is best structured as a form of Habermasian ‘public sphere’.

Comment on “Japan's Security Policy in East Asia”

I find myself much in agreement with the general argument of Auslin and Green (2007) on the main elements of Japanese strategic thinking, which are based on the fear of isolation, the calculation of the geopolitical strength of China, and the accommodation to the prevailing international order. I will comment very generally on the last two elements before I give a South-East Asian perspective of the security policy of Japan. On the matter of a rising China, I agree with the authors’ argument that the present Japanese policy toward it is one of engagement and containment, not unlike that of the USA. As to the Japanese accommodation to the prevailing order, it is manifestly obvious that Japan perceives that order after World War II, and especially after the Cold War, to be American dominated. Yet the difficulties the Americans are now facing in Iraq can have profound consequences for the US global position. The longer the USA is involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greater the likelihood, the authors argue, of the redeployment of US troops from East Asia. But what is the Japanese thinking on the impact of these wars on the US position in East Asia? Despite extensive Japanese involvement in South-East Asia after the war, that involvement had been primarily economic. South-East Asians had for long not accepted a direct Japanese security role in South-East Asia for fear that Japan could repeat the experience of World War II. Thus, in 1977, a very important landmark in Japan–Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relations, the Fukuda Doctrine, took account of South-East Asian sensitivity by rejecting a Japanese military role in South-East Asia. That sensitivity was still manifest in the 1980s when the Philippines and Indonesia expressed their concern over a statement by the Nakasone government about the extent of Japan’s defense perimeter. Today, the South-East Asian mood is changing. One important indicator is that there have been few objections, if any, by important South-East Asian leaders to recent Japanese actions on the security level that suggest a trend towards a “normal” nation. These actions include the upgrading of the defense agency into a ministry and the dispatch of ships to aid the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) effort in Afghanistan, and of troops to Iraq. Such dispatches cannot be construed to be directly related to Japan’s defense, and go well beyond South-East Asia from Tokyo. What has led to this changed mood? One reason is the increasing South-East Asian perception that the Japanese had played a constructive role in their region since the war. Through their aid, investment, and trade, the Japanese played a very big part in the economic development of the region. It is unlikely, given this record, that a Japanese military role in the region will be a resurrection

Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order

Since the Asian financial crisis of 1998, regional scholars and diplomats have maintained that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represents an evolving economic and security community. In addition, many contend that what is known as the ASEAN process not only has transformed Southeast Asia's international relations, but has started to build a shared East Asian regional identity. ASEAN's deeper integration into a security, economic, and political community, as well as its extension into the ASEAN Plus Three processes that were begun after the 1997 financial crisis, offers a test case of the dominant assumptions in both ASEAN scholarship and liberal and idealist accounts of international relations theory. Three case studies of ASEAN operating as an economic and security community demonstrate, however, that the norms and practices that ASEAN promotes, rather than creating an integrated community, can only sustain a pattern of limited intergovernmental and bureaucratically rigid interaction.

China's Cross-Regional FTA Initiatives: Towards Comprehensive National Power

Introduction Since the late 1980s and the advent of reforms led by Deng Xiaoping, China has pursued an increasingly export-oriented trade policy, accompanied by selective domestic agricultural and industrial restructuring, privatization and internationalization.1 But while China has long been a vigorous global trader and has entered into numerous trade and economic agreements with partners around the world, Beijing's leaders are relative newcomers to free trade agreements (FTAs) . This is particularly so compared with counterparts in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, and some of China's Asian neighbours such as South Korea, Thailand and Singapore. For example, when Pangestu and Gooptu in mid-2003 listed 36 Asian FTAs completed or contemplated, that list included twelve entries involving Singapore, ten involving South Korea, and five involving Japan, plus more than a half-dozen arrangements involving Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) group. However, China appeared only twice on the list, once regarding a possible China-ASEAN FTA and the other time regarding the even looser ASEAN Plus Three discussions.2 No bilateral FTA was on China's agenda at that time.3

Editors' Overview

Editors' Overview

Comment on “Free Trade Agreements and the Prospects for Regional Integration in East Asia”

Comment on “Free Trade Agreements and the Prospects for Regional Integration in East Asia”

Multilateralism, Regionalism, Bilateral and Crossregional Free Trade Arrangements: All Paved with Good Intentions for ASEAN?

Current initiatives in Asia and Asia Pacific regionalism are responses to regionalism happening elsewhere in the context of globalization, information communication technology and knowledge‐based economy. The conclusion is that many economies are ‘having it both ways’ in multilateralism under World Trade Organization (WTO) and new regionalism. The argument is that the ‘first best’ theory of free trade under multilateralism and WTO have fallen short. A ‘second best’ theory of new regionalism has been acknowledged by the Doha ministerial declaration to complement and supplement WTO. Both Asia challenged Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of South‐East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are challenged by ASEAN Plus Three (APT), which originated from the Asian crisis in the failed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). Singapore has responded to these challenges in bilateral trading agreements, driven by its idiosyncratic features of a small, city–state economy and frustrated by laggard ASEAN. Increasingly, there is a divergence in macroeconomic policy between Singapore and ASEAN in terms of openness and competition. The dilemma in Singapore's strategy of bilateral trading agreements and foreign economic trade policy is precisely this divergence in macroeconomic philosophy and policy. The pressure on ASEAN is no less from APT, China and regionalism elsewhere than from Singapore. However, the present paper concedes that bilateral and crossregional trading arrangements are still second best, and that broader regionalism and multilateralism are still superior. With so many regional trading arrangements and emerging competition policy there may be rules of origin or ‘spaghetti bowl’ effects for Singapore. In ‘realpolitiks’ and real political economy, the balancing of gains and benefits is not easy.

ASEAN and the Asia‑Pacific in the 1990s

I shall not in this paper discuss the various concepts of an Asian-Pacific commu nity as put forward by scholars and non-scholars alike. Such range on the one hand from the widest one that any nation that has any conceivable relation with the Pacific Ocean can be members, and on the other to one that would confine membership to the market economies of the five advanced nations of Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Papua New Guinea and the countries of the South Pacific. Nor will I trace the various developments towards the concrete realization of this Asian-Pacific community. Such developments have been primarily in the non-governmental sphere (since 1984, the ASEAN states have initiated a governmental dialogue between their foreign ministers and their counterparts from the five advanced countries of the Asia-Pacific, a dialogue known as ASEAN Plus Five), though such efforts have not led to anything remotely comparable to the European Economic Community or even anything resembling the cohesion of ASEAN. The literature is reasonably plentiful on both and is quite accessible.1 Nor will I discuss the political aspects of any proposed Asian-Pacific commu nity not only because it is controversial ? some fear that it could be turned into an anti-communist bloc or even a military alliance after the fashion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)2 ? but because all the excitement gener ated about the Pacific century derives not from politics but economics. At any rate, I do not foresee any profound transformation of the political balance now maintained by the United States and the Soviet Union in the Asia-Pacific, though there may be varying degrees of adjustment of the relative strengths of both in the 1990s. And indeed, proponents of the Pacific century have waxed eloquent on the economic aspect! On a somewhat hyperbolic level, some predict that the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries will see the global centre of economic gravity shifting to the Pacific just as in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century this gravity had moved to the Atlantic from the Mediterranean where it had begun. This talk of a vast quasi-Hegelian movement, with the time of progress perhaps implied though not explicitly stated, is a particular addiction of some Japanese writers3 somewhat caught up with the notion of their nation as being in the forefront of world history. On a more specific level, many refer to the