Concept Paper of the NEAT Working Group on
"The Road Towards the East Asia Economic Community (EAEC) 2020"
Sponsored by NEAT China, 2016
Background
ASEAN Plus Three (APT) cooperation has made substantial progress over the past 17 years in promoting trade and investment relations between ASEAN and the Plus Three countries, strengthening regional financial safety net such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) to maintain financial stability in ASEAN and East Asia, developing efficient and liquid regional bond markets, mitigating the threat of climate change to the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors in East Asia, and many other areas of cooperation, including environmental protection, disaster management, disease prevention and control, and cross-cutting issues such as connectivity (encompassing the physical, institutional and people-to-people linkages) and narrowing the development divide.
The idea of the EAEC has originated in the rather long history of APT cooperation. The East Asia Vision Group (EAVG)Ⅰ, which was launched against the backdrop of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and tasked to draw up a vision for mid-to-long term cooperation in East Asia, presented to the APT Summit in 2001 its final report titled “East Asia Community of Peace, Prosperity and Progress”, which laid a solid ground work for the future direction of East Asian regional cooperation.
Taking into account that 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the EAVGⅠreport and that 2012 marks the 15th anniversary of APT cooperation, the Republic of Korea (ROK) proposed to set up the EAVGⅡat the 13th Ha Noi APT Summit in 2010 to review and assess all cooperation activities implemented/being implemented within the framework of APT, and carefully reflect on the future direction of the APT process and regional cooperation in East Asia. The APT leaders welcomed the proposal of the ROK and agreed to “task relevant officials to implement this initiative.” Then the EAVGII was established and the EAVGII Report, which recommended the realization of an East Asia Economic Community (EAEC) by 2020 as the main pillar of APT vision, was submitted to and adopted at the ATP Commemorative Summit in 2012 in Cambodia.
For the full text of the report, click here.
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