Policy Recommendations on
Strengthening the Pillars of East Asian Community Building
 
Introduction
 
1. The Network of East Asian Think-Tanks (NEAT) Fifth Country Coordinators Meeting and its Fourth Annual Conference were held from 21-23 August 2006 at Le Meridien Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. To highlight the approaching tenth anniversary of inter-governmental cooperation in East Asia and to set the stage for further development, the theme of the Conference was “East Asia Cooperation: The Next Ten Years”. A total of 66 participants from the 13 NEAT countries attended.
 
2. The attention of participants focused on two areas. The first area of focus was the submissions made by NEAT countries for the Second Joint Statement on East Asia Cooperation to be adopted by the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) governments in 2007. This follows from the decision taken at the Sixth APT Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Vientiane, Laos, on 27 July 2005 to ‘take into consideration recommendations made by APT mechanisms, such as the Network of East Asia Think-Tanks (NEAT), East Asia Forum (EAF) and others’. Part II contains the summary of NEAT inputs to the Second Joint Statement.
 
3. The second area of focus was the reports of NEAT Working Groups in the areas of:
 
  • Intra-regional Exchange Rate Stability & Prevention of Financial Crisis in East Asia;
  • East Asian Financial Cooperation;
  • Trade-foreign Direct Investment-technology Linkages in East Asia;
  • East Asian Financial Cooperation;
  • Energy Security Cooperation in East Asia; and
  • Overall architecture of community building in East Asia (Regional architectures for non-traditional security and environmental cooperation in East Asia)
 
Part III of this document summarises the Working Group policy recommendations. The full background and rationale of the recommendations can be found in the various reports.
 
4. This Memorandum of Policy Recommendations was formulated, discussed and approved at the Fifth NEAT Country Coordinators Meeting (CCM) and presented to the Fourth Annual Conference. The CCM wishes to place on record its deepest appreciation to all the researchers and institutions that have led, participated or otherwise contributed to NEAT activities.