Asian Worry on Europe: Will Doors Be Closed?   
International Herald Tribune
May 17, 1993
Michael Richardson

Asia-Pacific nations fear that rising political, ethnic and religious tensions in Europe will force the European Community to become more inward-looking and strengthen protectionism.

Officials and specialists in East Asia are concerned that their region's growing economic power and exports at a time of recession, high unemployment and self-doubt in Europe will make it a prime target for exclusionary policies.

Japan and, to a lesser extent, China, have been strongly criticized by the European Community in recent months over their rising trade surpluses.

Jean-Pierre Leng, ambassador of the EC Commission to Tokyo, warned that the Japanese surplus, which reached $31 billion in 1992, was a "time bomb" that could derail relations with Europe unless it was defused.

Some Asian officials assert that Europe's view of Asia as an economic challenge is particularly prone to exclusionary policies because it is tinged with racism.

Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia said European "uneasiness seems to suggest that Asia today is a more serious threat than even militaristic Japan in the first half of the century."

Running through this perception, he said, "is a current of distrust and fear because East Asia is peopled not by Europeans but by non-Europeans."

H. Abdurrahman Wahid, chairman of the national executive committee of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, said that Europe "must be careful not to degenerate into traditional rivalries" between national, ethnic and religious groups.

He said that European reluctance to punish Christian Serbs for "ethnic cleansing" against Bosnian Muslims was "a clear case of double standards." Europe, he noted, had joined the United States in punishing Iraq for invading Kuwait but had failed to act with resolution against the Serbs.

Asian officials see a welter of European problems - from rising unemployment and social dislocation to doubts about future plans for closer political and monetary union - that will reinforce demands to protect industries and jobs against outside competition, especially from East Asia.

Although East Asian economies have managed to maintain respectable export growth in the midst of recession in Europe by increasing sales to the United States and among themselves, the Community remains an important market.

In 1991, the nine largest East Asian economies minus Japan depended on the Community for from 13.3 percent of total exports, in the case of Indonesia, to 23.6 percent, for China.

However, Celina Lin, an analyst with Peregrine Brokerage Ltd. in Hong Kong, said the Community could afford to adopt a more protectionist stand, since only 18 percent of its exports and 17.4 percent of imports go to, or come from, countries other than the Western industrial democracies and Japan.

"Perhaps even more telling is that the European Community conducts almost two-thirds of its trade within Europe," she said.

In 1991, the nine East Asian countries accounted for 3.8 percent of EC exports, worth $52 billion, and supplied 5.3 percent of its imports, valued at nearly $77 billion.

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