But Go-Fast and Go-Slow Approaches Divide APEC Forum : Pacific Groping Way Toward Free Trade 
International Herald Tribune
November 9, 1994
Michael Richardson 

Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister, once joked that APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, was "four adjectives in search of a noun."

As officials of the eighteen APEC countries gather in Jakarta for the start on Friday of two meetings that are intended to hasten trade and investment liberalization in the region, Mr. Evans's joke has a ring of truth, while the vision of President Bill Clinton of a Pacific community of like- minded nations still seems very far from reality.

As APEC tries to move beyond rhetoric to grapple with the conflicting interests of its diverse members, it is finding that giving real substance to the Pacific community vision will be a long and arduous task.

"The fact is that the Pacific rim is at least a generation behind Europe in terms of formal economic integration, and a number of key Asian governments are reluctant to accept mutually binding commitments to bring down barriers to free trade and investment," a Western diplomat said Tuesday.

That reluctance was underscored by Jiang Zemin, China's president, shortly before departing from Beijing on a tour of Southeast Asia that will include attendance at an APEC leaders' meeting in Bogor, Indonesia.

Speaking through an interpreter, Mr. Jiang said China supported regional trade liberalization as a long-term objective. "However, in view of the diversity of the Asia-Pacific countries, this timetable should be very flexible," he added.

APEC was formed in 1989 and now includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Chile will become a full member by joining the meeting of APEC foreign and trade ministers on Friday.

Two separate groups of in-house experts, including one made up of business executives, recently proposed that the APEC meeting should agree to set a date between 2010 and 2020 for achieving regional free trade.

The United States, Australia and Singapore are among the strongest supporters of a free-trade timetable. They want a deadline set to maintain APEC's momentum and credibility as a body for reducing barriers to the movement of goods, services and capital in the Pacific rim.

Analysts, however, said that China, Japan and South Korea were wary of making firm commitments on free trade because it could deny national governments control over politically sensitive decisions affecting their economies.

Japan, which will be chairman of the next APEC summit in Osaka in 1995, also wants to avoid having to deal with fractious disputes during its tenure.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday that given the importance of reaching agreement by consensus in APEC, and the long time remaining for realizing the goal, liberalization would proceed only in ways that all could accept.

Neither Japanese farmers nor providers of financial services - areas that would be hard pressed with full liberalization - need feel threatened, the official said.

"When we go forward, we have to proceed in a realistic and pragmatic way and take into account the fact that there is a diversity of economic stages among the members," he said.

Malaysia appears to be the most strongly opposed of all the APEC countries to the free-trade timetable, fearing it will open the way for domination of smaller APEC economies by more developed ones.

Mahathir bin Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, boycotted the APEC summit in Seattle but will attend the Bogor meeting out of deference to Indonesia.

But Rafidah Aziz, the Malaysian international trade and industry ministry, said recently that even if an agreement on free trade was hammered out in Bogor, it would be an "academic exercise."

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