Agence France Presse | January 8, 2002 | BY BERNICE HAN
SINGAPORE - China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a reminder for Southeast Asian countries to continue with economic reforms or risk being left behind in the global marketplace, incoming WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi said Tuesday.
Supachai, speaking at the one-day regional forum orgainsed by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said he saw China's entry "more or less as a wake up call" for countries in the region to implement economic reforms as quickly as possible.
Such reforms would allow Southeast Asian countries to forge closer economic partnerships with China -- the world's most populous country and fast emerging as an important export market, he said. Closer economic partnerships with Beijing would mean the region would be "less dependent on outside trading forces in major trading areas around the world", Supachai said.
While China is still a long way off from overtaking the United States as the region's most important export market, preparing the groundwork for closer cooperation would ready the region for its inevitable increase in influence.
"China and ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have increasingly become important trade partners," said Zhang Yunling, a director of Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
According to Wang Gungwu, a director at the East Asian Institute based in Singapore, China also has to make an effort if its relationship with Southeast Asia is to flourish.
"For there to be genuine cooperation between China and Southeast Asia, the following conditions must exist," said Wang.
"Firstly, Chinese strategists must shift their mindset and acknowledge that Southeast Asia, among all the four major regions that it borders, offers the greatest security for China but only if it is prosperous and stable," he said.
It was therefore in Beijing's interests to help the region return to the trajectory it was following prior to the 1997-1998 financial crisis, said Wang.
He said the signals coming from China were looking promising for the region.
"There are signs that that recognition has come to the authorities in Beijing and this should be encouraged," he said.
Southeast Asia, for its part, had to try to overcome its history of suspicion towards China.
"The region needs to reconsider carefully if its recent heritage of fear and suspicion is still justified," Wang said.
"If that kind of thinking continues, or if there is evidence that suspicions are indeed justified, then obviously cooperation will be long time coming, if ever."
With Japan's influence waning in the region as Tokyo grapples with deepening economic problems, both China and the region would need to cooperate more than ever should a crisis erupt, experts said.
The dialogue between the two therefore had to be "increasingly open and frank", said Wang.
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