asean

December 21, 2012

Since the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was launched in 2010, China has now become the organization's largest trading partner. Now to catch up with bilateral economic achievements, cultural exchange and cooperation are being emphasized.

India's decision to accede to the 1976 Asean Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in July 2003 was considered a major milestone in its diplomatic annals due to its swiftness and timeliness. Immediately, it upgraded India's status as well as its role in Asean.

It is wrong to suggest Australia has to choose between the US alliance and collaborating with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. We can do both, but the trick lies in how we manage that. Greater engagement with Southeast Asia would augment our relationship with the US and China.

Fresh from the visit of US President Barack Obama, Thailand is set to host Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this week. Although president Obama's visit took much of the attention of the press, the Chinese leader's visit is no less significant. The visit is very important in the relationship between the two countries, which will become increasingly sophisticated along as China continues to rise economically and politically.

Southeast Asian leaders endorsed a controversial human rights pact on Sunday during an annual summit in which they also focused on bruising territorial rows and deadly unrest in Myanmar. The leaders also plan to launch talks on a planned free trade zone that covers ASEAN and six other countries including China, Japan, and Australia.

ASEAN+3 (China, Japan and South Korea) youth leaders'symposium was held on Thursday, aiming at strengthening and broadening friendly relations between the two sides. Addressing the two-day meeting, Pit Chamnan, secretary of state at Cambodia's Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, praised the close cooperation between ASEAN and Plus 3 countries.

From that point on, Asean may begin to consider the prospects for developing its own collective “soft power.” Since Asean countries individually and together do not amount to much in hard power terms, that which is taken to be soft power, for what it is worth, may also be Asean’s best bridge to the future.

The result, as one Japanese analyst put it, was that “China scored an own goal,” immediately reversing what had been a favourable trend in bilateral relations under the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. More generally, while China spends billions of yuan in efforts to increase its soft power in Asia, its behaviour in the South China Sea contradicts its own message

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