ASEAN nations establish regional economic community to compete with India, China

In Malaysia, where Prime Minister Najib Razak is under investigation in a $700 million financial scandal, Obama kept his comments limited to a general call for making government “more accountable, more open, more transparent, to root out corruption”.

The 10 leaders in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed a declaration during their summit establishing the ASEAN Economic Community, as part of a larger ASEAN Community that aims for political, security, cultural and social integration.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang addresses the 18th ASEAN-China summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 21, 2015.

But there was a few disappointment among U.S. officials that Trudeau stuck to his campaign pledge to remove Canada’s warplanes from the coalition fighting Islamic State, despite the view that he could have used the Paris attacks as a reason to hold off on the move.

“The perpetrators of these cowardly and barbaric acts do not represent any race, religion or creed, nor should we allow them to claim to do so”.

“Malaysia stands ready to provide any help and support that we can, and be assured that we stand with you against this new evil that blasphemes against the name of Islam”, he said.

“These, I hope, will eventually not become competing regimes, but the foundations of an integrated economic community in the region”.

The President also reminded that ASEAN and China, which have huge potential for more economic cooperation, must build a mutually beneficial economic partnership to boost two-way trade to US$1 trillion by 2020 and increase two-way investment to $150 billion. “This reflects a long standing national consensus in India on the importance of this region for India and the world”, Modi said.

In charting its future course to 2025, ASEAN aspired to deepen the integration process to realize a rules-based, people-oriented, people-centered ASEAN Community, he added. But as at the recent APEC summit in Manila, there was no escaping the issue of the rising tensions over the South China Sea, with China and four ASEAN countries having overlapping territorial claims.ASEAN leaders have stridently different views on how best to handle the dispute.

Since 2009, China, the world’s second-largest economy, has been ASEAN’s biggest trading partner.

A survey of 1000 small and medium enterprises in Malaysia – one of the more developed countries and the host of the weekend summits – shows more than half of them had no idea what the AEC was, let alone what it could do for their businesses.

ASEAN countries have torn down tariff barriers and have removed a few visa restrictions, but they fall short in more politically sensitive areas such as opening up agriculture, steel, auto production and other protected sectors. Intra-regional trade has remained at around 24 per cent of ASEAN’s total global trade for the last decade, far lower than 60 per cent in the European Union.

ASEAN, founded in 1967, consists of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The remarks came as China and a few ASEAN countries are entangled in territory disputes on the South China Sea.

Unease over China’s push to expand tiny atolls into fully-fledged islands to press its disputed maritime claims also looms over the talks.