HANDS-ON UNITY: Leaders of the 16 members of the East Asia Summit pose before their fourth meeting in Hua Hin, Thailand, on October 25 (PANG XINGLEI)

The 16 countries agreed to work closely together in the fields of economy, education and combating climate change. They also adopted a statement on disaster management. China, for its part, pledged to increase 2,000 government-funded scholarships and 200 master of public administration scholarships for the developing countries at the summit in the next five years.

Hotly contested issues

Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama highlighted his concept of "an East Asian community" in his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on September 21, and in his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 24. Then Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared its intent to complete the East Asian community in the next 10 to 15 years. Later in October, Hatoyama promoted this concept again at the second trilateral summit of China, Japan and South Korea.

Soon the concept aroused hot discussions worldwide. And the United States became particularly sensitive to it.

In fact, Hatoyama's idea was nothing different from that of Junichiro Koizumi, one of his predecessors. Both advocated East Asian cooperation based on common values and benefit-sharing instead of a geographic framework. Both also intended to build an East Asian community with 16 member countries including India, Australia and New Zealand.

Hatoyama regards this concept as the core of Japanese foreign policy. Ostensibly, he wants to break away from America to join Asia but, in fact, he always becomes hesitant when facing Washington, uncertain as to whether to include the United States into the community or not.

On the other hand, his whole concept lacks specific details. Besides, only given the member countries and objectives suggested by him, his ambition can hardly become reality. In terms of member countries, his suggestion, which has broken the regional identity of East Asia, is unlikely to get universal approval.

As for the objectives, he advocates copying the European Union, a supranational, highly integrated organization. This is a mission impossible for East Asia, a region featuring dramatic diversities and differences in levels of development.

At the second summit of Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders in October, the three nations agreed to make it a long-term goal to build an East Asian community. But this does not mean the Japanese version of the East Asian community has been approved.

China is the earliest country to advocate and support the building of an East Asian community. But this community refers to the ASEAN Plus Three community. China is explicitly opposed to imposing Western values of democracy, freedom and human rights on the community.

Beijing insists that ASEAN Plus Three is the main channel for East Asian cooperation, and the East Asia Summit is an open cooperation forum. It is therefore clear that China does not agree with the Japanese version of an expanded East Asian community.

At the 12th ASEAN Plus Three summit this October, the initiative of establishing an East Asian free trade area, which had been shelved for a long time, was once again put on the agenda.

China suggested promoting the establishment of an East Asian free trade area in a phased manner. This is quite practical. Over the past 12 years, East Asian cooperation has always resorted to ASEAN Plus Three as the main channel. So far, there are already about 50 dialogue mechanisms at different levels established in 18 areas.

What's more, ASEAN has signed bilateral free trade area agreements with China, Japan and South Korea respectively. Based on these, to establish an East Asian free trade area in ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea can be assured a success, with little difficulty and low costs.

Nevertheless, Japan still sticks to its ASEAN Plus Six proposal, which aims to build a comprehensive economic partnership in East Asia with higher level and more members. ASEAN, on the contrary, suggests conducting a parallel study of the two proposals.

Although differences exist among the nations, they all share the common wish of promoting the economic integration in the East Asia. But there is still a long way to go to establish an East Asian free trade area.

Currently in the region, cooperation in specific areas is making rapid progress, but the whole integration process is quite slow. According to the ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan (2007-17) issued two years ago, the region will focus on more concrete and pragmatic cooperation in specific fields in the remaining eight years, instead of developing institutional arrangements such as building an East Asian community. And there is no clear timetable for East Asian integration.

However, this will not impede economic development in the region. In fact, mutually beneficial cooperation in specific fields and projects will deliver tangible benefits to all East Asian nations.

The author is a research fellow with the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences