Getting Wen’s attention

But the East Asia Summit is hardly the place to focus on bilateral problems with China. It is a place to observe Beijing’s relentless diplomatic advance in South East Asia and to find ways to cope with the rise of China.

Widely seen as a threat to South East Asia until the early 1980s, China has emerged as the principal economic partner for the region, put its boundary disputes in the South China Sea on the backburner. It is trying to build security partnerships with key countries of the region.

Dr Singh will have his task cut out in convincing the region that India’s Look East policy has some juice left in it.

East is red

While the US sulks at being left out of the East Asia Summit process, and Japan chafes at being marginalised in Asia, China paints east and southeast Asia red.

When it takes hold in 2010, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) would bring nearly 1.7 billion people together into a single market that is worth nearly $ 2 trillion. Beijing’s trade with ASEAN has multiplied 15-fold since 1991 and stood at $ 130 billion. It could reach $160 billion this year and $ 200 billion next year. China is all set to become ASEAN’s largest trading partner.

China has replaced the US as Japan’s largest trading partner. With its deepening economic presence in the Korean peninsula and the prospect of Beijing becoming the subcontinent’s largest trading partner, a Sino-centric Asia is now close to reality.

While Indian analysts, obsessed with the US, debate Asia in old terms, for much of the region China is the principal point of reference in economic and political domains.

India’s ASEAN crisis

India’s trade with ASEAN is also growing, but from a much lower base and at a slower pace. India and the ASEAN have set a target of $ 30 billion for bilateral trade by 2007. India’s immediate problem has less to do with numbers but the deepening crisis in the free trade talks with the ASEAN. At the last round of the meetings in December 2005 at Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN officials publicly ridiculed the long list of nearly 1400 items that the Indian Commerce Ministry proposed to exclude from free trade.

... contd.