Unexplained hold-up comes even as PM prepares to go east to expand India footprint.
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepared to travel to Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam to reinvigorate India’s ‘Look East’ policy over the next week, word came from Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan’s government a few days earlier that it was not been able to “internally clear” the much-vaunted Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Cepa) that was supposed to help place both nations in the vanguard of a regional economic revolution.
“The negotiations have been completed, but the Japanese side has told us that they still have to complete some internal discussions,” foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said today.
Rao put on a brave face on Japan’s inability to focus on the India story in the face of the growing tension between Tokyo and Beijing that has consumed Kan’s government, as did other officials in Delhi, who insisted the “conclusion of the complex free trade negotiations is a development of enormous satisfaction”.
Asean concerns
Clearly, though, a sense of disappointment remains, especially since the Cepa with Japan would have enormously strengthened the hands of the economist-Prime Minister as he travels to the India-Asean summit and the East Asia summit in Vietnam on October 30.
It is believed Japan cited a “lack of adequate number of translators” to translate the thick CEPA document from English to Japanese. To which, Delhi, keenly aware of the need to build a healthy alliance with one of the world’s biggest economies and a strong Asian power, preferred to maintain a diplomatic silence.
The Cepa would have completed the PM’s triumph and elevated him to the status of a serious partner in the eyes of Asean, which seems both beholden as well as besieged by the spectre of the continually rising Chinese economic giant, analysts said. It was at the Asean summit in Thailand last year that the PM pushed through the India-Asean free trade agreement in goods over severe domestic opposition.
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Next week, on the eve of the East Asia summit, Manmohan Singh will meet his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, but the photo-opportunity will hardly be of serious economic significance. According to G V C Naidoo, of the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University here, “China remains the focus of the East Asia summit, but as the Chinese have lately begun to adopt an aggressive posture, the region has become very wary of China. With the Americans still emerging from their own recession, there is a growing feeling that India is the only country that can in the future match China’s power.”
Analysts like Naidoo say while India was a long way off from becoming an equal of China, trade and investment pacts with large economies like Japan and South Korea would expand India’s footprint into this part of the world. That is why India’s proposed Ceca with Malaysia – where the PM is headed after Japan – is interesting, although external affairs’ ministry officials refused to give details of the pact.
Economic partnership agreements with Singapore and South Korea are already well underway, bringing both economies much closer and allowing the free movement of citizens, especially to Singapore. Interestingly, despite all the proposed cosiness with India, Japan is still hugely reluctant to allow the free movement of Indian labour.
But it is the Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia (Cepia), another proposed regional pact cutting across the Asean region and incorporating all six dialogue partners – China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India – which seems by far the most ambitious of all in its scale and vision.
It is still unclear how Cepia will meld with Russia and the US, two major powers all set to become members of the East Asia summit from next year. Their membership is being cleared in Vietnam next week, an event that India looks forward to with interest, especially as they are expected to counter China’s inevitable rise.
India as counterpoint
Still, Manmohan Singh, as he readies to receive US President Barack Obama in a fortnight, is nevertheless expected to also emphasise to his Southeast Asian neighbours that India is ready and willing to help its eastern neighbourhood emerge from its economic doldrums and help it regain its place in the sun.
While China remains at the forefront of the region’s collective consciousness, the region has also watched with mounting concern, as Beijing has aggressively moved to reassert itself on the back of a carefully-controlled yuan. From claiming the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea – also contested by a string of Asean countries – to the Senkaku islands governed by Japan to challenging the US’ right of passage in the Yellow Sea, the Chinese seem to be riding high, leveraging their geo-economic might with single-minded intent.
Which is why it is ironical that Japan, realising that China was beginning to use the East Asia summit to promote its economic interest, decided it was necessary to bring India into this game, is now being spooked by China’s deliberate ratcheting up of tension over the Senkaku islands episode.
India’s laidback style, on the other hand, aiming to reinforce “civilisational values”, hasn’t precluded it from initiating modest defence partnerships with several Asean nations. With Malaysia, for example, which has acquired two French Scorpene submarines, India is likely to train Malaysian naval personnel, while Indian trainers are likely to travel to Malaysia to train Malaysian pilots to fly Sukhoi-30 fighter jets.
Defence exercises with countries like Singapore and Indonesia are now beginning to develop a routine of their own. It is not a coincidence that India is looking east with a passion, Naidoo said, pointing out that India’s western frontier not a particularly happy place. On the other hand, he added, of India’s nine strategic partnerships worldwide, as many as six, albeit with varying degrees – Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and China – belong to this part of the world.