Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the International Conference on the Future of Asia, sponsored by Nihon Keizai Shimbun

[Delivered at the Hotel Okura, Tokyo, Japan, May 17, 1996]

A tradition of
consensus building

EVERYWHERE IN ASIA, consultation and consensus are deeply ingrained in our traditional cultures. The ancient concepts of musjawarah, mufakat, goi-keisei and our own Filipino tradition of bayanihan, all imply the same notion: First, build mutual trust—then act together.

We Asians are perhaps more culturally attuned to this kind of interaction than our friends in Europe and America. We value the fine gesture, the discreet word and the merits of harmony among the members of a community

Self-projection is not our style. These sober habits have nurtured among us a preference for the careful and quiet diplomacy that has fostered regional stability in Asia for more than two decades now.

The hottest conflicts of the Cold War

Of course we do not forget that the Asia-Pacific once endured the “hottest wars” of the Cold War era—in the Korean and Indochinese peninsulas. And that we have had our share of massive armed conflict within and between some of our countries in the years after 1945.

By and large, however, we Asians have consigned those conflicts to history. While a few areas have not entirely escaped the sorrows of strife, most of our countries have settled down to dealing with our real needs—which for all of us mean national development and modernization.

Over time, there has arisen among us a pragmatic consensus on two factors that have shaped Asia—especially Southeast Asia—into what it is today

First, all of us have buckled down to building up our respective societies—using the power of the market and the incentive of economic gain as our principal instruments for change.

From turmoil to dynamism

Second, all of us agree that this objective is best achieved by maintaining and, where possible, enhancing the climate of regional stability. Nowhere is this consensus more evident than in East Asia—which has risen from turmoil and conflict to become the most dynamic region in today’s world.

That we had outside help in this transformation is clear. The regional presence of the United States was useful in providing some measure of certainty during periods of occasional tension and strife. But it was our own countries that did the hard work. Without our individual commitment to focus on development—without our collective understanding to nurture amity among us—there would have been no Asian economic “miracle.”

Peering into the future—as this conference bids us to do—we see the zone of progress extending and widening to more lands and regions in our continent. East Asia will remain a nest for rearing economic dragons. As the East Asian newly industrializing economies have followed Japan on the road to development, so now the ASEAN countries—and China—are following in their tracks.

As ASEAN moves toward full modernization, so too will it draw the rest of Southeast Asia—Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar—into the mainstream of development.

And so also, it would seem, will the lands of South Asia modernize—once their cry for development finally overcomes the drums of conflict.

East Asia’s amazing growth has many unique qualities. To me, one of the most striking is that our progress has not been at one another’s expense. Our region is meshing closely—through economic integration woven by increasing intra-regional trade and investment. Trade among East Asians is already larger than our transpacific trade with North America.

The Asian newly industrializing economies, including some ASEAN countries—and now even China—have emerged as important capital sources.

Nor is East Asia, in its ascent to new heights, shutting itself off from the rest of the world.

Advocacy of open regionalism

East Asian economies are among the most fervent advocates of open regionalism in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. And it is we of East Asia who are trying the hardest to use the APEC forum to keep the Western and Eastern rims of the Pacific together.

Last March, East Asian countries initiated a new partnership for greater growth with Europe—through the Asia-Europe Meeting process. This partnership will augment Asia-Europe ties and enhance our two-way economic and political cooperation.

Greater symmetry in relations among Asia, Europe and North America—the three growth poles of the world economy—will also benefit global stability.

Taken all together, these are the foundations for an even more bountiful future—provided our train of regional growth stays on track. But however splendid our economic prospects, this is no time for complacency.

We stand on a slope charged also with problems and uncertainty. Although we are managing them rather well, we have political problems—mostly territorial in nature—that remain unresolved. Then also, much of our region’s prosperity depends on seaborne transport—and most of our countries are making extensive and increasing use of marine resources in the waters that we all share. This imparts a special sensitivity and urgency to the maritime disputes affecting the coasts and the overcrowded seas of Asia.

Terrorism, trafficking, extremism

These disputes stretch from the Bay of Bengal, through the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan, and onto the sea of Okhotsk and the Northwest Pacific.

In addition, the rivalry between India and Pakistan, the China-Taiwan question and rising regional arms-spending are major concerns. And there are newer problems, such as transnational terrorism, drug trafficking and religious extremism, that we must deal with.

It is ironic that while regional economic cooperation has flourished, regional political interaction and security cooperation have yet to be fully developed.

In this respect, East Asia is an exception among the world’s major regions. The Americas have the Organization of American States. Africa has the Organization of African Unity. The Arab nations have the Arab League. Europe has the European Union, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and a host of other regional political institutions.

Only ASEAN—which is active in functional, economic, political and security cooperation—enjoys a real presence as a political grouping in Asia. Asia’s other political organizations have not so far developed beyond the embryonic stage.

Thus I believe it is time we upgraded our institutions of political cooperation—to reflect more accurately the intensity of our economic interdependence.

The lack of mediating regional institutions can engender regional instability—particularly when political problems are serious and deeply felt.

ASEAN has played a major role in rebuilding East Asia’s security architecture for the post-Cold War period. Indeed, ASEAN has become the core of East Asian stability.

ASEAN offers its Treaty of Amity and Cooperation as a norm for resolving regional disputes. In Bangkok last December, ASEAN heads of government agreed on a Nuclear Weapons-Free Southeast Asia as their contribution to disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation.

Toward one Southeast Asia

Recently, ASEAN undertook to strengthen ties with Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar (ASEAN + 3)—in pursuit of its vision of creating one united community in Southeast Asia. Such a Southeast Asian community would enable us to shape our collective future according to our collective aspirations. A united Southeast Asia will also reinforce peace and promote development in the region.

Just as significant was ASEAN’s launching of the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1994—as the venue for a regionwide dialogue on regional security issues.

ARF provides a focal point for contact among our governments on how to enhance our common security. It operates by consensus—avoiding Cold War-type divisiveness and confrontation. ARF works on the principle that our regional security arrangements should not move faster than all our countries can run.

Yet it is just as true that we cannot afford to stand still in our collective effort to reduce or solve our political problems. We must find the means—whether in the ASEAN Regional Forum or in other regional conclaves—to improve cooperation and promote common action on the political issues of our time.

Three of these issues command our urgent attention.

The first is the role of the three regional giants—Japan, China and India—and of “SEA-Ten”—the community forming among the 10 states of Southeast Asia.

The second is the South China Sea.

And the third is the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and the peaceful use of nuclear energy within the region.

Destiny has brought the three Asian giants and a unified Southeast Asia to center stage. And East Asia must come to terms with the reality that their emergence will require a rewriting of the rules of the game in regional affairs. All Asian states have a critical stake in joining this process.

Japan has been an economic superpower for at least three decades. It has been cautious but consistent in its moves to gain a higher regional profile. Now Japan is in search of a new global role.

Certainly Japan should play a larger role in the world community commensurate with its economic strength. And this new role should be manifested—and facilitated—by a permanent seat in a reformed Security Council.

Regional roles for Japan and China

The Philippines supports such a role for Japan—because it will advance Asia’s interest and project Asian perspectives in the community of nations. And we welcomed the joint declaration on Japan-US bilateral security cooperation announced last month. But the Philippines also hopes that Japan will use its enhanced position to promote a closer regional security dialogue and cooperation—at this stage, principally within the ARF.

With similar understanding and concern, we must consider China’s role in the future of Asia.

In less than a generation, China has achieved a feat of modernization unprecedented in history. Today China is the world’s 11th largest trading nation. It may well be on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy early in the next century.

China is a part of our region: East Asia stands or falls with it. Our common aspiration—which is nothing less than the continued progress of our Asia-Pacific region—depends to a great extent on China’s integration with the rest of the region.

The Philippines already has a comprehensive bilateral relationship with China. We support a dialogue relationship for China within the ASEAN framework as well.

With closer dialogue, we seek to continue our frank exchanges with China on issues of mutual concern—and to ensure that China remains a full participant in setting our regional agenda.

Forging cooperation with the new India

Similarly, India—given its size and its new economic liberalism—is achieving remarkable progress—measured for example in its achievement of virtual food security and self-sufficiency.

Now India is reaching out to East Asian nations. We should encourage these moves. The Philippines, for one, is eager to develop mutually-beneficial linkages between India and East Asia.

Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, we are consolidating the foundations of a regional community embracing all our 10 nations.

Within East Asia, the region is already an economic center in its own right. It contains Indonesia—the largest Islamic nation in the world and the biggest country in Southeast Asia—which has been a paragon of stability and development in ASEAN. It has Singapore, a newly industrializing economy of long standing, and the next echelon of fast-growing developing countries composed of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Southeast Asia contains also the new investment frontiers of Myanmar and the former Indochinese countries, which are also associated with ambitious plans for developing the Greater Mekong Basin area.

The Asian middle powers—no less than the Asian giants—must have a role to play in crafting the future of Asia.

In fact, we in ASEAN—like Australia and New Zealand—have shown that those of us in the middle can be active and significant players—if not in economic and military might, then in the power of ideas and in the area of moral persuasion. We in the middle cannot merely be passive spectators of the interplay among the great powers.

By strengthening our own linkages and pooling our talents, capabilities and resources, we in the middle—as a concert of middle powers—can be a voice for moderation, fair play and mutual respect in the Asia-Pacific.

A second priority area for regional political cooperation is the South China Sea. The area today is a vortex of longstanding and multiple disputes. They involve issues of historical rights, sovereignty, jurisdiction, access to economic zones, control of resource development, the management of marine pollution, and the conservation and protection of the environment.

Overlapping claims on offshore petroleum and gas resources are a particular concern. The importance of these resources may increase as East Asia’s demand for energy grows, as offshore production technology improves and as China, hitherto a big oil producer, becomes a much larger net fuel importer.

Asian-style cooperation in the South China Sea

Furthermore the South China Sea engages the security interest of many countries outside the region—which are concerned about the freedom of navigation in the Asia-Pacific.

We of the Philippines have always maintained that these disputes can be resolved only through Asian-style regional diplomacy and consensus.

Our Government has held talks with the other claimants. Last year, we concluded separate bilateral codes of conduct with China and Vietnam, which are designed to reduce the chances of accidental conflict in the South China Sea.

Even so, the Gordian knot in the South China Sea cannot be cut bilaterally. We must find other mechanisms to help resolve the complex issues. Consequently, we are giving the various issues a good regional airing within the ASEAN Regional Forum. We have also brought them up during consultations with ASEAN and China. Indeed, the 1992 ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea was a significant contribution toward their peaceful resolution.

We have also given full support to the regional “Track Two” system of unofficial discussions and cooperative activities, which brings together all the states with interests in that maritime area. We value in particular the workshop series on managing potential conflict in the South China Sea sponsored by Indonesia.

But “Track Two” is not enough. We cannot continue to treat these vital regional problems at arm’s length. I feel the time has come for us to consider intensifying the official “Track One” talks alongside the “Track Two” activities.

A peaceable ‘nuclear club’

In the Philippines as in all of East Asia, we eat rice cakes. Our indigenous rice cake—called bibingka—is cooked between two fires, one placed beneath the mixture and the other on top. Perhaps if we extended the bibingka treatment to the South China Sea problem, we will produce the right temperature to get the conciliation process moving.

A third priority for regional political cooperation is the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the peaceful use of nuclear energy in East Asia.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) projects a basic shift in the global nuclear energy picture away from North America and Europe toward East Asia. Over the next 20 years, the share of nuclear power in total electrical power production is expected to decline in North America and Europe.

In contrast the share of nuclear energy in total power generation is projected to remain constant in Northeast Asia. This means that the use of nuclear energy will increase, because power demand will continue to rise with the region’s dynamic growth, industrialization and urbanization.

Japan and the Republic of Korea have very ambitious expansion programs. China has begun large-scale production. North Korea is trying to build up its civilian capacity for nuclear power.

In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Vietnam are said to be considering joining this peaceable ‘nuclear club’ themselves. Other developing countries may in fact be studying the option because—as the IAEA explains it—for decades to come, the only viable choice facing energy-starved developing nations is between fossil fuel and nuclear power.

This trend raises justifiable fears about the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation; the safety of using nuclear energy; and the storage, transport, treatment and disposal of nuclear waste and toxic substances.

Alongside these concerns, the region continues to watch what is happening on the Korean peninsula. Instability over there would have dire consequences for the rest of us.

For this reason, we should support the effort of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization to help Pyongyang build a peaceful civilian nuclear power program—just as we support the efforts to bring the two Koreas together.

The Moscow nuclear summit

What we must forestall is nuclear proliferation in East Asia—either clandestine or open weapons development programs or the unregulated handling of spent nuclear fuel, which could be diverted toward military purposes—or become a regional waste hazard.

We are encouraged by the results of last month’s nuclear summit in Moscow. That summit reflected the serious commitment of the participants to cooperate in coming to grips with the issues. But Chernobyl is still very much alive in our memories.

Before too long, East Asia may have to convene its own regional nuclear conference—to establish the framework for management cooperation in this sensitive area.

Such a framework should be consistent with IAEA guidelines—and it should be open to practical participation by countries from outside the region who possess nuclear power. And it should also be an instrument for containing any form of nuclear proliferation in the region and as a supplement to ASEAN’s Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone Treaty.

That framework should be developed and guided by regionwide consultations. Nuclear safety is a transregional concern: it should not be left only to countries having nuclear power. We should also consider any special nuclear needs of the region’s developing nations.

Agenda for political cooperation

Just as worthy of study is the development of a possible “Asiatom” (cooperation among Asian countries for containing nuclear proliferation similar to Euratom), which involves mutual safeguards by member countries. This scheme should involve essentially the two Koreas, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN states.

Consideration should be given to the possibility of international enrichment plants, reprocessing plants and international plutonium storage. This agenda for political cooperation—if tackled by our countries in a spirit of give and take—should yield a consensus that will foster peace and stability in Asia.

But even more than peace and stability, it will help spread the economic miracle to every part of the Asian continent—which is the goal we all want.

East Asia has done much better than other regions in alleviating poverty. Yet last year the Asian Development Bank reported that more than four-fifths of the population of its developing-country members live in countries where average annual incomes still fall below $500.

Indeed, poverty remains a painful Asian reality. Even in the better-off developing countries—and in the Asian newly industrializing economies—bottlenecks in development have become so serious that a concerted regional effort is now necessary to overcome them.

These bottlenecks include the widening infrastructure gap. An Asian Development Bank seminar last month estimated that Asia will need $6.9 trillion for spending on new infrastructure over the next quarter-century. Traditional modes of finance—whether national or multilateral—cannot meet this cost magnitude.

We need to mobilize more private investment for infrastructure development. And for this we must discuss ways of energizing regional financial and capital markets.

Indeed, sustainable development is a major area that calls for regional action. Massive urbanization and continued rural development are generating enormous social and environmental problems. In 1950 only two Asian cities had populations of four million or more. Today there are 20 Asian countries with more than four million people; and 11 with more than eight million.

The sharing and protection of human resources

Bottlenecks also encompass regional imbalances in human resources. Rapid growth calls for higher skill levels—but our combined workforces of engineers, technicians and professionals fall still far short of minimum national and regional requirements.

Tight labor conditions in the region might be eased through regional cooperation to spread training resources throughout the region—and to facilitate the orderly transregional movement and hosting of workers.

As the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council secretariat has reported, more than two million people are working outside their home countries in the Asia-Pacific. A substantial number of these are exploited and abused undocumented migrants.

I cite these glaring facts to illustrate that our long-term cooperation agenda for the region cannot be limited to the liberalization of trade and investment. The sharing and protection of human resources and development cooperation must be clearly also at the core of our concerns. Our policies of economic openness and integration must lead to tangible improvements in the quality of life for our peoples.

I do not wish to be an alarmist—but we must heed the lessons from the many industrialized countries whose social contracts are fraying badly.

In fact, the pendulum of opinion that swung so far in the direction of the free market in the West during the ’80s and the early ’90s may now be swinging in the opposite direction. We must prepare ourselves for this—and for the possibility that some of us in Asia may be infected by a similar change of heart.

Three elements of regional progress

This brings me to my final point—and it concerns the need for APEC, ASEAN and other regional bodies to defend the regional consensus that sustains Asia’s growth in our time.

The idea that our countries have common regional and also common national interests has taken time to establish itself. But I believe it is growing in our midst. And we need to cultivate it if our Asian community is to deal with problems that lie beyond the competence of single nations.

In this spirit, my country’s chairmanship of APEC this year focuses on three items of central importance to continued regional progress and stability.

First is the need to enhance regional economic and technical cooperation in a manner that combines the human, technical and financial resources of all players, developing and developed alike. Such cooperation in APEC should mobilize and provide key inputs in the development process.

This will help our developing nations to absorb the impact of their deepening integration into the global economy, and increase their contribution toward further global growth. It will enrich the developed economies’ own cooperation experience beyond aid in the old North-South context.

Second is the need to ensure that agreements concluded under APEC are actually carried out—and that there should be no backsliding.

We must all play our full part in moving the APEC agenda forward. No advantage will be gained by favoring one part of the agenda over the others.

We need a balanced approach—one forward-looking enough to inspire continued momentum, and also stable enough to accommodate our different concerns.

This means an approach that attends to the varied interests of producers, consumers, workers, and owners of capital and ideas—and yet does not lose sight of the collective goal of our common APEC endeavor.

And finally, there is the need to foster a more organic link between the private sector and the APEC process. We are all agreed that if APEC is to be a real catalyst for growth and development, then it must not become just another talk-shop among presidents, prime ministers and cabinet ministers. This we can ensure if we commit the private sectors of our countries to our official objectives and the programs under the APEC umbrella.

Political cooperation lags behind economic interaction

For this reason, the Philippines strongly encourages the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) to interact with governments on the design and implementation of APEC projects and on the research and preparation of APEC studies. ABAC-Philippines has in fact offered to host the ABAC secretariat.

To highlight the role of the private sector, the Philippines has also proposed convening an APEC Business Forum— where top business leaders from the region can exchange views on the directions they would like the Asia-Pacific to take. The forum can be held in the Philippines to coincide with the APEC leaders’ meeting at Subic in November 1996.

Let me now summarize and conclude.

All our countries, without exception, have a vital stake in advancing regional cooperation. But our political cooperation has fallen behind our economic interaction. We should therefore focus on closing this gap.

If our political cooperation does not move forward correspondingly, then inertia and inaction could work against us. And our political and security problems will stall our future growth. Despite East Asia’s impressive economic performance, development cooperation also remains an urgent priority. If development is not kept at the center of our efforts, then disaffection could undermine the regional consensus.

The Asian way

Our regional agenda is therefore a full one. And it will take all our political will and collective sense of purpose to carry it out.

But I believe we can be equal to the challenge because—as Asians—we realize the need for consensus, and we know the way to reach it. We will move at a speed comfortable to all. We will manage and advance through consultation and agreement. And even in settling the differences between us, we will preserve harmony. This is the Asian way.