Moving toward a New Asia-Pacific Region

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are coming to a head. At a conference with President Obama, Japan and the U.S. jointly identified a path to agreement. Now, it’ll take just a little bit more.

At the chief negotiators’ meeting in Vietnam, the two countries made progress in areas like intellectual property rights and the reform of state-run enterprises. The week of May 19, cabinet ministers will meet for the first time in three months.

Reaching a summary agreement here seems like it could be difficult, but the current momentum we have toward achieving that goal won’t be lost. At a summit meeting between Japanese and U.S. leaders, the two countries went so far as delaying their joint announcement while, incredibly, negotiations continued all night long. Japan and the U.S. have demonstrated their strong determination to finalize negotiations.

We’ve Already Moved Past the Difficult Part of Negotiations

When it came to reporting the results of this summit meeting, there was a rarely seen divide among Japanese newspapers. The Yomiuri Shimbun wrote that a “substantial agreement” had been made, whereas a headline in the Asahi Shimbun read, “Goodbye Agreement.” This newspaper, the Chunichi Shinbun, reported that the “way forward has been identified.”

These differing assessments made me think, “What the heck? Which one is the truth?” However, when you look at the major news sources, it’d be nice to see something like, “We’ve moved past the difficult part.” In other words, we no longer have a serious breakdown in negotiations.

What we’re seeing now is Japan and the U.S. putting their joint declaration — that they’ve “identified the path to progress” — into practice. They’re saying, “If we continue on our current path, we’ll arrive at our goal.” To put it another way, they can see the finish line on the horizon.

Since the public doesn’t have access to the contents of these negotiations, we can’t make hasty evaluations at this stage of events. Still, if I could presume to offer my thoughts, a TPP agreement carries immense weight for the Asia-Pacific. There can be no mistake about that. It should serve as the beginning of a new Asia-Pacific region.

Up until now, the Asia-Pacific region has been pivoting toward a Japan-U.S. axis. But then China began catching up with intense force, and that country is now trying to become No. 1 in the world. This intense competition brought vitality and stimulation to Asia, and has also become the driving force for growth.

The TPP’s “Five Founding Principles”

On the other hand, China’s push forward has also given rise to strain in the region. It disregards intellectual property rights and widely sells counterfeit goods both in its own country and overseas. There are also instances where doubts have been raised regarding whether laws were impartially applied to the launch of new enterprises. Just the other day, too, there was an incident where China seized a Mitsui cargo ship on the basis of a past wartime issue.

In the midst of all that, TPP negotiations are focused on the issue of tariffs over five agricultural products. The truth of the matter is, however, that creating rules for trade and investment has an extremely important purpose. If we can decide on some rules, we can then impose punishments on those countries that break the rules. Even China can’t ignore that. Trade extends beyond a mutually arranged and agreed upon business transaction — so you can’t behave selfishly.

If we look at it another way, what would have happened if Japan had not participated in negotiations? In that case, Japan would be forced to follow rules that were decided without its input, which would have left our country at a severe disadvantage. Even if only for that, participating in the negotiations was inevitable.

China also understands this fact and is showing interest in TPP. Well then, China could participate from this point on, couldn’t it? Though the Japanese and U.S. governments didn’t clearly say anything at the outset, the truth is that their answer to China wanting to join TPP would be “No.”

If we look at the reason why, one example is that legal controls in China are in their infancy. Trying to reform the laws will take an enormous amount of energy, and it’s not something that can be done overnight. They have additional problems on a more fundamental level. The TPP is not only about liberalizing trade and investment; in all honesty, it also affects matters like security guarantees and national defense.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pointing out these issues since he first decided to participate in the TPP, but the newspapers have hardly noticed.

If we talk about what these issues are, there are “five founding principles” within the background of the TPP: freedom and democracy, legal controls, human rights, and a market economy. The countries participating in TPP negotiations share these ideals and institutions.

Speaking of freedom and democracy or human rights in China, they’re all “limited,” to say the very least. What about a market economy? Here, too, China’s foundation is a state-run market economy. In other words, China as it is now can’t share in the foundational sense of values that the TPP is based upon.

Quite the contrary. In the South China Sea, China continues to “try to change the present situation by force.” The territorial rights over a certain reef are in dispute, but China has effectively taken control of the area, and it recently rammed a Vietnamese patrol boat, apparently to reclaim the reef.

As long as China continues this outrageous behavior, it’s very hard to imagine it joining the TPP. Rather, within the context of defense and the security treaty, it’s much more likely that the TPP will play a role in restraining China.

The Future of Collective Security

Furthermore, if we look to the future, the countries participating in TPP negotiations — Japan, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, among others — will be at the center. We may even arrive in an era in which we can conceive of collective security for a new Asia-Pacific region.

Japan is currently standing at just such a crossroads. Our great powers of conception are being put to the test.