SINGAPORE — Global financial dislocation and the economic slump are putting Asian regional cooperation to the test. They also appear to be shaping somewhat different responses in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. The latter, which formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations way back in 1967, has a big head start in institutionalizing collaboration and recently signed a charter that makes the group a legal entity for the first time. Northeast Asia has no organization equivalent to ASEAN.
But that may change if relations among China, Japan and South Korea continue to improve and the wider six-nation talks, chaired by China, succeed in persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear-weapons program and focus instead on economic development and poverty alleviation. These are big "ifs," given the historical and territorial conflicts that bedevil ties among Northeast Asian economies.
Still, China, Japan and South Korea took a significant step forward in improving relations at their first-ever three-way summit in Fukuoka, Japan, on Dec. 13. (They agreed to make it an annual event.) Leaders of the big three have been getting together fairly regularly since 1999, but only on the fringes of other meetings, usually the annual ASEAN summit.