LONDON -- Analysts and journalists have been trying hard to find something interesting to say about the first East Asia Summit (EAS) held in Kuala Lumpur in mid-December. The most frequent comment is that China was prevented from hijacking the summit, but they have mostly got it wrong.
In fact, Japan had already killed off the notion of the EAS as a meaningful regional entity worth hijacking by insisting that Australia, New Zealand and India be invited to join it as full members. As the three countries can hardly be described as being in East Asia, their presence made nonsense of the concept of the EAS as an East Asian community (EAC) of any sort.
China, among others, most notably the host country Malaysia, rightly complained that their presence meant that the meeting could not achieve its original goal of starting to work toward setting up an EAC.