Slow progress toward FTA

After the financial crisis, East Asia, one of the world's most dynamic economic regions, has become one of the main engines for the global economic recovery. As giants in East Asia, the three countries' economic scale not only accounts for 70 percent of the total economy in Asia, but also 20 percent of the global economy. If the FTA can be concluded, relations among China, Japan and South Korea will be optimized and the competitive ability of the three countries will be enhanced.

But although the idea of the trilateral FTA has been mentioned for years, the process of implementing it has been slow.

There are three reasons for this:

First, there is a big difference among the three countries' economic development level. In terms of GDP, China ranks first, followed by Japan and then South Korea; but in terms of GDP per capita, Japan ranks first, South Korea second and China third. If the gap between the different countries' economic development is too large it will make a free-trade agreement difficult to achieve.

Second, compared with China, Japan and South Korea have less farmland. Their agriculture depends on government subsidies and supportive policies in order to survive. They may therefore be worried about the competition from China if the FTA is concluded. However, if China cannot get any benefit from its agricultural advantage, a positive attitude toward implementing the FTA from the Chinese side cannot be assured.

Third, there are still non-economic factors delaying the launch of the FTA, such as territorial disputes and the Korean Peninsula denuclearization process. In addition, some Japanese politicians try to deny the historical truths of Japanese colonialism, which hurts the feelings of people from China and South Korea and makes it difficult to finalize the FTA.

However, it is important to accelerate the pace of launching the trilateral FTA. Although the three countries have differences in their economic development and political systems, and there are conflicts between the three countries' economic and political interests, as long as they have full understanding and adopt a positive cooperative attitude, a bright future for the FTA can be expected.

The author is a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University.

(China Daily 05/31/2011 page8)