Published in the Sunday Star on 27 June 2004.

East Asia ties keep region vital
Behind the Headlines
By Bunn Nagara

East Asia continues to fascinate not least because its development trajectory is not predetermined or humdrum. Between its evolutionary contours, the social, economic and political aspects bounce off one another to keep the region vital and dynamic.

REGIONAL gatherings on and in East Asia are now the norm rather than an exception. Among the most recent was the Second East Asia Congress in Kuala Lumpur, which dwelt on topical issues from economic growth, European ?expansion? and monetary cooperation to labour mobility, educational excellence and regional media.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi opened the conference with the reminder that the value of an East Asian regionalism that Malaysia proposed in 1990 is now self-evident.

In citing Schopenhauer?s observation that great ideas had to experience ridicule and resistance before being regarded as obvious, he hoped that regional peace and friendship would be better accepted from the outset.

Abdullah proposed several specific projects for the region: an Eastasia Peace Community (EPC), an Eastasia Economic Community (EEC), and an Eastasia Diplomatic Community (EDC). Just days before at a conference in Tokyo, he had suggested that the annual East Asia Congress could deliver insights to the annual Asean + 3 summits.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, in his introductory remarks, recalled the profusion of such regional meetings: the First East Asia Congress (Kuala Lumpur), the Network of East Asian Think-Tanks (NEATT, Beijing) and the First East Asian Forum (EAF, Seoul) last year, despite the outbreak of SARS, followed by the present congress, the Second EAF (Kuala Lumpur) and the Second NEATT (Bangkok) this year.

Nor are such meetings mere talking shops. Among the myriad outcomes is that both China and Japan, major countries in East Asia, have acceded to Asean?s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (besides South Korea, Russia and India), a pillar of Asean intent incorporating the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations.

Asean?s founding document, the Bangkok Declaration, runs to only two pages of text compared to the 3,000-plus pages of the North American Free Trade Agreement incorporating three countries (the United States, Canada and Mexico), as Abdullah observed. He said an East Asian Community document should be just as simple, with little fuss or formality.

A subject that has remained as vital today as it was in 1997 when the East Asian economic and financial crisis struck is the proposed (East) Asian Monetary Fund. Abdullah said it was time such a fund was established to complement the International Monetary Fund, just as the Asian Development Bank works alongside the World Bank.

The Prime Minister?s keynote address also touched on how regional media might grow into part of global media, to offer true media diversity rather than the present multiplicity. Global media today are essentially facsimiles of dominant Western media reproduced in multiple doses for the world, embellished with little more than regional accents.

The session on regional media the following day looked at the challenges facing the East Asian media.

Li Xiaoping, executive producer of China Central Television (CCTV), identified three major challenges: amplifying Asian voices in global information networks, increasing understanding while preserving multiculturalism, and fulfilling the media?s social responsibilities. She outlined some current anomalies ? the developing world contains six-sevenths of the world?s population but occupies only one-third of global information flow, while 60% of news in their own press is taken by reports from the developed world.

CNN International?s Lorraine Hahn said that one problem was getting more Asians to open up in interviews or just chats, since most Asians seem to be shy of volunteering their views. This was disputed by some who found that many Asians are only too eager to talk, that any shyness was fast disappearing, and much depended on the language used.

An observation was also made that BBC World was losing money, while at the same time al-Jazeera was growing rapidly. Last year alone, European subscriptions to the Arab television channel tripled, showing that more people wanted alternatives to the dominant Western media.

Dr Tak Jae-Taek of the Korean Broadcasting System proposed a common satellite broadcasting system for East Asia as a means of strengthening the regional community. This would not only serve as an alternative to the major broadcasting systems of the West, but also help to improve understanding and peace in this region.

Akiko Kato of Keio University acknowledged the growing challenges and pressures confronting the print media in particular. She said that one way for the press to survive was to enhance its analytical content beyond standard news reports, offering deeper analyses of issues and researched backgrounders.

There was consensus on the truism that every media outlet was biased in some way and to some degree. One means to achieve a balance from this was to allow different media with different agendas to bloom, so that the reader or viewer as consumer can choose between them.

But this situation overlooks another problem: that the strong and rich, with more resources, will still hold sway in global media quite regardless of the virtue of their values, truth of their views or accuracy of their reports. Which is then the better form of media equilibrium: balance in the content of each media outlet, or balance in the aggregate media in the industry?

Consensus also prevailed in what first needs to be done before the various goals can be achieved: better exchanges of information, in turn requiring better access to subject areas of public interest.

  

Posted on June 27th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Regionalisation