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The shows of South Korea, Japan and Indonesia
Next week South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan separately will host two crucial multilateral summits
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ext week South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan separately will host two crucial multilateral summits. For President Lee this is a magnificent opportunity to demonstrate the achievements of the world’s 15th largest economy, while for PM Kan this is a good chance to lift a “demoralized” nation whose economy and global influence have been overpowered by China.
On Nov. 11-12 President Lee will preside over the summit of the world’s 20 largest economies (G20) in Seoul and over the following two days (Nov. 13-14) it will be the turn of PM Kan to chair the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Yokohama. The president is luckier than the prime minister because all members of G8 are also members of the G20, which means in terms of content, the Seoul meeting is much more attractive for the world media than Yokohama. APEC reached its glorious peak in the 1990s when Indonesia hosted the second summit in 1994.
The Seoul event is also an occasion to “tease” leaders of North Korea as the country continues to face economic hardships. For Kan, his top priority includes his bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in which he will aim to cool down tensions after a recent clash over a territorial dispute. A meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss territorial disputes is also on the top list for domestic political consumption.
The G20 comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, the US and the European Union. The group represents about 90 percent of the world’s GDP.
APEC includes all the ASEAN members (except Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos), the US, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Russia, Hong Kong and Canada.
President Lee recently expressed his nation’s pride at hosting the summit. “Korea is a country with first-hand experience in economic development that propeled a country out of poverty all within the living memory of a substantial fraction of its population. Korea has also experienced the devastating impact of a financial crisis and understands the efforts necessary to secure a robust economy. However Korea’s experience cannot always be translated directly into off-the-shelf solutions for other countries.”
According to President Lee, in Seoul the G20 leaders will make decisions on how to implement financial sector reform to strengthen bank capital and liquidity standards and to address systematically important financial institutions and resolution issues.
“The new rules will build a more resilient financial system that serves the needs of the world’s economies, reduces moral hazards, limits the build-up of systemic risk and supports stable economic growth,” the president said as quoted by Korean media.
Meanwhile on the APEC meeting, PM Kan remarked, “Japan would like to continue to contribute to the Asia-Pacific and global economy’s recovery and development by addressing issues in three areas in an integrated manner to revive the Japanese economy: “economic growth”, “sound fiscal policy” and “social security reform”.
As Indonesia will host the APEC meeting in 2013 and one day will get have its turn to chair the bi-annual G20 meeting, we need to set clear and achievable goals starting now. It is natural that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will require Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to ensure that he will host the G20 summit before ending his second presidential term in September 2014. He wants to leave a long-standing legacy for the nation.
Hopefully when Indonesia has its turn to chair the two groups, our situation will be closer to South Korea’s current condition where the economy is booming and not Japan’s. No one is expecting the worse, where our leaders will use the all available means just to accumulate their political power at the cost of millions of Indonesians.
On Wednesday, The Jakarta Post quoted Columbia University’s Prof. Xavier Sala-i-Martin as saying that the G20 has no relevance in improving the welfare of the people of its member states. “You may think the way to resolve issues is through the G20. But at the end of the day, nothing binding happens. The policies that will help Indonesia come from Indonesia. Indonesia is on its own,” the professor told a Jakarta economic forum.
The professor is completely right because both APEC and the G20 are non-binding multilateral forums.
The co-founder of the Global Competitiveness Report also pointed out that Indonesia should prioritize boosting its per capita income.
But we also need to remember that the G20 represents major political and economic capital in the international community. Many Indonesians do not realize or do not see the significance of our membership in the club. One of the reasons is probably because many Indonesians do not see the direct and concrete impacts of the G20 in their daily lives. For many it is just a waste of money and energy.
When President Yudhoyono shakes hands with President Lee in Seoul on Nov. 11, we hope he can say, “When Indonesia hosts the next G20 summit, my country’s situation will be much more prosperous than South Korea’s”.
And to PM Kan, the President may say, “We will never be as big as Japan, but we will have better relations with our neighbors”.
Anyway, Yudhoyono may have great hope but the two hosts have very concrete achievements.
The writer is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.
