APRN News
Issues and Concerns by the Asia Pacific Research Network

• Open Statement to the APEC Leaders Meeting
  

  Open Statement to the APEC Leaders Meeting Mr John Howard and the other representatives of our governments,

  • Stop making claims that APEC reduces poverty in our countries. We see the reality of grinding poverty and misery every day: * Some 900 million people in this region live below a (problematic) poverty line of $2 day
  • Over 46 million people are unemployed in the region, nearly double since 1993
  • Tens of millions who have jobs are trapped in poverty wages, competing with each other, and denied the right to unionise
  • Privatisations deny people the right to potable water, education, health care while corporations control people's right to life saving medicines
  • Women and men work for pittances in foreign countries because there is no work at home to feed their families
  • Indigenous peoples are forced from their lands
  • Farmers can no longer work their land and the right to food sovereignty
  • Corporations rape our natural resources, pollute our environments and destroy the ecosystem.

  Why are you not prepared to see these realities?

  Those who have prospered from APEC are the corporations that have a privileged seat at your table. It is no coincidence that the heads of government, trade ministers and the leaders of the transnational corporations in the region have to meet behind the tightest security cordon in Australia's history.

  You claim to care about people, but all you really care about is the profits of big business. The most pressing issues for APEC in 2007 are all being converted into commercial opportunities through free trade agreements and foreign investment rights so the largest companied in the region can profit from climate change, renewable energies and human security.

  The APEC agenda – the war on terror, increased militarization, peddling nuclear power, ecological exhaustion – means more poverty and misery for the mass of people in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Australians face these realities alongside the poorest people in all other APEC member countries.

  We reject the APEC agenda and challenge you to hear the voices of those whose lives you condemn to poverty but whom you are determined to silence.

  Signed in Sydney, Australia on 6 September 2007-09-06

  Asia Pacific Research Network
  Aid/Watch (Australia)
  Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa (NZ)
  Committee for Asian Women (CAW), Thailand
  Institute for Global Justice (Indonesia)
  IBON Foundation
  Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG)
  Ecumenical Institute for Labour Education and Research (EILER, Phils.)
  Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (Australia)
  Global Trade Watch (Australia)
  Right To Water (NZ)
  Development Resource Centre
  Coastal Development Partnership, Bangladesh
  Arab NGO Network for Development
  Pacific Asia Resource Center (Japan)
  Korea Alliance Against Korea-US FTA
  Roots for Equity, Pakistan
  Public Services International
  Australian Services Union
  Third World Network

• Critical Overview Of APEC’s Agenda
  

  AFTINET MEETING Sydney, 1 September 2007

  It is difficult for APEC veterans to take the whole circus very seriously. It has always been a poor relation (in liberalization terms) to the regional initiatives in Europe and North America that its instigators (led by Australia) intended to match. It continues to limp along with old targets that are rarely met, new initiatives that are likely to go the same way. Member ‘economies’ will urge each other to breath life into the moribund Doha round and to ensure that bilaterals don’t undermine the multilateral system, and continue behaving the same.

  APEC’s official free trade agenda has been problematic from the start. The 1994 Bogor goal of free trade and investment among the richer economies of the region by 2010 and the rest by 2020 was always ‘voluntary and non-binding’. The pillars of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and that of economic and technical cooperation reflected an intrinsic tension between the Anglo-American members (Australia, NZ, US, Canada, later Chile) who wanted access into the Asian economies and markets, and the Asian members, especially Japan and ASEAN, that were interested in strengthening their existing integration.

  Each ‘economy’ was required to submit an Individual Action Plan (IAPs) setting out its steps towards this goal. Look for yourselves – the pro-liberalization countries like Australia and New Zealand assiduously did so. Others made promises they might or might not achieve.

  The idea of IAPS soon lost its gloss and the free traders developed a new initiative. Early voluntary sectoral liberalization would kick start liberalization in specified areas – from forestry to fisheries to toys and jewelry. This was launched at the Vancouver meeting in 1997 as the Asian financial crisis lowered the boom on the globalization nirvana of the early 1990s. By 1998 EVSL has failed too. Clinton stayed away from the Malaysia meeting in 1998 hosted by the ‘recalcitrant’ Mahathir, whose ‘unorthodox’ currency controls had limited the impact of the crisis on Malaysia’s economy. By 1999 New Zealand needed to find a new to pull rabbit out of the hat. Two developments happened. The East Timor crisis saw foreign policy and security become the major purpose of the leaders’ meeting of APEC ‘economies’. And the pro-liberalization camp began pushing bilaterals free trade agreements (FTAs) to rebuild momentum for liberalization from below. The architects dubbed it a Trojan Horse strategy. That was the month before Seattle. APEC’s attempts to catalyse WTO negotiations speak for themselves.

  The FTA strategy encountered the same internal divisions. Australia has led the push for ‘high quality’ liberalization and consistency through FTAs. Since 2003, policy dialogues at Senior Official level on FTAs have encouraged ‘sharing of experiences’ – New Zealand, Singapore and Chile have promoted the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (the P-4) as a model for integrating bilateral FTAs. Best Practice guidelines for FTAs were developed in 2004 and endorsed by the Ministers and Leaders meetings. The Australian government produced a handbook on FTAs for a workshop on FTA negotiations in late 2004, including a section on how to sell the agreements at home. This was part of the Australian government’s ‘capacity-building’ activities in APEC funded by AUSAID. Australia’s DFAT also published a negotiating guide to FTAs in 2005, which included the best practice principles and a stylized FTA. Training programmes have been organised to build micro-networks of officials, with several of the APEC Study Centres playing a key ideological role. Model chapters have been developed to encourage ‘high ambitions’. But governments continue to tailor their own approaches, driven by their own offensive and defensive interests and, increasingly, by their domestic opposition to these deals.

  The objective of the neoliberal camp is to link together the tangle of FTAs that is emerging in the region into a grand Asia Pacific FTA. While the principle has been broadly endorsed it is euphemistically described as a very long term goal. Just like the Doha round, unrealistic ambitions followed by excuses failure that fail to address the real causes are deeply discrediting the globalization agenda and reflect a growing desperation of those who champion and increasingly unstable free trade agenda.

  In one sense, APEC has lived up to its nickname of Aging Politicians Enjoying Cocktails. But it has also provided a place for officials to gather and for liberalization proselytizers in the APEC studies centres, Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, ABAC and government trade ministries to peddle ideas and promote guidelines and principles that do become incorporated into FTA texts. More importantly, the meetings provide diplomatic impetus for the brokering of deals as ministers and leaders need something to announce to justify the silly shirts and extravagant junkets.

  But APEC is also being overtaken by activities between its Asian and Latin American members, respectively. Sometimes the former is visible, such as the ASEAN plus three and the post-ASEAN dialogue with other governments, including Australia and New Zealand. But there are also more subtle and driven by new geopolitical dynamics that have changed dramatically in the past few years.

  Power is shifting. The US capacity to negotiate free trade agreements is likely to remain crippled without fast track negotiating authority, and it now treats trade agreements as instruments of foreign policy and security. It is looking internally for now with the Security and Prosperity Partnership among NAFTA members promoting deep integration and a commons security boundary (albeit divided by a wall between the US and Mexico). Canada is treated internationally rather like the Tasmania of the US. Australia has already negotiated its treaty of economic surrender with the US, and other easier targets like Singapore and Thailand. It has the advantage of energy but is also too aggressive for many governments. New Zealand sits irrelevant and increasingly desp