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The Furture of Asia Free Trade Zone Series 2 - Reading Rudd Proposal of Asian Union

Xiaowei (Daniel) Li

Recent news in ABC and other Australia media reported that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wanted to see a regional community, Asia-Pacific Union that contained the US, China, Japan and Australia By 2020. Some reports also mentioned that his predecessor former Prime Minister Paul Keating disagreed Mr Rudd said, said he would believe the current regional body APEC would be the best
entity to stick with, whilest China showed its support to Mr Rudd's idea.

To date, I have read many media reports but non of them was able to dig the deep insight on why Mr Rudd made such a move before his visit to Japan.

My observation is that Mr Rudd has made his ambitions to become a part of the founders of the future Asian (Pacific) Free Trade Zone, in his words, the "Asia Pacific Union" in competing with the US-Canada free trade zone, and European Union.

The insight behind Mr Rudd’s visit to Japan is that Australia is pursueing to be prepared to participating the ongoing Big Three (China, Japan and South Korea state heads) Meetings in regular basis. I do not think the US will play much important role in the proposed Asia-Pacific community as they already got its own Northh American Free Trade Zone (the US, Canada, and Mexico) to stick with but certainly Mr Rudd could be a good messenger between the future Asia (Pacific) communities and the US.

The reason for Mr Rudd to put this proposal on the table before his visit to Japan is 1. he already got the China’s support for the possibility to turn current Big Three meeting into Big Three plus Aust, and 2 Japan is the key member of the Big Three and is the financial
backbone of the Asian Development Bank which has consistently promoted a united Asian currency with a united Asian Free Trade market. It also would achieve it within next 50 years. Japan may not want the US to get involved deeply as the US involvement could cost Japan losing its bargaining power with the US, also as Japan has a long historical dream to leading an “Asian Union", even before the World War II.

The study of how Australia could be involved with the Big Three Meetings could be done before the Labor Party came into power last year. For more information on my comments on so called "Big
Three", "Asia Free Trade Zone", "United Asian Currency", and Australiai's future role in it, please read my another article released in
September last year at http://write.anz-china.com/free-trade-12-09-2007