Japan and the Consolidation of East Asian Regionalism: The ASEAN-Japan Closer Economic Partnership Agreement.

This paper examines economic integration in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). Even though market forces, the Sino-Japanese rivalry, and functional cooperation may help drive regionalism forward, the foundation of any significant integration in the East Asian trading system will be the ASEAN+1 FTAs with China, Japan, and South Korea. It is therefore important to examine the way in which these agreements structure cooperation. This study examines some of the major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (AJCEPA) and the ways in which these choices might help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. If AJCEPA is to be anything more than an umbrella for Japan's bilateral FTAs with ASEAN members, it must achieve greater uniformity in coverage of issues and, especially, rules of origin. The comparison of Japan's bilateral FTAs that closes the paper suggests the magnitude of this challenge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]