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G. Willis: Address to Summit 2022, Session IXa
Written by Gerard Willis, president and CEO, HJ Magnolia US Holdings
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Address to Summit 2022 and Leadership Conference,
Seoul, Korea, August 11-15, 2022
“Prospects for an Asian-Pacific Economic Union: Interplay between Korea, China and Japan”
Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to have been invited here with this distinguished gathering to speak about the prospects for an Asia-Pacific Union, something long advocated by Reverend Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon. But before we do that, I want to congratulate you all for your energy and dedication to peace, having stuck with us to the very end.
Now, these might not be the most optimistic times to be promoting the formation of a Northeast Asia regional union. Russia is making war on its neighbor. China is threatening to make war on its compatriots in Taiwan. And North Korea says it has nuclear-tipped missiles and can make war on just about anyone that it wants to, if it wants to. Nevertheless, in the darkest times, that is when we must redouble our efforts for peace.
This slide compares the economic accomplishments of the European Union with the potential of an Asian Union. I'm going to start by holding up the European Union as a model—one real, existing model—and compare that to where we are in Asia. As you can see statistically from an economic point of view, but more than that, the EU is made up of like-minded governments, free travel between its members, supranational laws and institutions, a common currency, a track record of resolving disputes peacefully without violence or the threat of violence. In the seventy years of its existence, no member of the EU has ever made war on any of its fellow members, and its rules-based order allows its smaller members to work without fear with its larger ones, such as France and Germany.
Such an example of peace and prosperity is certainly something worthy of holding out to Asia, both as a reason and a mechanism to resolve political differences. That is why Reverend Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon have long advocated for the creation of an Asia-Pacific Union extending beyond trade to seek true unity and address other critical problems. But before we explore their ideas for such a union in more depth, let us first examine the progress that Asia-Pacific has made in that direction to date.
The necessity of regional economic cooperation is now recognized and enshrined in important pacts. As you can see on the next slide, from the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) economic community through the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum and, most recently, the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), a pact that constitutes the world's largest free trade agreement among 16 Asian nations, Asia has made steady progress toward creating an integrated and connected regional economy within the global system.
But although those names sound like the European Union, the similarities end with the names. None has a common market, nor a monetary union. They do not establish supranational institutions such as the European Commission or the European Central Bank. And their charters do not provide for sanctioning members that violate those agreements.
Indeed, notwithstanding these regional relationships, progress toward a trilateral free trade agreement among the Republic of Korea, China and Japan is at a standstill, in large part due to ongoing political rivalries—for example, Japan's economic retaliation against Korea over the decision by a South Korean court to hold Japan liable to pay damages to former Korean “comfort women.” That did not help those who had hoped economic relations could be divorced from political controversies.
Yet the economic benefits from better trade relations and deeper ties between Korea and Japan are nearly unlimited. Japan's trade with Korea ranks fourth at only 4.7 percent of its total, and Korea's trade with Japan likewise ranks fourth at only 6.9 percent. There is much room to grow.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon have long appreciated the potential economic and other benefits of closer Korean-Japanese relations, as evidenced by their multi-decade-long promotion of a tunnel between the Japanese island of Kyushu and the South Korean city of Busan. The tunnel would reduce costs of trade, enhance supply-chain integration and promote tourism and closer contacts with people.
A good example of expected benefits can be found in the Channel Tunnel between Great Britain and France. This slide indicates some of those. But again, more importantly, before World War I and World War II, France and England were in constant warfare—in fact, over a millennium of warfare. And there's even one war that lasted so long, it's known to history as the Hundred Years’ War. That's no longer the case. So the question is no longer: Why build a Korean-Japanese tunnel? It is: What are we waiting for?
Regarding China, the big question is: Can China convince its neighbors that its aims are not as hegemonistic as they appear to be? Can a promise of peace and a new era of prosperity through a regional union motivate China to temper its ambitions to control new lands or new oceans even? What is China's vision for a peaceful Asian community other than to drive the U.S. out of the Western Pacific? And can China—together with Japan, for example—ever imagine themselves playing the role in an integrated Asian community that Germany and France play in the EU, as godfathers of a union that anchors peace and stability?
I've lived and worked in China for a long time, and I was there at the time that it promulgated the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a global infrastructure development initiative that seeks to help developing economies address critical infrastructure needs. I was intrigued and somewhat inspired by it. I'm a fan of Chinese culture and the people, and no one would build a 30-year career in China if that were not the case.
Historically, China conceived of its purpose in the world as promoting its culture to others—and, for the most part, by peaceful means. I wondered: Could the Belt and Road Initiative be viewed as a return to China's roots as a benevolent older brother to other nations?
Like many foreign aid programs, the Belt and Road Initiative serves China's commercial and strategic interests. That's not unfair. But unlike, say, the United States’ Marshall Plan [which provided aid to Europe after World War II], which had at its core an underlying idealism to promote individual liberty and genuine independence, the Belt and Road Initiative appears to have several features that belie its claim to the higher values listed here.
The case of Sri Lanka, for example, is a good example of what can happen to a country that falls into China's debt trap, mentioned on the slide as one of these features. When Sri Lanka could not make payments on a port that China built for them on the Indian Ocean, China took complete ownership of that port. But the aspect of the Belt and Road that concerns me the most is China's tolerance for corruption and indeed its facilitation of it.
Given the resentments and conflicts that divide the region, what can possibly persuade these countries to cross over to the promised land of peace and co-prosperity? For that to occur, according to Reverend Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, the nations of Northeast Asia must look beyond past historical wrongs and current resentments, see themselves as sharing a common destiny, and elevate their relations to a new plane of values.
Just as the EU is built on a common culture, so too East Asia's profound historical ties—cultural, philosophical, religious, even aesthetic—can be the basis for closer regional collaboration. Rather than focusing on the upheavals and crises of the last two centuries, the focus should be on peaceful interchange based on the fundamental values of family, filial piety and benevolence.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon have articulated a universal set of values that draw upon these religious ideals and cultural paradigms for building a foundation for regional cooperation. In a speech at Seoul’s Sheraton Walker Hill hotel in 1995, Rev. Sun Myung Moon offered this prescription: An ideal world, he said, means coexisting politically, prospering together economically, and creating an ethical society of goodness. Reverend Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon's ideas on social, political and economic principles derived from their religious teachings and are encapsulated in the terms “interdependence,” “mutual prosperity,” and “universal values.”
I don't have time to go into each of these very complicated philosophical terms today, but we have plenty of literature that delves deep, and I recommend that you take some time to explore them, particularly the idea of interdependence as it relates to economic theory.
But before completing my analysis, I would like to take a short detour from the macro-economic perspective to the micro. It's not easy to reconcile the laws of economics, namely the rational allocation of resources based on a free market, free competition and individual self-interest with a value-centered paradigm. But in the businesses started by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, I have seen that this is possible. As the former chairman of the Korean business group founded by Reverend Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon and as the current president of their U.S. business group, I would like to offer my insights on their organization and purpose.
The Korean business group and the U.S. business group, as well as, I believe, most of those that exist in other countries around the world, are owned by government-approved non-profit organizations, not individual investors. That means that, under the laws that apply to them, none of the profits can go to individuals or organizational shareholders. Indeed, they have no shareholders, only boards of directors. All profits must be used in pursuit of approved non-profit activities.
Thus, each year the income from these businesses goes to support religious activities and related educational, cultural, social and charitable organizations and for peacebuilding activities such as our meeting here today. And from personal experience, I can testify that these businesses are regularly and thoroughly audited by the government to ensure that they comply with their non-profit charters.
In her autobiography, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon wrote about the purpose she and her husband had in establishing these businesses. Our goal, she wrote, is for all people of the world to enjoy mutual prosperity. And our philosophy of living for the sake of others is the driving force behind all of this. Dr. Moon has stressed repeatedly that these businesses should undergird the construction of a world based on the principles of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal values, where business is pursued for the common good with a “heartistic”-based public spirit. And that's true in the macro-economic perspective as well.
You've heard about the resolutions and the declarations and the commitment of Rev, and Mrs. Moon to an Asia-Pacific Union. In fact, in the Phnom Penh Declaration, which was issued in 2019—it was an activity including the Royal Government of Cambodia, the Universal Peace Federation and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon—there's a call to address the critical issues of our time by forming an Asia-Pacific Union, embodying the ideal of living for the sake of others to help people reconcile differences and overcome divisions.
It's a big task and a big dream, but that's only the beginning. In a speech in 1981 to the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, while discussing the need to close the gap between the rich and the poor, Reverend Moon said that to overcome these problems, we need to find a new solution beyond humanism. To accomplish the unity and reconciliation of the classes, a central point of absolute value is needed.
With Asia as its starting point, a realistic united economic sphere could be established connecting east and west, north and south in a new civilization. This would result in peace and a new world centering on God's love, which is the absolute value.
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