TCS

At the opening remarks, TCS Secretary-General LEE Jong-heon explained that the Special Lecture would be a good chance to know what has been achieved and to think about what should be done more in the years to come for the regional economic and financial cooperation in East Asia.  

In the lecture, Prof. LI Xiao introduced the main achievements of East Asian regional economic cooperation and development in the last 20 years including FTA negotiations, institutional cooperation in financial and monetary fields, and Asian value chains centered in China. Prof. LI explained that the East Asian region has challenges for its regional cooperation and development in economic and financial areas not only due to external environment (China-US trade frictions, increasing uncertainties in global economy) but also internal environment (growing competition in similar industries, different targets of development strategy, nationalism). He concluded that the region needs to jointly find a sustainable ‘East Asian Consensus’, to resist the protectionism and to protect the multilateral trading system, to promote the trilateral coordination of development strategy and the third-party market cooperation, and to jointly promote RCEP+CJK FTA double platform cooperation pattern. 

The lecture was followed by the panel discussion between Prof. LI Xiao and Prof. LEE Hee-ok, Director of Sungkyun Institute of China Studies. The two professors shared insights and opinions on various areas related to the trilateral cooperation.