Promoting New South Bound Policy through APEC

                                                                                                              Wayne Chen
     September 5, 2016, the New Southbound Policy (NSP) was officially launched by the Taiwanese government to strengthen ties with countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific through promoting cooperation across fields including agriculture, business, culture, education,new energy and technology. 18 countries were centered in NSP as potential strategic partners, namely the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states, 6 nations in South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The proposal of NSP reflects not only the fear of the increasing marginalization of Taiwan in regional economic integration of Asia-Pacific, but a profound diplomatic strategy of the newly elected administration in response to a more challenging cross-strait relations. Considering the objectives, proposed actions and desired outcomes of NSP, I argue that APECcan be a very useful platform where Taiwan has been actively participatingsince 1991 for achieving NSP.
 
A wide range of common issues attended by APEC and NSP 
 
     NSP will be realized, as illustrated by the NSP Promotion Plan, through advancing the 4 main tasks, including economic collaboration, talent exchange, resources sharing, and regional links, which will contribute collectively to the achievement of a new sense of community and mutually beneficial ilateral relations. The wide range of areas for cooperation are not limited to conventional economic issues but extended to a broader horizon that crystalizes one of ambitious objectives of NSP that is to forge strategic partnership with target countries. Similarly, by following the 3 pillars of the APEC's agenda: Trade and Investment Liberalization; Business Facilitation; and, Economic and Technical Cooperation, APEC has developed initiatives across of the spectrum of works including the promotion of trade and investment as well as capacity building activities. The 4 main tasks of NSP are highly related to some overarching issues of APEC as identified in Table 1.

Table 1: Focus areas in common between NSP and APEC

NSP Main Tasks	Focus Areas	APEC Initiatives	APEC (sub) Fora
Promote Economic Collaboration	Supply Chains	Supply Chain Connectivity Action Plan	Committee on Trade and Investment
		Supply Chain Connectivity Alliance	Committee on Trade and Investment
		APEC Strategic Blueprint for promoting Global Value Chain Development and Cooperation	Committee on Trade and Investment
		Promoting SME’s Integration into Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) Global and Regional Markets	Committee on Trade and Investment
		APEC Services Competitiveness Roadmap (2016-2025)	Committee on Trade and Investment
	Infrastructure Projects	APEC Connectivity Blueprint (2015-2025)	Senior Official Meeting/Finance Ministers’ Process
		APEC Multi Year Plan on Infrastructure Development and Investment	Senior Official Meeting/Finance Ministers’ Process
		Cebu Action Plan	Finance Ministers’ Process
		Energy Smart Community Initiative	Energy Working Group
	Market Access	Bogor Goals	Committee on Trade and Investment
		Renewed APEC Agenda for Structural Reform 2016-2020	Economic Committee
		List of Environmental Goods	Committee on Trade and Investment
	Start-ups	Boracay Action Agenda to Globalize MSMEs	Senior Official Meeting
		Renewed APEC Agenda for Structural Reform 2016-2020	Economic Committee
		The Innovation for Women and Economic. Development Multi-year Plan	Policy Partnership of Women and the Economy
		APEC Women in STEM	Policy Partnership of Women and the Economy
		APEC Internet and Digital Economy Roadmap	Ad Hoc Steering Group on the Internet Economy
		Digital Trade	Committee on Trade and Investment
		Cross Border Privacy Rules System	Committee on Trade and Investment
Conduct Talent Exchange	Education Ties	Develop 21st Century Knowledge and Skills For All	Human Resource Development Working Group
		APEC Women in STEM	Policy Partnership of Women and the Economy
		APEC Scholarship	Senior Official Meeting
	Industry Talent	APEC Skills Development Capacity Building Alliance	Human Resource Development Working Group
		APEC Engineer
		Youth Sustainable Water Resources Education and Development Hub in the APEC Region
	New Immigrants	Enhance the Protection of Migrant Workers’ Rights
		Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy for Migrant Workforce in the APEC Region	Emergency Preparedness Working Group
Share Resources	Health Care	Healthy Asia Pacific 2020	Health Working Group
	Culture	Social Responsibility and Common Development on Mining	Mining Task Force
		APEC Sustainable Forest Management	Forestry Ministerial Meeting/Expert Group on Illegal Logging and Associated Trade
	Tourism	Travel Facilitation Initiative	Tourism Working Group/USA/Peru
		Sustainable Tourism	Tourism Working Group
	Technology	APEC PPSTI Strategic Plan 2016-2025	Policy Partnership on Science, Technology and Innovation
	Agriculture	APEC Food Security Roadmap 2020	Agricultural Technical Cooperation Working Group/Policy Partnership on Food Security
	Small and Medium Enterprises	Boracay Action Agenda to Globalize MSMEs	ME Working Group
		New Era of Growth for APEC SMEs through Online-to-Offline (O2O) Business Models	SME Working Group
		SME Crisis Management Center	SME Working Group
Forge Regional Links	Regional Integration, Negotiations and Dialogue, Strategic Alliances, Overseas Taiwanese Networks	Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific	Committee on Trade and Investment
		APEC Typhoon Center	Policy Partnership on Science, Technology and Innovation
		APEC Emergency Preparedness Capacity Building Center	Emergency Preparedness Working Group

      NSP underscores the significance of cooperation on infrastructure, human resource development and welfare-related issues, such as health care, tourism, agriculture and SMEs. Furthermore, given that migrant workers and foreign spouses from NSP target countries are increasing rapidly, enhancing culture exchange and mutual understanding as well as engaging new immigrants in local communities are highlighted throughout NSP and APEC could be complement to aforementioned areas from a regional cooperationperspective.
     One very example is the APEC Connectivity Blueprint (2015-2025) which was launched in 2014. The Blueprint identifies three pillars, including physical connectivity which refers to infrastructure, people-to-people connectivity which emphasizes cross-border education collaboration and institutional connectivity which involves supply chains related issues, and APEC economies can review and advance regional connectivity accordingly. The Blueprint not only reflects NSP's work on economic collaboration, talent exchange, culture and tourism, but the consensus and active participation of APEC economies in these areas demonstrates great opportunities for Taiwan to build partnership for future actions.  

Leverage Taiwan’s Success in APEC for NSP Cooperation

     Most of the NSP target counties are developing economies and therefore capacity building are intensively attended in building strategic partnership compared to trade facilitation negotiations. In this light, Taiwan's signature initiatives developed within the APEC discourse can serve as convenient start points for future NSP cooperation. APEC Digital Opportunity Centers, for example, which aims to narrow digital divide have developed strong and far-reaching reputation of assisting youth, women and people in remote areas engage in business. Moreover, 9 of 18 NSP target countries are APEC members. As a result, Taiwan government may consider ways to leverage achievement and recourses of APEC to maximize the outcome of NSP.
(Wayne Chen is an Associate Research Fellow, TIER)