CAMBRIDGE, England -- At the Baoa Forum for Asia that met on Hainan Island in China earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made yet another proposal for a greater economic cooperation agreement for East Asia. This time Japan's focus is on an ASEAN-plus-five formula, as announced in Tokyo the day after Koizumi's speech at Baoa. The five he has in mind to link up with the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.

Last December, though, Koizumi was pitching a different free-trade area when he toured the five original ASEAN members (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines). Then he was proposing that ASEAN's additional five include Australia and New Zealand as well as China, South Korea and Japan.

A month earlier, at the ASEAN heads of state meeting in Brunei, Koizumi proposed an ASEAN-plus-three (China, South Korea and Japan) free-trade area. At that meeting, Koizumi was kept waiting for an hour while Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was having his proposal for an ASEAN-plus-one (China) free-trade agreement accepted. This is intended to be fully operational by 2010, with China unilaterally opening its doors completely to trade with the ASEAN 10 (the original five plus Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) by 2006.