[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 46 (Monday, November 20, 2000)]
[Pages 2869-2874]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the APEC Business 
Advisory Council in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

November 15, 2000

    The President. Good morning, and thank you, Dr. Hamdillah. Your 
Royal Highness, fellow leaders, Madam Ambassador, members of the 
Business Advisory Committee. I thank you all for your support of this 
process. And if I might, I'd like to say a special word of appreciation 
to the three members of ABAC from the United States, Sy Sternberg, Paul 
Song, and Ernie Micek.
    I appreciate what the private sector involvement has done for APEC--
for example, last year's auto dialog, which brought regulators and firms 
together to lower trade barriers. I hope we can do the same this year 
with the chemical industry dialog. I thank you for your ideas and for 
your impatience, reminding us always that none of these commitments made 
at APEC mean anything if we don't follow them with actions.
    As you know, this has been a rather interesting week in the United 
States. [Laughter] And as a result, I did not arrive here until late 
last night. One of the things I think we have learned is that we should 
all be very careful about making predictions about the future. 
[Laughter] But I know I can safely predict that this will be my last 
APEC Summit. [Laughter] I just don't know who will be here next year. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say a few words about the organization, if I might. I 
remember our first summit in 1993, the first leaders' meeting in 
Washington State at Blake Island. Some of you were there. Before that, 
APEC had been doing good work but in a low-key way, I think largely 
unnoticed by many of the politic leaders among all the countries here 
represented. I wanted to establish a mechanism to bring together the 
leaders of the most economically dynamic region in the world. I thought 
that together we could work to be better prepared for a world that was 
becoming more and more integrated, more and more interdependent, a world 
in which the Asia-Pacific region was destined to play a larger and 
larger role.

[[Page 2870]]

    In 1993 we didn't use the word ``globalization'' very much, but that 
is what we were preparing for. And I think we knew the process 
inevitably would be about more than economics. By bringing our economies 
and our societies closer together, I believed then, and I hope all 
believe now, that we could advance not only prosperity but the cause of 
human freedom and our common ability to avert conflict in this vital 
part of the world.
    By inviting the APEC leaders to Blake Island, I wanted to send a 
clear message, also, that Asia was even more important to the United 
States after the cold war. I believe that our partnership with Asia is 
stronger today than a decade ago and that Asia's future is brighter.
    There is no longer any doubt that our link to this region is 
permanent, not passing. Our troops remain here as a force for stability. 
We have renewed our alliance with Japan. We have worked to preserve the 
peace in the two likeliest flashpoints of conflict, the Taiwan Strait 
and the Korean Peninsula.
    In 1994, with our ally South Korea, we negotiated an agreement that 
froze North Korea's production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. And now 
President Kim Dae-jung has made his courageous journey of 
reconciliation, for which he justifiably won the Nobel Peace Prize.
    We have encouraged China's historic choice to open its economy to 
the world and applauded the similar choice made by Vietnam. I think it 
is a fitting symbol of where the world is going that Vietnam now chairs 
ASEAN, an organization originally created in part to contain Vietnam.
    In Indonesia, 200 million people are struggling to overcome recent 
severe economic and political problems, but at least they now have the 
chance to shape their own destiny. They have great resources and great 
talent and a great future.
    I believe in these years, APEC has made a difference. I believe 
these annual leaders summits and the business meetings associated with 
them have made a difference. I hope very much that they will continue 
indefinitely. I think it is very important for the leaders to meet, to 
work together in an informal atmosphere. It creates a much greater sense 
of community, and I think it's very important for all of you to come 
here to help us work through practical problems and keep the pressure on 
the political systems to move forward.
    Particularly after the hard economic times of 1997 and 1998, I 
certainly hope we all know now we have a stake in each other's success. 
We have no interest in pitting one part of the region or one trading 
bloc against another. We are managing our crises better, and not just 
economic ones. Last year in New Zealand, for example, we used the annual 
APEC leaders summit to forge the coalition that ended the violence in 
East Timor.
    During the last 8 years, we have worked also to ensure that the open 
world economy works as a means to raise living standards and lower 
poverty for all nations. We've learned that meeting that challenge 
requires more than the continued expansion of rules-based open trade. It 
also requires strong social safety nets, more quality education, anti-
poverty efforts, and labor and environment standards so that people 
believe that globalization is leading not to a race to the bottom but to 
higher living standards for all who work hard and are a part of it.
    In no part of the world has globalization been put to the test as 
much as in Asia in these last few years. You have felt both its great 
benefits and its temporary but brutal sting. On balance, the global 
economy and more open markets clearly have been a positive force in Asia 
and, indeed, around the world. That is not to downplay the impact of the 
financial crisis or the abject despair it brought to millions. It is 
also true that countries with more closed economies did not suffer as 
much during the crisis, but those same closed economies, isolated from 
the risks of the global economy, have also been isolated from its 
fullest rewards.
    APEC has pushed all of us to seize those rewards. And the rewards 
are clear. Per capita GDP in East Asia has doubled since 1990. Among 
lower income economies in APEC, incomes have grown by 60 percent in the 
last decade, even as they have shrunk for many less developed countries 
outside APEC. In 1970, before economic expansion through trade began, 
infants in this region were 5 times more likely than today to die

[[Page 2871]]

at birth. Children were 6 times more likely than today to die before age 
5.
    I think a fair reading of history is that the greatest Asian 
financial crisis was not the brief one now coming to a close but the one 
that lasted almost two centuries before Asia began to open its economies 
to the world. Fifty years ago most of this region was desperately poor. 
Many economists predicted that the country with the best chance of 
success, because of its human and natural resources, was Burma. In 
reality, the most successful countries were not those which started with 
the biggest advantages but those that made the most of the advantages 
they had by opening their markets and ultimately their societies.
    That is why APEC has been a force for free markets. In our 1994 
summit, we agreed to achieve free and open trade in the Asia Pacific by 
2010 for industrialized economies and by 2020 for developing economies. 
We've been making steady, sector-by-sector progress. In 1988 more than 
half the APEC economies had average tariffs of 10 percent or more. 
Today, only four do. APEC exports have more than doubled.
    Of course, the region is not out of the woods. It would be a cruel 
irony, indeed, if the recovery were to breed a complacency that stalled 
the very changes making recovery possible. I believe we need to meet 
four related challenges to keep the recovery and our share of prosperity 
going.
    First, we must continue to modernize our economies by promoting E-
commerce and applying information technology to the full range of 
economic activity, from agriculture to heavy industry to transportation, 
to reduce costs and raise efficiency.
    To maximize potential, we must turn the digital divide among and 
within our nations into digital opportunities. That will be a big 
subject of this summit. Internet use is growing in the region, and Asia 
is poised to participate in what will be a $7 trillion global 
E-commerce market by the year 2005. At the same time, it has been 
estimated that if we simply maintain the current rate of growth, in 11 
of the 21 APEC economies the percentage of the population online by 2005 
will average just 4 percent, compared to an average of 72 percent in the 
top eight economies.
    As we discuss Internet access, we must also address the obstacles to 
E-commerce. For example, being able to order a package online is not 
enough if a competitive airline cannot fly it to you at low cost, if it 
can't get through redtape at customs, or if there's no delivery service 
to take it the final miles to your home. APEC has encouraged all its 
members to make a comprehensive assessment of their readiness for the 
information age. The assessment asked questions about access to the 
Internet, about the reliability and price of services, about the number 
of schools connected, about local language content, about the business 
environment for E-commerce, about the protection of intellectual 
property, and a host of other issues.
    Now that the roadblocks are being identified, we propose that 
governments in this region and companies like yours launch pilot 
projects to start removing them. I hope as many of you as possible will 
participate. We cannot close the digital divide without your efforts to 
provide distance learning, to donate software and low-cost computers for 
villages, and to train people to use them. We need initiatives like 
APEC's Knowledge Network, which is compiling on one Internet site 
information on all the service companies--all the services which 
companies are providing to help economies close the digital divide.
    Now, people are talking about tripling the number of people online 
in our region by 2005. With your help, I believe we can easily quadruple 
the number and perhaps do even better.
    APEC has also agreed to adopt one test and one standard for all its 
members to use to measure the safety and quality of computers, agreed 
that only legitimately licensed software can be used in government 
offices so companies can be more certain of their copyrights, and to 
continue its moratorium on E-commerce duties. That's a good step toward 
meeting the second big challenge we face, to continue to open our 
markets to more trade and more investment.
    At this summit, the United States, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and 
Singapore are announcing the first multilateral open-skies agreement in 
the world, a model we hope others will emulate and join. APEC members 
are also agreeing to post on the Internet our

[[Page 2872]]

individual action plans for reaching free trade in the region, so you 
can judge our progress and, frankly, so you can put a little more 
pressure on us to get it done. The most important thing we can do is to 
launch a new trade round at the WTO. It ought to happen as early as 
possible next year.
    A third challenge is to continue doing what we all said had to be 
done in the wake of the recent financial crisis, to improve 
transparency, to speed up financial restructuring, to strengthen the 
rule of law, and to build more accountable political institutions. 
That's easy to say and hard to do. But surely it can't be as hard as 
living through another crisis. And the imperative for reform will only 
grow as our economies become more and more intertwined.
    The challenge is especially profound for two nations in this region, 
China and Vietnam. Both have signed trade agreements with the United 
States as steps toward joining the WTO. For China and Vietnam, these 
agreements are about much more than lowering tariffs; they are 
declarations of interdependence, recognition that in a global age no 
country can succeed without continuing to open up to the world.
    Both agreements require far-reaching change, dismantling command and 
control economies, giving people more access to information and, 
ultimately, I believe, more freedom to use that information to shape the 
decisions that affect their lives.
    A final challenge is to recognize that open markets alone cannot 
guarantee the kind of growth that lifts everyone, as I said earlier. We 
know we need strong safety nets, especially in regions like Asia, with 
rapidly aging populations. We know we need to invest more in education 
and spread access to education as broadly as possible. As the private 
sector knows better than anyone, even if you have 100 percent literacy, 
every dollar you invest in education continues to bring ever greater 
economic returns.
    We also need to fight the infectious diseases that kill people and 
progress in too many of our nations. There will not be a lasting 
recovery in Asia if Asia becomes the next epicenter of a global AIDS 
crisis. But that could happen without concerted leadership. Government 
cannot provide that leadership alone. Companies will have to educate 
their workers; CEO's will have to add their voices to those trying to 
destigmatize the disease. This is not someone else's problem; it is all 
our problem. As APEC is recognizing, we must fight it together.
    In short, we have a lot to do if we don't want this recovery to be 
as fleeting as the latest Elvis fad in Japan. The good new is, we know 
what to do. Painful experience has also taught us what not to do. 
Experience has also taught us to have faith in this region's capacity to 
overcome very great challenges. After all, how many people foresaw a 
generation ago that Asia would grow so rapidly we would be talking today 
about a Pacific century? How many people said 2 years ago that Asia's 
success was a thing of the past? The truth is, the problems the 
financial crisis exposed were very real, and they haven't all been 
solved yet. But the achievements and the resilience of Asia's people are 
very real, too, and a lot has been done in the last couple of years.
    The commitment of Asia's friends and the stake we have in Asia's 
success is also real. That is what drives APEC. With your help, it will 
keep us on the right path.
    These last 8 years have been a great honor and opportunity for me to 
try to tie the United States firmly and forever in a very positive way 
to the Asia-Pacific region. I think this work should continue. I think 
the leaders' meeting should continue. I think the involvement of the 
business community is essential.
    So I thank you for what you have done, and I hope that you will 
continue to move forward on these four challenges.
    Thank you.
    Dr. Hamdillah Ha Wahab. It is, sir, a very rare opportunity for the 
President of the largest economy in APEC to grace his presence in this 
year's summit, hosted by the smallest economy of APEC. [Laughter] And I 
would like to take this opportunity to invite our CEO summit delegates 
to raise questions to the President of the United States of America.
    Please.
    The President. I just want to say, after I saw this facility, I did 
not believe this was a small economy. [Laughter] I have here with

[[Page 2873]]

me today the Secretary of State, our Trade Ambassador, Charlene 
Barshefsky, as well as Secretary Albright and many other distinguished 
people from the American Government, and I know they're going to be 
pushing for us to build an outpost on the South China Sea. [Laughter] 
Now, this is an amazing place.
    Does anyone have a question? Yes, sir.

Integration of Technology and Education

    Q. [Inaudible]--and we're here with some students from--
[inaudible]--and the United States, covering this event. And so, on 
behalf of the students, I'd like to ask a question, and that is, how do 
you feel APEC and the members of APEC can do a better job the integrate 
technology and education?
    The President. Well, one of the things I think that--we're going to 
be talking about that at this meeting, and it's one of the subjects of 
the leaders' meeting. So I will answer that question, but I would also 
just say to you, sir, if you and the students have any ideas you want to 
share with us, this is the time to do it because it will be a major 
focus of the discussions we have all day tomorrow.
    I think perhaps the most important thing we can do is to identify 
what is now taking place in every country and to see whether or not the 
best practices in each country can be spread to the others as quickly as 
possible. I also think it's worth looking at what's being done in some 
non-APEC countries that might have particular relevance to the 
developing economies.
    I spent some time a few months ago in India, and I went out into a 
couple of small villages, as well as being in some of the larger cities. 
And in the State of Rajasthan, which is not one of the wealthiest States 
in India, they will have a community computer available to all the 
citizens and all the children of the community within 3 years in every 
village in the State. In another State where I was, they already have 18 
government services on the Internet, more than most American States do, 
I think.
    So I think what we need to do is to take--look, the technology is 
out there. We are going to have to have, as I said in my remarks, more 
activity from the business community in donating both the hardware, the 
software, and the expertise and a lot of things that particularly are 
needed in the developing areas. But I think we ought to make a 
commitment to quadruple access over the next 5 years. And I think we can 
do much better than that.
    But I think that it shouldn't just be E-commerce. There ought to be 
a serious focus on the schools and having Internet access in the schools 
and making sure the proper educational software is available and that 
international communications are available among the schools, which I 
think are quite important.
    Anything else? Yes, in the back.

Asian Economic Integration

    Q. [Inaudible]
    The President. I think that there are inherent constraints on APEC 
which--the EU is becoming a common economic unit, and I do think that 
there will be more regional economic cooperation within Asia, as well as 
more cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region in the future. And I tried 
to make a very pointed reference to that in my remarks. I don't see the 
two things in conflict. And I know there are some people who apparently 
believe that building a stronger Asia-Pacific cooperative economic 
network is inconsistent with building greater Asian economic 
integration. I simply don't agree with that.
    And I think that we make a grave mistake when we start to create 
zero-sum games in the global economy. I think it's a mistake; it ought 
to be avoided at all costs.
    Now, I do think that we should look at ways in which this 
organization could be stronger and more effective in actually pushing 
for the changes that we recommend. But you know what the problems are. I 
mean, many of you agree that we ought to do certain things, but the 
things that you think we ought to do are politically difficult for some 
nations to do once the leaders go back home and have to deal with the 
political reality on the ground.
    So I think one of the most important things that perhaps could be 
done is an examination of what the business community both within 
countries and beyond countries could do to support the political leaders 
who are willing to try to make the changes that we all think ought to be 
made. Because it's very easy for

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us to come to this beautiful place and recommend all these changes, and 
these changes may well be beneficial to all the business people 
represented here from all the countries. But it doesn't mean that they 
can be made painlessly by political leaders when they go back home.
    So I think one of the things I'd like to see all of you discuss is 
what you could do not only to put more pressure on the leaders here once 
a year but what you could do to provide more systematic support to the 
leaders who are prepared to make these tough decisions who live in the 
countries where the decisions are indeed difficult to make.
    Yes.

Next President and the Trade Agenda

    Q. [Inaudible]
    The President. Well, without commenting on what kind of leadership 
we will have in the other countries, which I think is inappropriate for 
me to comment on and also not possible to predict, one of the things 
that both Vice President Gore and Governor Bush agreed on in this 
election is that the United States should continue its strong leadership 
for a more integrated global economy and for expanded trade. And as 
nearly as I could tell, there was virtually no disagreement on that, 
except that there were disagreements about the extent to which we also 
ought to push the trade-plus agenda, if you will, that I've been talking 
about for the last several years. But on the question of leadership for 
trade, I think the world can rest easy because both our candidates made 
strong commitments to do that.
    Yes, sir.

Post-Presidential Plans

    Q. [Inaudible]--NAFTA and trade relations with China, but I have a 
question to ask you. You're still young, articulate, intelligent, and 
the President of the United States. What do you do now? [Laughter]
    The President. Well, now I have a United States Senator to support. 
I understand that's an expensive proposition. [Laughter] I don't know.
    Let me just say that the important thing for a former President, it 
seems to me, is to find a way to be a useful citizen of both my country 
and the world and to continue to pursue the things that I think are most 
important to making the world a better place but to do it in a way that 
does not get in the way of my successor.
    The United States can only have one President at a time, and it's 
very important to me that I continue to be active in the things that I 
care about--many of which I was talking about here today--in a way that 
is respectful of the fact that the country has a new President, and the 
people need to bond with the new President, and the new President needs 
to establish his relationships and role in the world.
    But I think I can find a way to do that. So I'll be around. But I 
also have to support a Senator, and I'm going to do my best to do that, 
as well.
    Thank you very much. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. in the Ballroom at the Empire 
Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Hamdillah Ha Wahab, chairman, 
APEC-CEO Summit 2000; Prince Abdul Qawi of Brunei; U.S. Ambassador to 
Brunei Sylvia Stanfield; Sy Sternberg, Paul Y. Song, and Ernest S. 
Micek, U.S. members, APEC Business Advisory Council; President Kim Dae-
jung of South Korea; and Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George 
W. Bush.