6.1 General

The majority of the world's people live in Asia. The second biggest and wealthiest national economy in the world, the Japanese economy, is also in Asia. The most rapid and successful economic performances witnessed after World War II came from countries located in the eastern part of this continent. Two countries that have a population of over 1 billion each are found in Asia. China is growing at a rate unprecedented in history. India has emerged from decades of sluggish growth to an accelerated development over the past ten years. If they continue at this rate, the two countries will represent huge economies. If China maintains its current speed of development, it will have an economy the size of the U.S. and Europe combined in thirty years. In short, developments in Asia could change the world's economic balance.

Asia could play a very important role in our development. It provides the main example of successful development. In addition it is from Asia that we can get highly trained manpower and technical assistance inexpensively. We also need to take advantage of the remarkably growing Asian economy. This region could provide investment that suits our context and level of development. As regards development aid, it is mainly Japan, and to a lesser extent China, that provide financial assistance. This could continue and even expand. Most Asian countries are in the developing world and are our partners in the struggle to mitigate the negative effects of globalization. Taken in sum, they too can make a growing contribution to our development.
The countries in this region have been demonstrating their commitment to international law and order, and are part of the fight against extremism and terrorism. We believe that they can assist in our effort to maintain our national security by contributing to the creation of a conducive international political climate. Some of them could even go further and provide significant support for our efforts to achieve sustainable peace.

To sum up, we believe that our relations with Asian countries merit far greater attention because of the important significance Asia has for our development and also our national security. While we should in principle be prepared to work closely with all countries that can make a positive contribution to our efforts, we need to concentrate on the major countries in the region.

6.2 Japan

Our friendship with Japan dates back to the years well before World War II. We note that quite a number of Japanese people are positively inclined towards Ethiopia, and that presently Japan is providing us with substantial development aid including technical assistance. This strong development relationship should continue to grow. But we cannot say that enough has been done regarding trade and investment. We have not entered the Japanese market in any meaningful way. Nor have we received Japanese investment of note. The low level of participation in this area is attributable, partly to our failure to create a conducive environment for investment and partly to Japan's concentration on East Asian countries, not to mention the inaccessibility of the Japanese market to products from less developed countries. We should work to strengthen the good relations we have with Japan. While deploying, as in the case of Europe, more effort to secure investment and trade possibilities, we need to concentrate on securing more financial and technical assistance and increasing the effectiveness of such assistance.