Regional Economic Cooperation and Integration in Northeast Asia—The way forward under the GTI Framework

This paper is elaborations on the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI)’s current situation and future development as a vehicle mandated to promote regional economic cooperation between China, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Korea and Mongolia. GTI is the only active intergovernmental mechanism in Northeast Asia. Hence, its future holds special importance for the region as a whole, including Japan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. To assess GTI’s current state of play, its prospects, and challenges, we reviewed the wealth of official documents and studies of GTI as well as scholarly literature on the topic. The authors additionally draw from their long-standing involvement in the regionalization process in Northeast Asia. Based on the review, we highlight several success factors as well as challenges and propose four areas for improvement. Examples from GTIs work in four key sectors: transport, trade, energy, and business cooperation are utilized to highlight the importance but also the shortcomings of GTI. To justify the role of GTI in regional cooperation and integration, we emphasize capacity enhancement for project-oriented activities, improving operational processes, strengthening its institutional structure, and streamlining activities across sectors to achieve the set goals. GTI’s strategic development framework is also proposed, consisting of the institutional development plan and operational plan. The implications of this research can inform the institutional update of GTI to enhance operational output with a view to creating tangible results for regional integration.