HONG KONG Ignore the documents; find substance in the gestures. That was, not for the first time, the lesson from the annual Asean summit meeting that just ended in Vientiane, Laos, and from its parallel meetings involving the prime ministers of China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. The most telling aspect of this mix of multi- and bilateral meetings was that the focus was more on the non-Asean dialogue partners than on the issues of Asean itself and its members. This was understandable, given the neighbors' international weight compared with that of the Asean 10. Their presence, however, seems also to have become useful as a distraction from Asean's own modest progress. Indeed, at the insistence of next year's host, Malaysia, the gathering is morphing into an East Asia summit, to include China, South Korea and Japan but not India and Australia. That is supposed to be a one-time event, but there are reasonable concerns among some members that it will further detract from Asean itself. Others, especially Indonesia, are concerned that it will increase the regional clout of China at the expense not only of India and Australia, but of Asean, too. In Vientiane, Asean diplomatically sidestepped the difficult issue of the role of pariah member Myanmar and did nothing more than acknowledge the existence of concerns about the situation in Muslim southern Thailand. Such evasions were understandable in the context of Asean's mantra of "noninterference in one another's affairs" and the failure of Asean's own efforts to persuade Myanmar's generals to soften their politics and improve their economics. Less understandable was the failure to have meaningful discussion on one issue that is important to almost all its members and where they are in a position to have some international impact - currency values. Instead they discussed issues like North Korea's nuclear ambitions, over which their influence is nil. China again stole the show by signing on to a deal, outlined two years ago, for a free-trade agreement with Asean to come into effect between 2005 and 2010. This had already sent Japan and Sough Korea clamoring to make similar pacts. India, Australia and New Zealand have now joined the list. All this needs to be treated with skepticism. To start with, Asean's own free-trade area continues to be beset by exceptions and implementation problems. The trade regimes and interests of the likes of Japan, Australia and India are also far apart. Such politically inspired trade gestures are damaging the wider World Trade Organization deals to which these mostly trade-dependent nations are supposedly committed. Meanwhile, some Asean members like Thailand and Singapore are signing bilateral agreements with Australia, the United States and other countries outside Asia. The Vientiane meeting can only add to the hopeless confusion of existing paper trade pacts. Asean members must take a slice of the blame. Australia, once a fierce opponent of bilateral trade deals, must take some too. It continues to shoot itself in the foot in its political relations with the region, meanwhile pushing for trade pacts as a substitute. Prime Minister John Howard refused to have any truck with a regional nonaggression pact on the curious grounds that it would conflict with Australia's defense treaty with the United States. His repeated defense of pre-emptive strikes also annoyed his Asean neighbors. The proposed pact is another empty document, but Howard's attitudes toward Asia ended any chance that Australia might have had of being invited to join the East Asia summit, or any other specifically Asian grouping. Japan, too, continued to damage its international clout for the sake of domestic politics. China is surely exaggerating the significance of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine for Japanese war dead. But the diplomatic cost to Japan is high. Likewise, though Japanese trade and investment remain more important to Southeast Asia's development than that of China, Japan has again proved incapable of the sort of trade gestures that have given China such regional clout. Nor did it provide any leadership on the currency issue. With a convertible currency and the world's largest foreign reserves, it is in a position to seize Asian leadership and play a global role. Instead, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China was able to claim the headlines with the most absurd line in Vientiane, criticizing the United States for its weak dollar while insisting that his own currency remain artificially pegged to it.