ASEAN’s World Cup ambitions

I spoke late last week to Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines,  Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Along with a group of ASEAN foreign ministers, Pitsuwan just completed a circuit of a key ASEAN trade route that culminated in a meeting with China’s foreign minister in Yunnan province. Pitsuwan is a former foreign minister of Thailand and Harvard Ph.D who’s been mentioned as a possible UN Secretary-General. He chronicled the recent trip enthusiastically via Twitter. "A lot of eating, tender care and goodwill–traditional hospitality of China," he tweeted after a Chinese welcome banquet.

Briefly at least, the trip shifted the focus from the tension between several ASEAN nations and China over the South China Sea to the more friendly terrain of mutually beneficial trade and commerce. Pitsuwan stressed repeatedly the commercial benefits that tighter relations with China might bring the regional grouping.  "We are talking about an almost two billion people strong market combined between ASEAN and China. Our commodities, our tourism industry and our services sector will benefit a great deal from our connectivity with China."

When we spoke, Pitsuwan was still  exhilerated by the road trip. "It was meant to demonstrate that we are connected physically and that [the connection] will be improved and shall be improved."  Pitsuwan was also excited about the possibility of establishing regular high-level meetings at the level of foreign ministers. "I think both sides agreed that this would be very useful."

But mostly we talked about soccer and, in particular, the idea that ASEAN might facilitate a joint bid to host the World Cup in 2030. The idea got its start at an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting last summer and appears to have picked up some steam. Pitsuwan’s son, Fuadi, who is based in Washington and affiliated with Georgetown University, has been promoting the idea tirelessly. In the Jakarta Post last week, he argued that a joint bid would foster a deeper sense of community:

Submitting a bid will catalyze efforts to further integrate the ASEAN single market. Integration is pivotal for our economic prosperity in an era when a rising China and India are favored destinations for foreign investment. A bid would solidify a critical second identity, ASEANites, for all citizens of ASEAN. An ASEAN World Cup would be an achievement that years of joint efforts and political communiqués declaring a “sense of community” cannot attain.

In that article, Fuadi also began to make the case for ASEAN as host over possible competitor China.

[A]rguably, we have a much stronger football culture than the Chinese. We are already football-mad, but we could be even more so if given the opportunity. We will be required to commit significant investment in infrastructure development in order to compete with the Chinese bid. The ultimate benefit of competing with China though lies in the fact that it would forge a sense of identity among ASEANites. With a common challenge, our people will unite. We will be one.  

For his part, Surin Pitsuwan told me that an ASEAN bid should appeal to FIFA, soccer’s governing body, which has stressed bringing the sport to regions beyond its traditional strongholds in Europe and Latin America. Pitsuwan says the idea "has generated so much excitement in the past few days and now I’ve been tasked to coordinate with Malaysia to come up with a proposal for the leaders to look at and deliberate on and endorse in May, when they meet in Jakarta."

Both Pitsuwans acknowledge that sizeable hurdles remain. It’s not clear how many of the ASEAN countries could actually be involved and how precisely a joint bid would be submitted. A FIFA executive board member said recently that no more than four countries could concurrently serve as host. If that’s true, it seems at least possible that the bidding process could generate tension as it raises hard questions about who gets to host games and who doesn’t.

But for the moment at least, the possible coordinated bid is one more sign of a regional organization that seems to be bursting with energy and good intentions.