A recently signed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is expected to go a long way toward strengthening India's economic engagement with Korea.

As a result of this deal, in the next five years economic exchange with Korea is expected to grow at a rate of more than 35 percent a year, taking the total trade between the two countries to more than $30 billion.

Similarly, India's recently signed free trade agreement (FTA) with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (though only relating to goods at this stage) is expected to boost economic exchange with the trade block, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of over $2 trillion.

Once the deal becomes fully operational, trade with the block is expected to reach $70 billion within the next five years.

With these two economic deals, India has come a long way in strengthening its economic relations with the region since 1990 when it first launched its Look East Policy. Today, with trade relations of more than $100 billion, East Asia has thus emerged as India's largest overall trading partner.

As the world's fastest growing region in the world, neither Europe nor North America can match the potential future growth of this region.

East Asia is also emerging as the center of a power struggle between the current hegemonic United States and the future superpower China.

China's increasing economic and political engagement with the region is openly challenging the U.S.-led balance of power there, with America no longer in a position to maintain adequate political security.

If China continues its current pace of developing economic and political relations with the region (which it seems it will), the day is not far off when China will emerge as the most influential country in the region, reducing the United States to a relatively powerless spectator.

If and when East and Southeast Asia come fully under the Chinese sphere of influence, it will of course have worldwide strategic security implications.

As one of the biggest countries in Asia, India will certainly be one of the most affected from such a regional hegemonic change.

The pace of China's engagement with East Asian countries has been phenomenal in recent years. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, China, like India, had minimal relations with eastern countries.

Most of these nations still regarded China as a direct rival country. But in the past 18 years or so, China, with its creative and multi-dimensional approach (unlike India which has focused mainly on economic relationships) has emerged as the most important ``partner" of most regional countries including Japan and South Korea.

Today, China, Korea and Japan have more than $300 billion in trade among themselves, a level of economic cooperation that is unprecedented in the history of these three countries.

Keeping the bigger picture in mind, China has followed a multi-pronged strategy of engagement within this region. Convinced that economic engagement alone would not be enough to strengthen its relations with East Asian countries, it has also been emphasizing political, cultural, social and educational relationships with its neighbors, thus strengthening its sphere of regional influence.

Among the most prominently influential tools has been official economic aid. Many countries in the region now receive more aid from China than from the United States.

For example, according to recent studies, in 2003, China's aid to the Philippines was roughly four times greater than U.S. aid, and roughly three times greater to Laos. The same is true of many other countries in the region.

China has not only increased aid but has been using it in a very sophisticated manner that serves wider foreign policy objectives. Promotion of Chinese companies, cultivation and development of political ties with local elites, and the softening of concerns about China's economic and military rise are but some examples.

Toward these objectives, a large number of political elites from the region are invited annually to China and given special ``study tours'' of Chinese cultural and historical sites. In contrast, very little of this sort is happening with regard to strengthening India's Look East Policy.

One indication of China's growing cultural and educational influence in the region is the recent growth of foreign students attending Chinese universities.

Only a decade ago most students from Southeast Asian countries preferred American elite universities, yet the number of students from regional countries studying in China's elite universities has been increasing at a rate of 20 percent per year.

Thus, the ``American Dream" of East and Southeast Asian students has been replaced by the ``Chinese Dream." Even though India has world-class technical and management universities, it has failed to attract any similar number of such foreign students from this region.

In many countries of the Southeast Asian region, the so-called ``Beijing consensus" on authoritarian government plus a market economy is becoming more popular than the previously dominant ``Washington consensus" of market economics with democratic government. This is bound to have serious long-term implications for India and all other democratic states in the region.

Sometimes the hardest thing to see is the biggest thing. This is exactly what is happening with regard to India's Look East Policy. While economic engagement has been going on at reasonably good pace, strategic engagement has begun to flounder.

Its failure to properly comprehend the fundamental change currently occurring in the region may very well hurt India's core strategic, security and economic interests in the near future.

India does not have the luxury of unlimited time to further strengthen its strategic engagement within the region in question. Opportunities which are available to India today might very well cease to exist within a few years time considering the pace of change now taking place.

If ``corrective" measures are not taken soon, the Look East Policy might collapse. Economic policies alone will be insufficient to save India's prominent engagement with the region. A broader strategic perspective is the need of the hour.

While there are many reasons for the overall imbalance of India's policy approach, two main factors have been India's weak intellectual and diplomatic resources in the region.

Diplomatically speaking, India has given far more preference to Europe and America, where its best diplomatic resources are currently sent. Consequently, average or below average assets have been deployed in the East and Southeast Asian region. This must change.

With China on a spree building new embassies and renovating old ones in the whole region, not a brick seems to have been added to Indian missions in the region. Moreover, most of them are underfunded and understaffed.

They lack vision, strategic perspective and are stuck in a Cold War mindset, largely unable to connect and work with Indian experts and scholars working in the region.

In their present condition, they are just not ready to meet with India's strategic interests in the region. Without strengthening these weak points, the future of India's Look East Policy is very dim.

* The article was first published in korea times on August 24, 2008.