Regionalism in
Asia-Pacific so far has been more of a network-based integration rather
institution-based, which is the characteristic of the European Union. Since the
Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, East Asian Countries have been looking for
alternative for the less-relevant and weak APEC. This resulted in an increasing
number of sub-regional initiatives within the Asia-Pacific region, especially
within the East Asian and Southeast Asia states. Under the framework, of ASEAN
Plus Three, ASEAN countries, China, Korea, Japan, have agreed on establishing a
currency-swap arrangement, the Chiang Mai Initiative. On top of that, ASEAN
also has FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with each of them. Other economic and
financial projects such as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and a recent Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB), though there are still much work to be done in those projects, has
added the complexity to the regionalism process. The “Noodle Bowl” are now added
with more of the noodle. Some scholars argues that those sub-regional
initiatives are very instrumental in community building of the Asia-Pacific,
while some others views them as a challenge.
One of the
scholars who perceives these sub-regional initiatives as a barrier to the
regional architecture is Richard Weixing Hu. He sees those regional building
projects as overlapping and sometime even competing each other. Evidently, APEC
and ASEAN+3’s overlapping objective has caused former to weaken when the East
Asian and Southeast Asian member states of APEC decided to shift their
attention toward the latter. To Hu, it’s a zero sum game between any
institutions and regional building projects that have overlapping objectives,
even a few. The overlapping regional building projects could lead major powers
to practice “forum shopping”, because they are able to justify their actions,
which is against one institution’s value and norm, in another institution.
Added by the culture of network-based integration embedded in Asian countries,
it would be really hard, if not impossible, to find the right configuration and
putting all those puzzles in their right place, which is very instrumental in
community building.
Hu continues
saying that multiple regional building projects would erode cohesion of region.
He reasons that those multiple projects are the illustration of “soft power”
competition between the superpowers and the medium powers. For example, in 1990
Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir proposed East Asian Economic
Caucus (EAEC), which was vetoed by the US, because the EAEC included only
Southeast Asian and East Asian member states. This means that the US would be
left out of the table and have no role and very limited influence in the
region. Even though the dynamic of regional building has been seen throughout
the region in recent, Hu still believe that very little progress has been made
in ensuring any promising coherent regional architecture. They yet still do not
have any widely-agreed framework to establish regional architecture for East
Asia and Asia-Pacific.
It is widely
noticed that all prominent regional building projects are all proposed by the
major powers. Evidently, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Comprehensive Economic
Partnership for East Asian, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership were
proposed by the US, Japan and ASEAN respectively. Though Japan and US are ally,
through Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, each of them pursue a
leadership role in the region. ASEAN is not very different, as mentioned in its
charter, it states clearly that it determine to be the regional driving force
of regional initiatives. These conflicting of interest, if manage carefully,
could produce a widely-agreed upon framework for regional building. If not, it
could lead to the division and the road to Asia-Pacific community will be
prolonged even longer.
Despite the
pessimistic views on the network of sub-regional initiative, it is believed that
states will be able to adopt the situation and reach a consensus through a
series of mediation, consultation and compromise, and turn the challenges into
opportunities. A series of FTAs between ASEAN and its dialogue partners create
interdependence and will eventually lead to a higher-level of integrations. The
Asian Noodle bowl regionalism is the fundamental element to the extensive pan
Asia-Pacific’s regional architecture.
Various regional
building projects could also provide space for major powers and medium powers
to discuss the regional building blueprint. Such multi-layered forums increase
opportunity for confidence building, consultation and consensus, which is very
instrumental in regionalism process. US and China are very like to have
conflicting ideas regarding how the regional architecture should be; therefore,
these two have to come down compromising and concession to each other if they
want build an inclusive and strong Asia-Pacific community. In order to achieve
this goal Baogang He (2012) suggests the regionalism be a hybrid one. Taking
advantage of the hybrid nature of ASEAN, a hybrid regionalism can be achieved.
By doing it this way, it would involve the superpowers in the process and each
of them could play certain leadership role. The intertwined network of regional
building projects play a crucial in this process. They provides countless of
forum, discussion opportunities and creates sense of belonging and identity.
Through that, it allowed the hybridization to take place between the East and
the Western side of Pacific. . He (2012)
continues saying that the regional actors, including the US, China, and Asia
all want different style and framework for regional building, but neither of
them will get what they want and they still have to accept it anyway. They will
have to share responsibility in managing regional affairs. It can be vividly
seen that the regionalism in Asia-Pacific started to hybridize. Started with
ASEAN, then APEC, ASEAN+3, East Asia Summit, we have witnessed more and more collaboration
and cooperation between both sides of the Pacific.
What is it about?
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