6 - ASEAN+3: The Roles of ASEAN and China

Summary

East Asia is in the throes of an important socio-economic evolutionary process, after three waves of monumental transformation since the late 1980s. Each wave of change and transformation moulded East Asia incrementally and helped forge an East Asian economic model, which is becoming discernable today. In turn, the emergence of this “new” model is dictating East Asia's challenges and opportunities, as new socio-economic and political trends emerge and as East Asian regionalism take off.

In this regional context, ASEAN and China are playing important roles in shaping ASEAN+3 in socio-economic development, regional peace and cooperation, and the cultural affirmation of an Asian identity. This chapter focuses on three aspects.

The East Asian socio-economic transformation in three waves (liberalization/globalization, the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS epidemic) has prompted China and ASEAN to develop an East Asian model of socio-economic development;

The fundamental geopolitics is based on a shifting ASEAN-China relationship, thanks to China's pragmatism and ASEAN's changed threat perception of China;

The eventual affirmation of an Asian identity or “Asian-ness”, especially with the rise of China's “soft power” and ASEAN's acquiescence of this rise, has in turn contributed to the consolidation of ASEAN+3.

THREE WAVES OF TRANSFORMATION AND CHANGE: TOWARDS EAST ASIAN REGIONALISM AND A NEW EAST ASIAN SOCIO-ECONOMIC MODEL

First Wave of Liberalization/Globalization: Opening Up and Export Orientation

Like the rest of the world, East Asia was profoundly affected by the trends of liberalization and globalization, as it was “opened up” and its economies liberalized, at the behest of the United States and Western powers.

In the early 1990s, the Reaganite and Thatcherite revolutions brought sweeping changes to the mentality of the post-Cold War order. When the Soviet Empire ultimately collapsed under the weight of inefficient communism and China became progressively engaged in a successful “socialism à la chinoise” experiment, liberalism's final triumph was hailed and communism's demise ultimately sealed. Daniel Yergin emphasized that the most important phenomenon and transition in post-War modern times was undoubtedly this “free market revolution that changed the world”.

Neo-liberalism and liberalization engaged the world in a frantic race towards the globalization of four key elements, viz. the massive and rapid circulation of goods and services, capital, ideas and human resources worldwide.