A Case For Leadership In East Aisan Economic Cooperation

Chapter one is the introduction part, mainly focusing on literature review, logic and hypothesis of the dissertation. There are many schools of explanation trying to analyzing East Asian economic cooperation, such as Theory of Interdependence and Complementarities; Band Wagon Theory; Pragmatic Explanation and Cultural Explanation. However, very few research touches on government's role in regional cooperation, and some argue that Sino-Japanese cooperation is the key to East Asian economic cooperation, but with little convincing arguments. The logic line of this dissertation is to classify leadership in international cooperation into three categories: intellectual leadership; entrepreneurial leadership and structural leadership, and the models of cooperation can be sorted as the following four types: assurance play; coordinative play; prisoner's dilemma and persuasive play. Before China and Japan can take up leadership together, regional members in East Asia play different leading roles in different aspects and stages. Leadership is defined as the following: a role that is played by nation state, to promote international cooperation and to ensure its implementation for the common interest of the nation group. East Asia is defined as ASEAN plus three: ten members of ASEAN, China, South Korea and Japan. The essence of international cooperation is that nation state coordinate in policy making process for the sake of production of collective goods. Actors always evaluate the risks and benefits in cooperation and then make the final decision. Chapter two focuses on establishing a theory on the relations between leadership and international cooperation, while utilizing the theory to analyzing the de facto situation in East Asia. Different types of cooperation require supply of different kinds of leadership, only with sufficient leadership supply, can cooperation be successfully concluded. Leadership is a necessary condition for cooperation. As for leadership in regional cooperation, the leading country should have capacity and will to be a leader, and also should be put up with by the global power, following countries as well as competing regional powers. Chapter three analyzes the history and present situation of East Asian financial cooperation, utilizing the analyzing framework established in Chapter Two. It is argued that before the financial crisis, there existed some forms of regional financial cooperation among East Asian countries, but at low level. Some small countries played a leadership role in promoting regional financial cooperation, but leadership supply was still not sufficient, so that the cooperative efforts could not resist the coming crisis. During the crisis, some East Asian countries adopted a "Neighbour thy beggar" policy and the whole region fell in Prisoner's Dilemma. The cooperation between powers such as China and Japan led to the conclusion of "Chiang Mai Initiative", the efficiency of which still needs testing. Most of the initiatives in East Asian financial cooperation belong to high-level cooperation type, and thus leadership will be highly demanded. But from short to middle term, no country is ready to take up such kind of leadership, so that it will be more difficult for the cooperation to be furthered. Chapter four selects free trade area in East Asia as a case. ASEAN Free Trade Area, China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, Japan-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Partnership, Japan-Singapore Free Trade Area are analyzed in detail, illustrating that free trade cooperation is not between totally equal partners and leadership supplied by powers is the key to a successfulfree trade agreement. China and Japan have taken some measures to encourage ASEAN members to participate in free trade cooperation, playing a certain role of leadership. As for the prospect of the East Asian Free Trade Area, it cannot be optimistic, mainly because of the competitive industrial structure in East Asia, as well as the obstacles from domestic resisting forces. Chapter five is the concluding part of the dissertation. Th...