ASEAN's Economic Cooperation: A Regionalism Perspective

This paper is titled ASEAN's Economic Cooperation: a Regionalism Perspective.Regionalism in this paper is defined as the practice and faith on political and economic cooperation which are carried out by some adjacent nations, with a goal to attain national and/or regional interests. Essentially, regionalism is a theory on the interactions between state and market or political power and market mechanism.There are two traditional approaches to regionalism study, namely, political and economic ones. The author of this paper chooses the International Political Economy (IPE) approach which treats and market as the most important analytical dimensions, to discuss regionalism. In order to analyze the objective, the author choses ASEAN's economic cooperation as a case study. The main objective is to study the content, institutions, performance and characteristics of ASEAN's economic cooperation.The contents of this paper include: (a) the key definitions and relevant theories of regionalism, and IPE analytical framework of regionalism; (b) the case study on ASEAN's economic cooperation, including internal and external perspectives; (c) the international institutions and performance in ASEAN's economic cooperation; and (d) the dynamics and future of ASEAN's integration.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, there are 5 chapters in this paper, total 180 thousand Chinese words. The subject and outline of each chapter are as follow:Chapter One is titled The General Theory on Regionalism. In the first section, the author discusses the definitions of region, regionalism, regionalization, regionness and integration. In the second section, the author explores, based on the introduction of the two traditional political and economic approaches, the basic logic on regionalism, and argues that regionalism study needs an eclectic approach. The third section uses the IPE framework to analyze regionalism. The conclusion of this chapter is that the state and market, of which the key interests are defined respectively by security-power and wealth-efficiency, have a great impact on the characteristics and evolution of regionalism.Chapter Two is titled ASEAN Internal Regional Economic Cooperation. From this chapter on, this paper begins to analyze ASEAN's economic cooperation at internal and external levels for the sake of discussion convenience. This chapter includes 5 sections. The first section is mainly about the historical background and evolution clues of ASEAN's economic cooperation. The following three sections include internal trade cooperation, industrial cooperation, investment cooperation and sub-regional cooperation, and regional monetary cooperation. The final section makes a special discussion of the 6 key ASEAN member-states, e.g. Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippine and Viet Nam, in regional economic cooperation.Chapter Three is titled ASEAN's External Economic Cooperation. Foreign states and markets which have great impact on ASEAN are discussed in this chapter, mainlyfrom the perspectives of trade and investment. Section one is about the United State, Japan and European Union, which are three of the most important partners to ASEAN. Section two makes some discussions on the other important partners, such as Australia, Korea and India. Section three makes a detailed discussion on the economic cooperation between ASEAN and China, with a conclusion that there are both competition and complementarity relationships in this cooperation. In the final part of this section, the author makes a comparative study on the economic cooperation between ASEAN-China and ASEAN-India. The fourth section discusses the economic cooperation between ASEAN and the other regional economic organizations, especially for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).Chapter Four is titled ASEAN's Economic Cooperation: Institutions and Performance. Different from the previous two chapters which are mainly about the contents of regional cooperation, this chapter is to explore the characteristics of this cooperation. Based on the close relations between international regime and regionalism, the author makes a discussion on the regime of ASEAN economic cooperation. There are a series of principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures in ASEAN's economic cooperation. These four factors can be named as the ASEAN Way on Regionalism. The discussion on the political and economic performance for this regime is in the second section. The author argues that regional economic cooperation brings positive effect to ASEAN, such as on economic growth, regional competitive ability increasing, regional market development and foreign market access. But there are also some limitations in this economic cooperation, such as its failures to upgrade member states' industrial structure, and deficiency on regional cohesiveness and institutions building for ASEAN economic cooperation.Chapter Five is titled The Dynamics and Prospect of ASEAN's Economic Cooperation. In the first two sections, the author argues that ASEAN's economic cooperation is state-led and market-oriented. The certain conditions of state and market have a decisive impact on ASEAN's regionalism. In the third section, the author argues that there are two development tendencies for ASEAN's integration, e.g. from Free Trade Area (FTA) to Economic Community and from Southeast Asia to East Asia, which bring ASEAN both opportunities and challenges.