Research On East Asia Region Cooperation

Region integration is an important tendency in contemporary world. Among the developments of region integration, Europe integration is the earliest and the most mature. North America has also established free trade region, which is gradually expanding toward the whole America.East Asia region cooperation can be traced back to the development of sub-region cooperation, the origination of Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN). However, as a whole, East Asia region cooperation start very lately, until Asia banking crisis.The process of East Asia region cooperation is dynamic but slow. Although East Asia Vision Group has submitted a report about constructing East Asia Community, presenting the long-term goal of East Asia region cooperation, it has a very long way to go before turning the attractive goal into reality.Comparing with other region integration, East Asia region cooperation has many different features, such as multi-level, sub-region-based, low institutionalizing, non-exclusiveness and non-intervening-sovereignty. Despite falling behind Europe and North America, East Asia is the most dynamic area among those integrating areas in the world, because there are many motive force putting the process of East Asia regional cooperation onward. Viewing from a theoretical perspective, neo-liberalism and constructivism give a convincing explanation to the motive force of integration. According to them, it is the shared-interest and shared-knowledge that drive the development of East Asia region cooperation. Viewing from practical perspective, the change of international structure, the pressure of globalization and regional integration and the urgency of decreasing the dependence on Europe and America are the external forces that propel the development of East Asia region integration. The increasing economic...