Research On China's Policies On East Asian Regional Cooperation After The Cold War

Today, regionalization is developing as fast as globalization, and they become two currents in the world. Regionalism not only summarizes regionalization in terms of theory, and also presents the process of regionalization. Under the guide of regionalism, many countries have made their policies on regional cooperation and put them into practice one after another. European countries took the lead in unfolding regional cooperation and they have made vast success, which set a good example for other regions in the world. Since then, other regions such as North America also have made more or less progress in regional cooperation. This brought pressure to the development of East Asia countries. Against this background, East Asia regionalism began to bourgeon. After the Cold War, with the rapid development of East Asia regionalism, China has made a lot of policies and great efforts in the regional cooperation. In recent years, more and more attention on China's policies has been paid by academia. On the base of the other scholars' achievements, the subject of the thesis is the evolvement of China's policies and the causes and prospect of China's actively participating in East Asia regional cooperation.Firstly, regionalism and regional cooperation are analyzed theoretically. Regionalism is a notion that concerns two levels. The first level is theory level. It includes valuable belief which considers that regional arrangement is the best way to achieve national interests and various theories on regional cooperation. The second level is practical level which concerns generally regional cooperation in various fields between states and other behavior bodies. Therefore, regionalism contains regional cooperation. In some degree, regional cooperation is also regionalism. The policies on regional cooperation includes: the attitude of the governments, the purpose and goals to achieve, the principles, ways, emphases and pivotal fields, etc in cooperation. Then China's policies on East Asia regional cooperation after the Cold War is analyzed and divided into three developing stages: the inactive participating stage from early 1990s to mid-1990s; the active participating stage from mid-1990s to early days of 21st century; the active propelling stage from early days of 21st century to today. Then the developing track of China' policy becomes very clear.Through the above analysis, we can find that China's policies are gradually improved and China is taking part in East Asia regional cooperation more and more deeply. What prompts China to make the choice? The causes include international circumstances and domestic reasons. International circumstances consist of four aspects. Firstly, the world has entered into Globalization Times and Multilateralism is prevailing increasingly. Secondly, regionalization is developing fleetly and regionalism is getting favor from more and more countries. Thirdly, European regionalism has made vast success which makes regionalism spread rapidly to the world. Under the pressure of European regionalism, East Asia regionalism is rising speedily. Lastly, transnational and regional unconventional security problems make China and other East Asia countries face the same threaten. Domestic reasons contain objective and subjective factors. The former refers to objective interest relation between China and Asia-Pacific region as well as China's national power and international status. The latter refers to the changes of China's understandings to the international community which include the adjustment of its identity orientation, the recognition to multilateralism and the great shift of its security and development concept.Finally, the prospect of China's taking part in East Asia regional cooperation is analyzed on the base of aforementioned analysis. Firstly, the favorable conditions for China in the regional cooperation in future are analyzed which include China's torrid economic growth since reform and opening; the good image established by China's actions in South-East Asia Financial Crisis; the continuous development of "10+3" mechanism in East Asia; China's geopolitical dominance, and so on. Then, the problems which China need to solve in the cooperation are analyzed which include East Asia regional identity, the form and quality of regionalism construction, the leading power, the role and function of USA ,the political mutual trust ,the Taiwan Problem , and so on. Facing the advantages and problems, China should actively construct its strategy of regionalism regarding maintaining national interests and promoting peace and development of East Asia as the starting point.