The Limits Of The Theory Of An East Asian Community Construction

With the trend of globalism, regional integration is nowadays forced to develop in the world, but as the one of three of the most important economic developing areas, East Asia, the process of integration is slow and lack of efficiency because of the obstacles inside and outside of the area. The expected model of East Asian Community should be fitted for the national interest of every country both inside of East Asia and outside of the area, especially the big powers’traditional national interests and the expected interests in the future. It is easy to understand that the premise of constructing East Asian Community successfully is to analyze the policy of every referent country and the causes behind it. This paper is to analyze the characters of East Asian Community construction process from the points of views of major actors——ASEAN, Japan, Korea, the United States and China.ASEAN is focused as the "driver" of East Asian Community construction process, but the logic of "balance of big powers" reveals the true color of defending the interests of every member country inside ASEAN by seeking the strategic rooms among China, Japan, Korea and the United States. Regional integration bases on the regional core countries’approval and impetus. So called core country is the one who has the strongest overall national strength in the region, the equilibrium development of the country core interest as well as a big power admitted by other countries. The following four aspects reveal the importance of the core countries. Firstly, they are the origin force to impetus the regional cooperation; secondly, they help to keep the region steady; thirdly, they are the key factors to make the regional organization effective; and the last is about their importance to maintain the regional public interest. If the core countries are unwilling to cooperate, or one of them rejects to collaborate, the regional organization cannot be established. Even if setting up one, its effect and function will not be brought into full play. While ASEAN is only a small-country group, which lacking leading core, and operating in an on-compulsive and non-interferential way. Its member countries are much different from each other, so there are some frictions among them occasionally. ASEAN can only be a pioneer of the regional integration, yet will not be its motive force.East Asia enjoys highest rate of economic development in the world, and its pace of regionalism has been accelerating in recent years. As the economic power of East Asia, Japan has its own pursuit on the issue of East Asia regionalism. Japan now is facing the East Asian international relations with China’s historical rising, and Japan is worried about the rare structure of two big powers in East Asian modern history by trying to conclude Australia, New Zealand and India inside East Asian Community as the name of "open regionalism". It is ridiculous to invite those three countries inside the community by using the name of East Asian Community at the same time anyway. Due to their preponderant comprehensive force, China and Japan are the two big powers of East Asian region and without any doubt that they will be the key countries of East Asian integration. The relationship between China and Japan relates the peace, stabilization and developing cooperation of East Asian region. However, the obstacles between them in historical and practical issues, the conflicts between their strategies, and their totally different attitude to East Asia restricted them to play the function as core countries, even resulted in the East Asian integrating slowly. At present, Japan still face several obstacles on carry out its policy, the economic depression and weak political power within Japan are the internal factors:the restriction of Sino-Japan relation and USA-Japan relation, and Japan’s attitude toward the World War Two and its military expansion comprise the external factors, which result in the lack of trust on mutual cooperation between Japan and other East Asian countries.The pragmatic diplomacy by the name of "New Asian thoughts" of Korean government is meant to put the ASEAN countries, especially Vietnam, at top of the list of its East Asia diplomacy. At the same time, the strong Korean nationalism due to special Korean national history memory of "victims" is embarrassing Korea to act as the role of leader or positive element towards East Asian Community together with the traditional US-Korean ally. At the same time, the US-Korea alliance is also an important part of US alliance system in East Asia, which has been one of the pillars of US Asia-Pacific security strategy.In Post-Cold War era, the East Asian region is experiencing significant and profound changes, no doubt, the rise of China is and will continue to be the most notable features of the region:China’s economic development has driven economic growth throughout the region; At the same time, multilateral cooperation in East Asia is forging ahead, and the integration of East Asia process also speed up. The balance of power in East Asia is experiencing significant changes, and the regional power structure is giving birth to the new changes. All those have aroused the concern and vigilance of the United States. As respond, the United States began to strengthen and consolidate the alliance system in East Asia in an attempt to continue to maintain its dominance in East Asia affairs. The United States is using the way of keeping the loose, decentralized East Asia to enforce its role of arbitrator in the East Asian area. As result of pattern of "balance of power" in this area, ASEAN will play the game of "balance of the big powers" and China and Japan will guard each other, the United States can keep its residence and the role of "East Asian police" continually. So, the slow progress of East Asian Community is the most benefited to the United States.To promote the further development of East Asian cooperation is an important strategy for China to realize its goals of Peaceful rising in the new century. China emphasizes the thought of "harmony world" to keep order, not the Community and institution, in the area, so it is safe to say that it is flexible for China to get involved the process of East Asian Community. China should consider adopting below principles in formulating its East Asia strategy:to strengthen sense of responsibility, to promote regional identification, to balance interests of various parties and to boost the system construction of East Asian cooperation.This essay is to consider the negative factors from the point of views of Eastern Asian countries and the United States to get the reasons to slow down the process of Eastern Asian Community. Though the paper believes the integration process is pessimistic, the future of it would be better if the negative points mentioned in the paper are conquered by the actors in the area.