Conclusion and Issues for Further Discussion

In the discussion of China’ s regional behavior, APT’ s institutional design deserves our atten-tion. It becomes evident from the above discussion that APT’ s socializing role in the East Asian regional integration project can be observed from its institutional design and purpose. Once China entered the APT process, its socialization and further integration with East Asia were accelerated through this multilateral institutional process. This phenomenon suggests that APT’ s socializing role was derived from its institutional design. Secondly, the process of institutionalization of re-gional multilateral cooperation aimed at integration as conducted through the ASEAN way clearly suits China’ s foreign policy thinking. Moreover, China’ s active participation in the regional proj-ect, which coincided with its improved self-perceived regional identity, tells us that China’ s be-havioral change has gone beyond tactical ‘charm offensives.’ The compliance they have shown and the strong approach they have used towards the institutionalization of APT will not be easily reversed.

However, while it is fair to conclude APT is ideal for the socialization of China, and that China is indeed being socialized in this ongoing process, the limitations of it should not be ne-glected. On the one hand, China’ s potential dominance and hegemony within APT and this social-izing process have already become a contentious issue. Since China was historically a dominant power in this region, the concept of China as a threat is not a new topic. Within the APT frame-work, critics of China’ s behavior mostly concentrated on the country’ s reservations toward the enlarged EAS and China’ s bilateral negotiations. As for the EAS-membership debate, critics argue that China will dominate the regional project and challenge the core interests of both the US and ASEAN countries. ¹¹⁷ Moreover, China’ s potential hegemony may also affect bilateral negotiations.

However, different countries have different concerns. Japan, for instance, is wary of China’ s strong push to engage ASEAN through the ASEAN plus One model within APT, despite the fact that APT’ s institutional design is ideal for socializing China. That is, the parallel existence of ASEAN plus One and ASEAN plus Three within APT is already showing its weakness. As for ASEAN as a group of countries, China was a concern due to its potential rivalry with Japan. Additionally, for these signal countries within the ASEAN camp, China may be a threat due to its uneven bilateral connections with different countries. Thus, even though China is being disciplined in an ideal arena and the consensus-based decision-making system denies great powers’ ability to control outcomes through majority voting, the institutional design of APT is inadequate to avoid potential hegemonic behavior and other rivalries related to regional leadership.

Secondly, in the case of China, a dilemma emerges when this conceptual framework is ap-plied to sovereignty-related and other ‘sensitive issues’ such as the South China Sea disputes and the human rights issue. The socializing process described above is challenged when it counters sovereignty-related issues that are closely related to China. As Taiwanese scholars, for instance, keep arguing: “it is the hope of the people of Taiwan that their contributions to the region and neighboring countries will be recognized,” because it is still hard for Taiwan to be included in the East Asian regional integration project. ¹¹⁸ Besides, with regard to the South China Sea disputes, both the institutional design of APT and China’ s redefined regional identity require further toler-ance and reassurtoler-ance from China. But negative voices inside China seem to blur the future outlook of its continued tolerance and compliance. ¹¹⁹ Furthermore, within APT’ s conference diplomacy framework, it is difficult for China to discuss human right issues with its regional partners, even though the human rights issue is important in the scope of regional integration promotion.

To sum up, as Acharya put it, “Creating and sustaining ‘the process’ has been more important than the realization of specific or concrete goals such as an economic community or a security community.” ¹²⁰ Therefore, it can be concluded that APT is an ideal socializing environment for the further disciplining of China toward the aim of regional integration.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration (GIARI) at Waseda Uni-versity for its financial support in my participation at the Waseda & Erasmus Mundus-GEM PhD School Joint Summer Institute 2011. I also thank the participants of the Summer Institute for their stimulating presentations and comments. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers of the ear-lier version of this article and to Professor Tsuneo Akaha and Christian Wirth for their helpful comments. Research for this article was supported in part by a scholarship from the China Scholar-ship Council (CSC).

Notes

1 The “regionalist view of international relations” here refers to the approach to contemporary interna-tional politics with a focus on the study of regions, regionalism and regionalization. Generally, those who take the regionalist view on international relations argue that we are now living in a ‘world of regions’ and the 21^st century is a region-building century. Shaun Breslin, Richard Higgott and Peter J.

Katzenstein are prominent among the scholars with a regionalist view.

2 The term ‘a world of regions’ was coined by Peter J. Katzenstein in A World of Regions: Asia and Eu-rope in the American Imperium, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Theoretically, there is no clear concept of East Asia. Geographically, however, East Asia refers to a region that encompasses all states from the Sea of Japan in the north to the South China Sea in the south. ‘East Asia’ in this study draws on the works of Takashi Terada and other East Asian regionalism experts. Terada states, for example,

“East Asia means a combination of Northeast and Southeast Asia. Northeast Asia is consisting of Japan, China and South Korea. Southeast Asia exactly refers to those 10 small or medium-sized ASEAN coun-tries,” Takashi Terada, “Constructing an ‘East Asian’ Concept and Growing Regional Identity: From EAEC to ASEAN+3,” Pacific Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 2003), p. 252; Richard Stubbs, “ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asia Regionalism?” Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 3 (May/June 2002), pp. 440-455.

3 ASEAN is the region’ s most enduring intergovernmental organization, established in 1967 by Indone-sia, MalayIndone-sia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei joined the grouping in 1984 upon gain-ing its independence from Britain. Vietnam joined in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999, bringing ASEAN’ s total membership to ten. On the East Asia side, the institutional architecture includes bilateral and sub-regional trade agreements, regional security dialogues (such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Six-party Talks), regional economic and business fora (such as the Boao Forum and the Asian Cooperation Dialogue), and regular meetings of East Asian leaders, including ASEAN plus Three and the East Asia Summit. See Richard Weixing Hu, “Building Asia Pacific Regional Archi-tecture: The Challenge of Hybrid Regionalism,” the Brookings Institution: Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, July 2009, p. 3, available at http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/07_asia_pacific_

hu.aspx (accessed October 3, 2011).

4 The first informal summit of APT convened in December 1997.

5 See Sanae Suzuki, “Chairmanship in ASEAN+3: A Shared Rule of Behavior,” IDE Discussion Paper, No. 9, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization, Tokyo, 2004, pp. 3-6.

6 Chien-Peng Chung, “China’ s Approaches to the Institutionalization of Regional Multilateralism,” Jour-nal of Contemporary China, Vol. 17, No. 57 (November 2008), pp. 747-764.

7 For an example, see Stubbs, 2002; Shiping Tang, “Leadership in Institution Building: The Case of ASEAN +3,” in Bertrand Fort and Douglas Webber, eds., Regional Integration in East Asia and Eu-rope: Convergence or Divergence? London: Routledge, 2008, p. 69; and Yunling Zhang, China and Asian Regionalism, River Edge: World Scientific Publishing, 2009, p. 32.

8 Richard Weixing Hu, “Building Asia Pacific Regional Architecture: The Challenge of Hybrid Region-alism,” the Brookings Institution Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, CNAPS Visiting Fellow Working Paper, 2009, p. 19, available at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2009/07_

asia_pacific_hu/07_asia_ pacific_hu.pdf (accessed November 2, 2011).

9 See Tang, 2008.

10 See Rosemary Foot, “The Organizational Dimension,” draft paper presented at the seminar on Interna-tional Society at the Regional Level: The Case of East Asia, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, May 22, 2011; forthcoming in Barry Buzan and Yongjin Zhang, eds., International Society at the Regional Level: The Case of East Asia.

11 With regard to China’ s strong drive for the institutionalization of APT, see Chung, 2008. See also Tiankai Cui’ s speech at the Second East Asia Investment Forum, Weihai, Shandong Province, China, June 29, 2006, in which he stated, “APT served as a main channel in East Asia region-wide coopera-tion,” available at http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn/gxh/zlb/ldzyjh/t265661.htm (accessed October 3, 2011, in Chinese).

12 With regard to China’ s drive for regionalism perceived as a threat by the US and China’ s neighboring states, see Samuel R. Berger, “The US Stake in Greater Asian Integration,” Global Asia, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006), p. 126; Michael A. Glosny, “Heading toward a Win-Win Future? Recent Developments in Chi-na’ s Policy towards Southeast Asia,” Asian Security, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2006), pp. 24-57.

13 Shulong Chu, “The East Asia Summit: Looking for an Identity,” Brookings Northeast Asian Commen-tary, No. 6, Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2007.

14 See Chung, 2008.

15 For an overview of rising China’ s constraints, see Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2007. On the domestic pressure and its constraints on China’ s regional

be-havior, see Xuefeng Sun, “Why Does China Reassure South-East Asia?” Pacific Focus, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2009), pp. 308-312. Also note Satoshi Amako, “The Idea of New International Order China is Seeking and East Asia Community,” GIARI Working Paper, 2007-E-1, pp. 3-4. In his working paper, Amako linked the Chinese slogan “Restoration of the Great Chinese Nation” and “prosperous society,” which originated from the 16^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, to its changed regional policy.

16 Speech by President Jiang Zemin in the 15^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on September 12, 1997, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-01/20/content_697189.htm (accessed September 28, 2011). See also Denny Roy, “The Foreign Policy of Great-power China,” Con-temporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1997), pp. 121-135.

17 See Roy, 1997 and Sun, 2009.

18 In terms of an East Asian Community, see East Asian Vision Group, Towards an East Asian Community.

China has supported the formation of the East Asian Vision Group of academics in 1999, which came up with the above mentioned blueprint report in 2002.

19 After the end of the Cold War, scholars’ work on East Asia’ s prospects without the bipolarity carries more pessimism than optimism. See Richard Betts, “Wealth, Power and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 34-77;

Yaqing Qin and Ling Wei, “Jiegou, jincheng yu quanli de shehuihua - Zhongguo yu Dongya diqu he-zuo” [Structure, Process and Power Socialization: China and East Asian Regional Cooperation], Shijie Jingji Yu Zhengzhi, Vol. 3 (2007), pp. 7-15 (in Chinese); Evelyn Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter 2007/2008), pp. 113-157; Stein Tønnesson, “What is it that Best Explains the East Asian Peace since 1979? A Call for a Research Agenda,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January 2009), pp.

111-20 As Goetschel puts it, “In traditional political thought, as reflected by Henri Rousseau or Charles de 136.

Montesquieu, the qualification of a state as ‘small’ in the context of foreign and security policy meant that such a state was perceived as no danger to neighboring states. Small states were seen as fragile creatures in the rough sea of international relations… The concept of small state has always been a rela-tive term. The qualification of a state as small only makes sense in relation to large states. However, the consequences of being large or small were not always just relative.” See Laurent Goetschel, “The For-eign and Security Policy Interests of Small States in Today’ s Europe,” in Goetschel, ed., Small States Inside and Outside the European Union: Interests and Policies, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2010, pp. 13-31. Accordingly, in this article, small states refer to ASEAN countries located in the South-east Asian area.

21 See, for example, Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” In-ternational Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 5-33; David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong:

The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring 2003), pp.

57-85; David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Secu-rity, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Winter 2004/05), pp. 22-35.

22 See Chung, 2008; and Suisheng Zhao, “China’ s Approaches toward Regional Cooperation in East Asia:

Motivations and Calculations,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 20, No. 68 (2010), pp. 53-67;

Taek Goo Kang, “Assessing China’ s Approach to Regional Multilateral Security Cooperation,” Austra-lian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 4 (2010), pp. 406-431.

23 In terms of the justification of the study of institutional design, see Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, “Comparing Regional Institutions: An Introduction,” in Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, eds., Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 1-12.

24 See Jeffrey Checkel, “Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 3 (2001), pp. 553-588.

25 In terms of the ASEAN way, see Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: The Problem of Regional Order, London: Routledge, 2001; and Qin and Wei, 2007.

26 See Dirk Nabers, “The Social Construction of International Institutions: The Case of ASEAN+3,” Inter-national Relations of Asia-Pacific, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2003), pp. 113-136.

27 See Kai Alderson, “Making Sense of State Socialization,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 27, No.

3 (2001), pp. 415-433; and Jeffrey Checkel, “International Institutions and Socialization in Europe:

In-troduction and Framework,” International Organization, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn 2005), pp. 801 - 826.

28 See Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York: Knopf, 1978.

29 See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: Random House, 1979.

30 Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000, Princeton: Princ-eton University Press, 2008, p. 3.

31 See G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 283-315.

32 For a seminal discussion on socialization from a structural realism perspective, see Cameron G. Thies,

“State Socialization and Structural Realism,” Security Studies, Vol. 19 (2010), pp. 689-717.

33 See David Shambaugh, “The Evolving Asian System: A New Regional Structure?” paper presented at the conference on East Asian Cooperation and Sino-US Relations, Beijing, China, November 3-4, 2005;

cited in Qin and Wei, 2007.

34 On neo-realism’ s discussion on ASEAN and the ASEAN way, see Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs, “Is ASEAN Powerful? Neo-realist versus Constructivist Approaches to Power in Southeast Asia,” The Pa-cific Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June 2006), pp. 135-155.

35 Alastair Iain Johnston, “Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory,” in G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and Asia-Pacific, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, p. 108.

36 See Lisa L. Martin, “An Institutionalist View: International Institutions and State Strategies,” in T.V.

Paul and John A. Hall, eds., International Order and the Future of World Politics, Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1999, pp. 78-98.

37 See Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

38 See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

39 See Alderson, 2001 and Checkel, 2005.

40 See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

41 In terms of constructivism in IR theory, Acharya notes five striking points to distinguish constructivism from other camps of theories. For details, see Amitav Acharya, “Asian Regional Institutions and the Possibilities for Socializing the Behavior of States,” ADB Working Paper Series on Regional Economic Integration, No. 82 (June 2011).

42 See Ann Florini, “The Evolution of International Norms,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No.

3, Special Issue: Evolutionary Paradigms in the Social Sciences (September 1996), pp. 363-389.

43 See Martha Finnemore, National Interest in International Society, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

44 See Wendt, 1999.

45 See Checkel, 2005.

46 See Johnston, 2008.

47 Acharya, 2011, pp. 20.

48 For details, see Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, “Comparing Regional Institutions: An In-troduction,” pp. 1-31; Johnston, 2008; Rosemary Foot’ s draft chapter on the Organizational Dimension in Barry Buzan and Yongjin Zhang, eds., International Society at the Regional Level: The Case of East Asia, 2011 (forthcoming).

49 On the justification of analyzing institutional design in regionalism project, see Acharya and Johnston, 2007, pp. 1-12.

50 Yasumasa Komori, “Asia’ s Institutional Creation and Evolution,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 33, No. 3 (2009), pp. 151-182; and Richard Stubbs, “ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?”

Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2002), pp. 440-455.

51 The Chiang Main Initiative can be seen as an example in terms of the functional cooperation under the APT framework.

52 As we can see from the Joint Communiqué of the First ASEAN plus Three Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC+3) in 2002, it was China that suggested the APT process include re-gional political and security issues such as combating terrorism and other transnational crime. See Su-zuki, 2004, p. 18.

53 See Dieter and Higgott quoted in Xiaoming Zhang, “The Rise of China and Community Building in East Asia,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2006), pp. 129-148; and Stubbs, 2002.

54 See, Johnston, 2008, pp. 25-31.

55 Ibid., p. 31

56 Ibid., p. 81.

57 The term ‘renewed bilateral friendship relations around China’ indicates the restoration of diplomatic ties between China and Indonesia in 1990 and Vietnam in 1991.

58 Ibid., p. 74.

59 For the process of acceptance of the concept of East Asia in the APT process, see Takashi Terada, “The Birth and Growth of ASEAN+3,” in Bertrand Fort and Douglas Webber, eds., Regional Integration in East Asia and Europe: Convergence or Divergence? New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 222-229.

60 See Xiaojun Li, “Social Rewards and Socialization Effects: An Alternative Explanation for the Motiva-tion behind China’ s ParticipaMotiva-tion in InternaMotiva-tional InstituMotiva-tions,” The Chinese Journal of InternaMotiva-tional Politics, Vol. 3 (2010), pp. 374-377.

61 For instance, Leifer is one of these scholars who did not see a lot of value in ASEAN in his work in 1996. See Michael Leifer, “The ASEAN Regional Forum,” Adelphi Paper, 302, New York: Oxford University Press/Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996.

62 See Terada, 2003.

63 The concept of small or medium-sized state has always been a relative term. This article does not ana-lyze the quantitative criteria for the qualification of a state as small or medium-sized, but accepts that the consequences of being large or small are not always simply relative.

64 I am grateful to the reviewer for suggesting this point. For an overview of small states and the European Union, see Laurent Goetschel, ed., 2010.

65 See Hu, 2009.

66 See Rajshree Jetly, “Conflict Management Strategies in ASEAN: Perspectives for SAARC,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2003), pp. 53-76; quoted in Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs, “Is ASEAN Pow-erful? Neo-realist versus Constructivist Approaches to Power in Southeast Asia,” Pacific Review, Vol.

19, No. 2 (2006), pp. 135-55.

67 See Acharya, 2001.

68 Sanae Suzuki, “East Asian Cooperation through Conference Diplomacy: Institutional Aspects of the ASEAN Plus Three Framework,” IDE APEC Study Center Working Paper Series, 03/04 - No.7, APEC Study Center, Institute of Developing Economies, JETRO (March, 2004), p. 30, available at http://

www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Download/Apec/pdf/2003_07.pdf (accessed November 4, 2011).

69 See Soesastro quoted in Hu, 2009.

70 See Eaton and Stubbs, 2006.

71 See Qin and Wei, 2007.

72 See MOFAT quoted in Nabers, 2003.

73 In terms of the debate on expanded ASEAN machinery, see David Martin Jones and Michael L.R.

Smith, “Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order,”

Smith, “Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order,”

Im Dokument Editorial Board (Seite 69-77)