Political Economy and Geopolitics, 16Th to 21St Centuries

East Asian Regionalism and its Enemies in Three Epochs: Political Economy and Geopolitics, 16th to 21st Centuries

Mark Selden

East Asian Regionalism and its new East Asian regional order resting on Enemies in Three Epochs: Political foundations of dynamic economic growth. Economy and Geopolitics, 16th to 21st From the perspective of East Asian Centuries integration, the US-China opening of 1970 marked both the end of a century of Mark Selden war and polarization and the emergence of economic complementarity and

geopolitical restructuring that have Précis: This paper examines the dominant transformed both East Asia and the world forces at play in East Asia in an effort to economy. In assessing the resurgence of chart regional dynamics within a global East Asia and the emerging character of non-Eurocentric framework in the course East Asian regionalism, emphasis is of three epochs.* In the first era, placed on relations among China, Japan th th and Korea as ascending regional-global spanning the 16 to the early 19 century powers and the position of the United a China-centered tributary trade order States as a powerful but declining provided a geopolitical framework within superpower. The analysis considers the which private trade could also flourish. At th interplay of geopolitics and political its height in the 18 century, as East Asia economy in structuring hierarchies of linked to a wider regional and global wealth, power and position both within economy, core areas achieved high levels Asia and in the world order or disorder. of peace, prosperity and stability. The Is the emergence East Asian regional second period is notable for dislocation, order a basis for regional independence war and radical transformation spanning or a new framework for US penetration? the years 1840-1970. In this era profound What insights can the past offer toward transformations were the product of the emergence of a viable regional order system disintegration, colonial rule, in East Asia, or, at a minimum, pitfalls to world wars, and anti-colonial wars and skirt? revolutions. With the collapse of the regional order, bilateral relations,I East Asian Regionalism: The 18th colonial and postcolonial, predominated. Century Since the 1970s there have been signs of the emergence of a third epoch notable Throughout the nineteenth and well into for progress toward the formation of a the twentieth century, the dominant view

1 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF in both East and West privileged a millennium. History does not, of course, dynamic Western world order over a repeat itself, yet it may offer insight into weak, inward-looking and conservative possible options. While sympathetic to East Asia that collapsed in the face of approaches emphasizing contemporary Western capitalism and militaryEast Asian dynamism and its continued predominance. The result was astrength into the 21st century, I propose Eurocentric world vision that reified the to rethink both Eurocentric and perspective of the colonial powers and Sinocentric perspectives on East Asia as their successors.[1] The essentialist a world center prior to its destruction by presumption that continues to pervade a European colonizers in the nineteenth substantial literature is that Western century, and to consider subsequent superiority is an historical constant, once regional restructuring and the and forever immutable. contemporary implications of alternative perspectives that break with An alternative paradigm that has Eurocentrism with particular reference to emerged in recent years recognizes the China-Japan-Korea relations and East salience of China not only as the Asia’s position in global perspective. dominant economic and geopolitical center[2] of an East Asian regional order Drawing on the work of Takeshi but also as a major actor in the global Hamashita, R. Bin Wong, Kenneth th political economy from at least the 16 to Pomeranz, Kaoru Sugihara, Anthony Reid th the 18 century and arguably continuing and Andre Gunder Frank, among others, to the arrival of the Western powers in it can be said that between the sixteenth th full force in the mid-19 century.[3] and eighteenth century, at the dawn of Interestingly, the avatars of this China- European capitalism, East Asia was the centered perspective on East Asia and center of a vibrant economic and the world economy emerged notgeopolitical zone with its own distinctive primarily from Chinese scholarship but characteristics. Two elements of the East from the writings of Japanese andAsian order together defined its American researchers.[4] China’s distinctive regional and global features. economic strides of recent decades, and, above all, the resurgence of East Asia with China, Japan and Korea as an expansive center of the capitalist world economy in the final decades of the long twentieth century and into the new millennium, lend plausibility to this approach. This has led some to anticipate that China will lead the way in creating a new Asian regional order, or even an Asia-led world system in the new

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Canton and international trade in the 18th East Asia, particularly China, with Manila century as the key port of transit. Indeed, the large-scale flow of silver from the First, among the most important linkages Americas to China beginning in the that shaped the political economy and sixteenth century and peaking in the mid- geopolitics of the East Asian world was seventeenth century linked the major the China-centered tributary trade order, world regions and transformed both pivoting on transactions negotiated intra-Asian trade and China’s domestic through formal state ties as well as economy. The silver-lined story that providing a venue for informal trade Hamashita, Pomeranz and Reid detail conducted at the periphery of tributary began not with the multiple disasters missions. The system was also driven by a associated with the drainage of silver to wide range of legal and illegal trade, much of it linking port cities that were pay for opium, or with the debacle in the beyond the reach of the Chinese imperial Opium War that led to China’s and Asia’s state. While Korea, Vietnam, theforced opening on terms dictated by the Ryukyus and a number of kingdoms of Western powers, and the associated loss Central and Southeast Asia actively of Chinese sovereignty associated with engaged in tributary trade with China, the Treaty Ports and extraterritoriality. It Japan sent no tributary missions in the began rather with the preceding epoch of course of the 17th-19th centuries. China- Chinese global trading predominance and Japan direct trade nevertheless continued flourishing intra-Asian commerce. Reid through Nagasaki as well as indirectly writes of Chinese-Southeast Asian trade through the Ryukyus and Hokkaido, in in global perspective in the years addition to coastal trade that the Chinese 1450-1680: “The pattern of exchange in state defined as piracy. In short, despite this age of commerce was for Southeast the imposition of inter-state tradeAsia to import cloth from India, silver restrictions by both the Qing andfrom the Americas and Japan and copper Tokugawa governments, through both cash, silk, ceramics and other tributary and informal networks, dynamic manufactures from China, in exchange East Asian trade continued, underlying for its exports of pepper, spices, aromatic the region’s economic dynamism.[5] woods, resins, lacquer, tortoiseshell, pearls, deerskin, and the sugar exported Second, East Asian linkages with the by Vietnam and Cambodia.”[6] The end world economy from the sixteenthresult was massive silver flows into China century forward, mediated by silver from other parts of Asia, Europe and the exchange, transformed East-West trade Americas in exchange for silk, tea, relations as well as the domestic Chinese porcelain and other manufactures. and regional economies. Silver flows, to China’s domestic economy was also pay for tea, silk, ceramics and opium transformed as silver became the among other products, were critical in medium for taxation in the Ming’s single binding Europe and the Americas with whip reform, deeply affecting the

3 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF agrarian economy as well as urban eighteenth century. Silver became an exchange. important medium for trade in Korea, Japan and Vietnam somewhat later than in China. Recognition of these facts puts paid to perspectives that privilege Western merchants and traders as the driving force in world trade in general and silver circulation in particular.

Silver provides one significant thread that ties China, Asia and the world economy over five centuries.Maritime perspectives on China and the world economy contrast to the long dominant Chinese junk, 17th century statecentric, specifically land centered and inward looking, China scholarship. Silver provides a thread to link Europe, We seek to examine the interplay of the Americas and Asia as well as a means statist tribute and private commerce both to deconstruct Eurocentric history and to in the seaborne sphere with silver as a chart profound changes internal toprimary medium of trade and finance Chinese economy and society. Tracing from the sixteenth century, and landed the world-wide flow of silver from the trade, including barter trade, that linked sixteenth century problematizes the China to Inner Asia and extended across unilinear notion of world history as the silk road to Europe. determined by the discovery of the “New World,” followed by the flow of silver to Beyond the tributary system and the Europe, and thence from Europe to Asia. importance of silver is a spatial vision As Hamashita shows, the articulation of centered less on national economies and Asian silver markets with Euro-American state policies, and more on open ports silver dynamics shaped world financial and their hinterlands. It is an approach flows and facilitated the expansion of that requires new spatial understanding trade that took place in the sixteenth and of the relationship between land and sea, seventeenth centuries.[7] between coastal and inland regions, and among port cities and their hinterlands. Long before the discovery of New World silver as well as after it, Asia was the Here we cannot limit discussion of intra- center of large-scale regional silver Asian trade to the formal parameters of circulation and the flow of silver would the tributary order. Consider, for be determined in large part by the example, the fact that, while the Ryukyus manufacturing dominance that China actively participated in tributary relations enjoyed in its relations with Europe and with China, in order to obtain pepper and North America through the earlyother products that were mandated by

4 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF the Chinese tributary relationship, Ryukyuan merchants traded far and wide throughout Southeast and Northeast Asia and the Pacific Islands from at least the fifteenth century. Likewise, Nola Cooke and Tana Li highlight the autonomous trade patterns that gave rise to the “water frontier” linking southern coastal China and Indochina in the 18th century, thereby contributing to the transformation of the domestic economies of the Mekong region. Fuller understanding of non-tributary linkages among China, Vietnam, Korea, the Ryukyus, Inner Asia and insular Southeast Asia is likely to reveal extensive trade networks independent, or at the margins, of official tributary missions, and strengthening regional economic linkages. Such an approach could shed new light not only on the tributary trade system but also on current scholarship highlighting global city networks largely autonomous from central state controls that would emerge with new vigor in the course of the long twentieth century and particularly with respect to China since the 1980s.[8]

Ryukyuan tributary vessel

At its height in the eighteenth century, large regions of East Asia, with China at its center, experienced a long epoch of peace and prosperity on the foundation of a tributary-trade order at a time when Europe was more or less continuously engulfed by war and turmoil.[9] If

5 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF tributary and private trade lubricated the to 18th centuries. This is particularly regional order, so too did commonsignificant in light of the tendency in the elements of statecraft in the neo-reappraisals of imperialism beginning Confucian orders in Japan, Korea, the with S. B. Saul, J. Gallagher, R. Robinson, Ryukyus, and Vietnam. In contrast to and D. C. M. Platt, to slight Asian European colonialism in the eighteenth dynamism, indeed to treat Asia in a and nineteenth century, this Sinocentric negative or exclusively reactive fashion, order placed fewer demands forand of the general Orientalist dismissal of assimilation on China’s neighbors when the East within an East-West binary.[10] contrasted with European conquerors, was less exploitative in economic terms, Our discussion has focused on tribute, and, at its height, secured general peace trade, and other economic and financial th throughout large areas of East and mechanisms during the long 18 century. Southeast Asia for protracted periods. We can here only briefly enumerate certain other distinctive features of the Indeed, a distinctive feature of this regional order at its height prior to the regional order is the fact that China, onslaught of European imperialism. subsidized peace and stability through the tributary trade order. This meant • While Mark Elvin saw China sanctioning the regimes of favored local caught in a high-level equilibrium trap, rulers as well as assuring a sustained Sugihara Kaoru and Kenneth Pomeranz transfer of resources to them via direct demonstrate that income and subsidies and guaranteed access to consumption levels in core areas of China lucrative trade with Korea, Vietnam, and and Japan were comparable to or higher the Ryukyus among others. Even Japan, than those prevailing in Western Europe which sent no tributary missions to China and North America in the th18 during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), century.[11] Building on the insights of bought into the system through behind- Akira Hayami and Jan de Vries for Japan the-scenes domination of Ryukyu tribute and the Netherlands on the “industrious missions to secure lucrative trade with revolution,” they contrast China’s and China while subordinating the Ryukyu Japan’s distinctive technological and kingdom to Japan in its own version of a institutional path, predicated on labor tributary order. Likewise, Vietnamintensive development, with the capital implemented a sub-tributary order with intensive approach that emerged in 18th Laos. century England to power that nation’s advance in the age of empire. In these and other ways, viewed in longue durée perspective, a distinctive • The Chinese empire, under regional political economy emerged in a Manchu rule, may be viewed as the prosperous East Asia that was linked to hegemonic power in East Asia during the other parts of Asia, Europe and North long 18th century in the triple sense of America in the world economy of the 16th being the most powerful state presiding

6 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF over a protracted peace and legitimating spread across Asia and the world from selective regimes in wide areas of the the second half of the nineteenth century. region, the leading manufacturingThe migration of Chinese to Manchuria, exporter and magnet for the world’s Southeast Asia, the Americas and silver, and radiating cultural-political elsewhere coincided with the norms as exemplified by thedisintegration of the Qing empire and predominance of Neo-Confucian thought creation of Western and Japanese and modes of statecraft in Japan, Korea, colonial empires. Beginning with silver Vietnam, the Ryukyus and beyond. remittances to the coastal communities of South China by overseas workers and II The Demise of the East Asian merchants, migration created Regional Order: China’sfoundations for Chinese banking Disintegration, Competitivenetworks at home and abroad. We note Colonialisms, Japan’s Asia, Anti- the progression from the earlier flow of colonial and Revolutionarygoods to the flow of silver to the Movements, America’s Asia, and movements of people and the return flow Bipolarity in Postwar Asia, 1840-1970 of goods and silver to China. If the largest number of migrants were The disintegration of the Qing in the th Chinese, significant numbers of Japanese early 19 century set the stage for the and Koreans also migrated to other parts onslaught of the Western imperialist of Asia, as well as to Hawaii and the powers in China and East Asia, bringing Americas. Each group created new to an end the regional order and the networks and flows of labor, remittances protracted peace that had extended across East and Inner Asia to parts of and capital. Despite such foundations for Southeast and Central Asia. regional development, geopolitics trumped political economy. While the Japanese economy soared, much of Asia was subordinated to the colonial powers giving rise to new bilateral ties but undercutting multilateral relationships.

From the latter half of the nineteenth century, with China in disintegration facing invasion and rebellion, and then carved up by the Western powers and Japan, with much of Southeast Asia

The First Opium War of 1840 colonized by the British, Dutch, French and Americans, and with Korea, Taiwan As the Chinese state crumbled internally and the Ryukyus incorporated within the and was battered by foreign invaders, Japanese empire by the first decade of tens of millions of Chinese migrants the twentieth century, the protracted

7 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF peace of the 18th century grounded in the Russo-Japanese War May 1904 (Print by former tributary-trade order and private Kyokatsu. Museum of Fine Arts. Visualizing Cultures) trade gave way to a century-long inter- colonial conflict and bilateralAs Japan extended its reach, Taiwan, metropolitan-periphery relations which Korea, Manchuria and China all precluded the re-emergence of aexperienced invasion and occupation or coherent regional economy. colonization, though Japan never succeeded in completing the conquest of th In the final decades of the 19 century China. We will consider Japan’s Asia from th and the early 20 century, Japan and the three perspectives: first, economic United States expanded into the Asia- development and social change; second, Pacific, inaugurating a process that war, nationalism, and anti-colonialism; would lead to the eventual clash of and third, regional dynamics and regional empires. In the early decades of the 20th ties to the world economy. century, Japan emerged as the dominant power in East Asia and the challenger to the European-centered colonial order that had transformed the region in the 19th century. With the seizure of the Ryukyus, the integration of Hokkaido, the colonization of Taiwan and Korea, the victory in the Russo-Japanese War and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo between 1872 and 1932, and Japanese infantry in Manchukuo, 1933 eventually over the next decade the Like the Western colonial powers, Japan conquest of large swatches of China and actively mined the colonies for natural Asia, Japan became the only nation of resources and human resources to spur Asia, Africa or Latin America to join the Japan’s industrialization. At the same club of the colonial powers. It is fruitful time, far more than either the Chinese to compare Japan’s approach to regional th tributary-trade order or the Western integration with that of the 18 century colonial order elsewhere in Asia, Japan tributary-trade order. fostered colonial agricultural and industrial development, notably in Korea, Taiwan and Manchukuo. Between the 1920s and 1945, Japan presided over large-scale migration — to Japan (from Korea, Taiwan and mainland China) and from Japan and its colonies to the farthest reaches of its empire, but above all to Manchukuo in the years

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1931-45.[12] European colonial powers, Japan’s spokes and wheel trade pattern in Asia As Angus Maddison has shown, per precluded the development of trade capita GDP gains in Taiwan and Korea in complementarities or other forms of the years 1913-1938 were 2.2 and 2.3 economic integration among the colonies percent respectively, compared with 2.3 and dependencies. percent for Japan. These figures are substantially higher than those for all In contrast to the Qing empire, imperial other colonies in East and Southeast Japan directly assimilated colonized and Asia, and probably in Latin America, the conquered peoples, above all the Caribbean, and Africa.[13] Strikingly, by Koreans, Taiwanese, the peoples of 1938, per capita GDP in Korea and Manchuria (including Chinese, Mongols, Taiwan were 53 and 60 percentHui (Muslims) and Manchus), and respectively of that of the metropolitan Ryukyuans.[16] The colonized were country, Japan. By comparison, the range educated in the language of the was 10-25 percent for British, French, conqueror and subjected to intense Dutch and US colonies in Asia (Booth assimilation as Japanese (or Manchukuo) Table 2). In short, the developmental citizens and subjects, particularly in impact on Japan’s colonies, and the rapidly growing urban centers. In all degree of economic integration with the these respects, Japan broke sharply with metropolis, were far greater than in the patterns of the tributary-trade order in case of European or American colonies. East Asia and also differentiated the Japanese from European and American Trade between Japan and its colonies and colonization in the degree of assimilation. dependencies expanded rapidly. The trade of Manchukuo, Korea and Taiwan In the 1930s, Japan extended its were all dramatically redirected (in many territorial reach but at the price of instances away from China and toward sapping the nation’s resources, Japan) between the late nineteenthdeepening its isolation from European century and the late 1930s. As Samuel and American power, and strengthening Ho noted, Taiwan’s exports to Japan the bonds between China and other increased from 20 percent of total expots powers. Landmark events were Japan’s at the time of colonization in 1895 to 88% 1932 incorporation of Manchukuo, its by the late 1930s, with rice and sugar the 1937 invasion of China south of the Great dominant products.[14] Comparable Wall, the abortive attack on Russian trade dependence on the metropolis in forces at Nomonhan in 1939, and the the late 1930s was similarly notable in widening US-Japan conflict. By 1940, a the case of Korea.[15] Economic bonds US oil and scrap iron embargo would among the colonies, by contrast,lead inexorably to Japan’s attack on Pearl remained weak, in part as a result of a Harbor in a desperate attempt to lack of complementarities, but above all supplant the European and American by imperial design. Like that of the colonial powers throughout East and

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Southeast Asia and the Pacific. At its emphasize the fact that it continued in height in the early 1940s, Japan’s vast the postwar decades.[18] However Asian empire and its pursuit of a pan- important a watershed World War II was Asian order led to an extreme example of from many perspectives, far from regional autarky, Japan’s earlier strong bringing peace to East Asia, the end of economic and cultural ties to Europe and the war paved the way for a new wave of the Americas having been severed as a wars and revolutions that coincided with result of inter-imperialist rivalry. If Meiji the US advance into Asia and its attempts Japan had placed its hopes forto establish a permanent presence. modernization and prosperity on economic, political and cultural ties with, and emulation of, the Western powers, We note three important legacies of the Japan now found itself isolated from core colonial era for Asian peoples: first, regions of the world economy while massive dislocation, destruction and loss fighting wars against powerful of life that were the product of colonial adversaries on multiple fronts.[17] and world wars; second, the stimulus to nationalist and anti-colonial revolutions, initially of Japan’s victory over the Western powers from the Russo-Japanese War to the conquests of 1942 and subsequently Japan’s own defeat, that would propel nationalist independence movements and the formation of new nations in the wake of the Pacific War; third, the stimulus to economic development and industrialization in Japan’s colonies and dependencies, notably Korea, Taiwan and Manchukuo, which would establish foundations for postwar economic growth in these areas. Battle of Nomonhan

Perhaps most striking, in contrast to the protracted peace of eighteenth century East Asia under the earlier tributary order, is the permanent turmoil that extended across the Asia-Pacific region throughout the century of imperialism and continuing in the wake of World War II. This was notably true during the half century of Japan’s ascendancy, but we

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Japan’s historical development over the preceding millennium.

A comparison may clarify several points concerning the nature and consequences of the war that Japan fought against China and then extended to Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Priya Satia observes that “British imaginings about Arabia were circulated in the main by a community of intelligence agents who ventured to the land of the Bible hoping to find spiritual redemption under cover of patriotic duty.” This set the stage for analysis of a landmark event in the history of the bombing of civilians, the 1920s British bombing of Iraq. The

British bombing of Iraq, and above all In both the lofty rhetoric of empire and European conduct of World Wars I and II the brutality of the conquest andin Europe, cautions against assumptions subjugation of Asian peoples, notably in that Japan was uniquely brutal in its its war with China but also in battles with treatment of Chinese in the Sino- its rival nations, Japan shared much in Japanese war. It is a reminder that the common with the Western colonialbombing of civilians began with British powers. Features that differentiated the and German attacks in the Middle East Japanese from Euro-American empires and Africa long before World War II.[19] include geography and race. European “Flying in the face of what James Scott and American colonialists traveled to the has told us about how modern states ends of the earth to conquer racially and see,” Satia observes of the British, “this culturally distinct peoples. In seeking to regime fetishized local knowledge not as subjugate China, Korea, Taiwan,an antidote to but as the foundation of its Manchukuo and Vietnam, andviolent effort to render nomad terrain subsequently much of Southeast Asia by legible.” Satia concludes, in a comment contrast, Japan fought people who were equally applicable to Japan in China, that not only for the most part racially“imperialism is a political relationship indistinguishable and were nearmore than a perspective; intimacy does neighbors, but also, in the cases of China not make it go away.” The deep and Korea in particular, they were people admiration on the part of many Japanese the Japanese had long admired for their for Tang poetry and Chinese thought accomplishments in statecraft andgenerally no more protected Chinese culture that had profoundly shaped from Japanese brutality than British awe

11 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF concerning the Holy Land protected Arab movements that transformed the political civilians from bombing.[20] For Japan, landscape of Asia. If the Chinese, neither racial similarity nor cultural Vietnamese and Korean revolutions were bonds mitigated the onslaught against landmark events in postwar East Asia, the Chinese population in a “war without independence movements in the mercy” which was certainly no less brutal Philippines, Malaysia, the Dutch East than the U.S.-Japan war which John Indies, Burma, India and elsewhere Dower memorialized with this phrase, a brought profound change to other parts war fought across racial and cultural of Asia, signaling the end of the classical divides.[21] Indeed, the China warcolonial empires. exacted the heaviest toll in lives of all From the perspective of Asian colonial wars—10 to 30 million Chinese regionalism, however, it is important to deaths being the best estimates available note that continuities spanned the 1945 in the absence of official or authoritative divide. Far from inaugurating an era of statistics. peace, the end of WW II brought a new wave of wars in which East and Southeast Asia was the primary zone of world conflict throughout the following quarter century. US occupation of Japan and Korea on the one hand, and the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese revolutionary wars on the other, produced independent nations whose subsequent wars took an immense toll in Asian lives.

The Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese

Refugees flee Japanese bombing of wars and revolutions—playing out within Chongqing, the Nationalist capital the purview of US-Soviet conflict and giving rise to divided nations—were the Historians of all persuasions have taken decisive events establishing Asia’s World War II as the major watershed of division in the wake of World War II. New twentieth century Asian and globalnations, or nation fragments, established geopolitics, as indeed it was in so many primary relationships with one of the ways. It marked the defeat andsuperpowers, the US or the Soviet Union, dismantling of the Japanese empire and forging relationships that were the rise of the US as the dominant paramount in defining each nation’s superpower and major force in the Asia international relations in the immediate Pacific and globally. It also touched off or postwar decades. In short, as in the energized waves of nationalist-inspired century of colonialism, in post-colonial revolutionary and independenceAsia bilateral ties to one of the great

12 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF powers were decisive and multilateral metropolitan countries, in Europe, North intra-Asian linkages largely absent. In America and Japan, as well as the this postwar disorder, as was the case subsequent primacy of ties to the US or over the preceding century, there was the Soviet Union in postwar Asia. scant room for horizontal linkages among Asian nations or Asian societies. To locate Japan’s postwar resurgence, followed by the rise of the Newly III Economic Resurgence,Industrializing Economies (Taiwan, Hong Complementarity and the Sprouts of Kong, Singapore and South Korea) and Regionalism in East Asia China’s sustained double-digit growth in GDP and trade in recent decades, it is World attention has focused on China’s critical to grasp the interpenetration of rapid and sustained economic growth in trade and investment among the East the wake of earlier surges by Japan and Asian nations of China, Japan and Korea, Korea. Yet contemporary East Asian and the extension of this pattern of development is best understood not as a intertwined economies to Southeast Asia. series of discrete national phenomena but To be sure, institutional ties among Asian in terms of regional and global dynamics nations, long divided by ‘Cold War’ that include economic development but divisions deepened by hot wars in China, equally require attention to geopolitics Korea and Indochina, are far weaker than and cultural interchange. This is not those of the European Union. There is no because national policies are no longer East Asian Union, no common currency, important in an epoch of globalization; parliament or high court. Nor do we find they remain vitally important. It is rather, a military equivalent of the NATO we will show, the growing alliance. Above all, the United States interpenetration of Asian economies, remains the dominant military power in polities and cultures in the new the region, a major presence bolstered by millennium and the expansive role of the an extensive network of military bases region in global perspective. and alliances with Japan, South Korea, China’s unity and strength were central and Taiwan, among others. Yet US to the 18th century political economy and dominance is also being tested as a result geopolitics of the tributary-trade system, of the combination of a relative decline in which underlay an epoch of protracted power, ideology and credibility specific to peace in East Asia and flourishing East- the failures of the Bush administration, West trade. We have contrasted this with but above all a product of the longterm China’s disintegration, the relativedecline culminating in the meltdown of decline of Asia in global perspective, the the US economy that began with multiple colonialisms that produced a industrial erosion in the 1970s. If the century of war and a wheel and spokes emblematic expression of this decline is version of political and economic ties the economic and financial crisis that between Asian colonies and thebegan in 2007—not in East Asia as it did

13 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF in 1997 but in the United States—and has Vietnam (1975), of Germany (1989) and subsequently touched off the mostsubsequently of China with Hong Kong serious world recession of the postwar (1997) and Macau (1999), only a divided era. We return below to the present Korea and the China-Taiwan division conjuncture. To gauge the character and remained of the major national ruptures assess the prospects of East Asianthat were the legacy of World War II and regional development, however, requires subsequent conflicts. Moreover, even the assessment of the geopolitics andlatter two divisions have eroded since the political economy of the last four decades 1990s. These profound changes illustrate in the region and globally. the interface of geopolitics and political economy both in global (particularly US- The 1970 Divide and the Resurgence China) interface and regional (China- of East Asia Japan-Korea as well as mainland China- Taiwan) terms. 1970 set the stage for new East Asian regional possibilities and a globalAmong the remarkable changes made reconfiguration of power: in the wake of possible by the post-1970 US-China the China-Soviet rift of the 1960s, the opening has been the emergence and US-China entente and economicdeepening of China-ROK relations: from relationship opened the way for ending anti-Communist Mecca, a South Korea the bifurcation that had characterized not that fought China in the Korean War and only postwar Asia but East-West global then in Vietnam, would emerge as one of relations. The end of China’s isolation in China’s most important trade and 1970, its assumption of a UN Security investment partners beginning in the Council seat, above all its re-emergence 1980s and snowballing thereafter. Within with access to US markets, and its a few decades, China, South Korea, and eventual position at the center of East- Japan would become one another’s West trade and investment, opened the leading trade and investment partners, way to the reknitting of economic and surpassing in significant ways even their political bonds across Asia andbonds with the United States. In 2007 strengthening Asian linkages with the they were the world’s 2nd, 4th and 14th global economy. Among the critical largest economies by IMF reckoning.[22] developments of subsequent decades were China’s full engagement in, indeed, Another important regional development its emergence as the workplace and has been the trade, investment and motor driving the Asian and worldtechnological partnership that links economies, the deepening and/or opening Taiwan and mainland China. In less than of Japan-China and South Korea-China two decades, the core of Taiwan’s high relations, and the expansive trade and tech production migrated across the investment role of overseas Chinese in Straits. Approximately one million linking China with Asian and other Taiwanese workers, engineers and economies. With the reunification of managers and family members presently

14 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF work and live on the mainland, most of forth from and to Chinese cities. them in Guangdong, Fujian, and especially the Shanghai-Suzhou corridor, Comparable, but much slower, strides the center of Taiwan enterprise.have brought together the two Koreas, a Taiwanese capital and technology are process made more difficult by the fact central to China’s industrialization and that the US, which never signed a peace export drive.[23] In turn, Taiwan’s Treaty to end the Korean War, long sought to isolate North Korea, and by the economic future rests firmly on the North Korean nuclear program. With the performance of mainland industry, its Kim Dae Jong—Kim Jong-il summit of exports and the expansion of its domestic 2000 as the key point of inflection, the market. The deep political gulf between bitter hostility between the two Koreas the two claimants to the Chinese mantle, yielded to efforts toward rapprochement exacerbated under the leadership of the and economic integration.[25] However, Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, the 2008 election of Lee Myung-bak as did not substantially slow their economic president of South Korea, and the stroke integration. Nevertheless, the 2008 suffered by North Korean leader Kim electoral victory of the Guomindang’s Ma Jong Il have slowed rapprochement to a Ying-jeou as president strengthened halt, indicative of the fragility of the cross-straits ties as indicated by the relationship and the deep divisions in initiation of regularly scheduled flights as Korean politics. Lee’s election has not, well as direct shipping and postal links however, slowed the deepening economic between Taiwan and mainland China, the and cultural ties between South Korea, signing of oil development agreements, Japan and China. and China’s offer of a $19 billion loan package to Taiwan enterprises inAs multilateral intra-Asian trade and China—all factors suggestive of further investment deepened from the 1970s, so possibilities for economic, social and too did the region’s ties to Europe and political integration.[24] the US. Trade between the East Asian trade surplus nations and the US, the The role of diasporic Chinese capital, world’s leading deficit nation, presently technology and labor, including a major comprises one of the signature patterns role for returnees from North American of the contemporary world economic and European graduate schools, has been order. The enormous surpluses generated large, multi-directional, and embracing by China, Japan and South Korea account the full range of activities spanning for the largest part of the massive US investment, technological transfer,trade deficit, and in turn, these nations networking, and labor migration back have made it possible for the US to and forth across the Pacific andcontinue to live beyond its means as throughout Asia. The US, Taiwan, Hong dollar surpluses (more than $2 trillion for Kong, and Singapore are among the China as of December 2008, and even inter-linked sites for movement back and larger sums for Japan) were recycled

15 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF back to the US, primarily in the form of and the US economy, ever more Treasury bonds but also as direct and dependent on the financial and service indirect investment. As of November sectors, became the world’s leading 2008, according to the US Treasury deficit nation, its prosperity resting on Department, China with 682 billion credit provided by East Asian and oil- dollars and Japan with 577 billion dollars producing economies whose own in US treasuries ranked first and second prospects rested heavily on access to US in the world, accounting for 40 percent of markets and who in turn provided the the world total of $3.1 trillion.[26] surplus dollars that allowed continued US Chinese and Japanese purchases of profligacy that could only end in financial treasury bonds over the last five years implosion of global consequences. helped to hold down US interest rates and the yuan-dollar and yen-dollar ratio, China’s reentry in the world economy and boosting the trade and growth of all three the formation of a dynamic economies, and financing the Iraq and interconnected East Asian economic zone Afghanistan Wars at the same time that from the 1970s coincided with and was US manufacturing jobs continued their made possible by two major inexorable move to China.[27] developments of global significance. The primary global war zone, whose greatest intensity had been in East Asia since the 1940s—the Pacific War followed by Chinese, Korean, and Indochinese revolutionary wars as well as independence struggles in the Philippines, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies among others—subsequently shifted to the Middle East and Central Asia.[28] If intra-Asian politics remains contentious, the growth and deepening of the Asian regional economy since the 1970s has taken place in the midst of a

US-China Trade Statistics 1989-2006 general peace, widening cultural and economic exchange, and easing of In short, even as the Asian regional tensions throughout East Asia.[29] economy took shape and intra-Asian Second, China’s full entry into the world trade and investment soared, the East economy took place at precisely the Asian economic powerhouses, China, moment when the postwar global Japan and South Korea, played central economic expansion came to an end, the roles in the Asia-Pacific and worldB-phase in the Kondratieff cycle began, economies. Specifically, US and other and the US sought ways to prevent manufacturing jobs migrated to China economic collapse through the expansion

16 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF of a world economy that included China experienced more measured growth? even as its industrial strength andAmong the historical and contemporary economic growth rates plummeted and factors facilitating rapid economic its economy became ever moredevelopment, industrialization, dependent on finance and services.[30] substantial growth in per capita income and the formation of a vibrant multi- A number of comparisons to the colonial directional East Asian regional economy, era in general, and Japan’s Greater East the following seem particularly Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the years important: 1930-1945 in particular, are instructive. First, the rapidly growing •The legacy of Asian economic and multidirectional flow of trade andpolitical strengths examined earlier in the investment involving China, Japan, South epoch of Chinese preeminence, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore andprotracted peace, and the regional Taiwan in recent decades may betributary-trade order of the 18th century, contrasted with the predominantlylegacies that would become clear with bilateral economic relationships linking the resurgence of Chinese strength at the European, American and Japanesecenter of an emergent East Asia. colonies with the metropolis as well as framing the dependent relationships with •The role of the Chinese, Japanese the metropolis of the prewar and early and Korean diasporas in re-linking Asian postwar periods. In the years 1988-2004, and Western economies through trade, as world trade expanded at an annual technology and investment networks that rate of 9.5%, intra-East Asian trade grew extend across the region and link East at 14% per year, compared with 9% for Asia globally. that of the European Union. East Asia’s share of world exports increased by 6% •Early postwar developmental and in the course of those years, while that of social change strategies throughout East the European Union decreased byAsia predicated on state-led accumulation 3%.[31] and investment, social change strategies that pivoted on land reform, and Second, in contrast to the autarky of East measures that blocked takeover by Asia between 1942 and 1945, since the international capital while creating firm 1970s the region has been fullyfoundations for the domestic economy. enmeshed in global trade, financial and investment networks. So, too, of course, •The reknitting of the region have many other regions. What then bridging the divide that we have traced “explains” the resurgence of East Asia in to the era of colonialism and regional these decades at a time when others who disintegration and which continued in the shared a post-colonial history andera of US-Soviet conflict that defined incorporation in world trade networks global geopolitics and political economy have languished, disintegrated orin the immediate postwar decades.

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If intra-Asian factors are of primary from China, Russia and South Korea, importance, the resurgence of East Asia both the US and North Korea took as a region has been shaped by global important steps, including nuclear factors, notably the role of the United dismantlement and ending North Korea’s States in the Asia Pacific. During the classification as an outlaw state (by US immediate postwar decades the US edict), thus enabling that regime to played a key role not only in shaping such modestly expand its trade, to regain global institutions as the World Bank, eligibility for international aid and to IMF and United Nations, but also in envisage the possibility of normalization structuring a bifurcated Asia Pacific, in of relations with the United States. The plunging the region into protracted wars, intertwined issues of the unresolved and in assuring the primacy of bilateral Korean War and the division of Korea over multilateral relations. Since 1970, it remain critical to regional and even has facilitated the resurgence not only of global accommodation. This is but the the national economies of East Asia but most intractable of concerns that can also made it easier to transcend at least only be resolved in multilateral terms, some of the divisions inherent in earlier requiring a striking departure from US East-West conflicts. unilateral attempts to impose its will on others through military action. The In light of a two centuries-long pattern persistence of a divided China and a characterized by the primacy of unequal divided Korea have not prevented bilateral relationships and a virtualimportant strides toward the formation of absence of multilateral bonds, a number a cohesive economic region, laying the of recent multilateral initiatives merit basis for further political accommodation attention in terms of changing regional and, eventually, addressing the geopolitics in East Asia. For only the environmental and political economy second or third time since the eighteenth issues of poverty and inequality that have century, and the first in half a century, accompanied galloping growth. (We China has taken the lead in an important return to these issues below.) regional and even global geopolitical initiative:[32] as host, and arguably the As it gained strength in recent decades, leading force in the six-party talks that China has spearheaded other initiatives may eventually lead to a breakthrough directed toward regional solutions: these that results in North Koreaninclude efforts to bring about an ASEAN denuclearization and opens the way + 3 arrangement involving China, Japan toward ending the half century Korean and Korea to unify East and Southeast War between North Korea and the United Asia; agreement on an ASEAN-China States and between North and South Free Trade Area to take effect by 2010. It Korea. Although the Bush administration should be noted, however, that in failed to complete an agreement on North contrast to China’s centrality in the Korean nuclear weapons, under pressure tributary-trade order of the 18th century,

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Southeast Asian nations, through ASEAN, Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands have played a leading proactive role in As China’s star has burned brightly in the emerging regionalism in the new regional and global affairs, Japan, the millennium, as in the planning for a free world’s second economic power, and the trade area. These agreements have been motor that drove region-wide economic predicated on a willingness by the parties growth in the 1960s and 1970s, has to set aside for future resolution such virtually disappeared from much analysis contentious territorial issues as Chinese of Asian regionalism and global border disputes with India, Russia, Japan, geopolitics. This is a product of three and Vietnam among others, including main factors. First is the surge in China’s disputes over potentially oil rich islands, economic and financial strength over the the Spratlys and Paracels, that involve last two decades while Japan’s economy claims by many Southeast Asian nations. has never recovered momentum since the Particularly notable for its potential bubble burst of 1990 resulting in a regional and global significance, is the decade of stagnation and the collapse of China-Japan provisional accord on stock market and real estate values. territorial issues involving the Second is Japan’s reluctance to exercise Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands and leadership of an emerging Asia, in no Okinotorishima, making possible an small part because of fears that agreement for joint oil exploration in the regardless of its efforts, the region will disputed area, although conflicts be dominated by a resurgent China. continue.[33] Finally, perhaps most important and directly related to the second point, Japan remains firmly in the American embrace, viewing its future in terms of the US-Japan alliance and maintaining an ambivalent view at best toward Asia. Japanese leaders continue to prioritize their subordinate relationship within, and dependence on, the US-Japan relationship, what Gavan McCormack controversially calls the Client State bond.[34] This includes the primacy of the US-Japan economic and security relationships above all others, the US nuclear umbrella, the stationing (at Japanese expense) of US forces on the Japanese mainland and Okinawa, and ample Japanese financial and logistical support for successive US wars, recently

19 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF buttressed by the dispatch of Japanese currency and financial crises (efforts to naval, air and army forces to Iraq and the do so at the time of the 1997 Asian Persian Gulf. In short, despite thefinancial crisis were blocked by the growing strength of intra-regionalUnited States), an initiative reinforced in financial and economic ties and the 2008.[36] overall decline of American power in Asia and globally, despite Japan’s growing The first summit of the three East Asian cultural influence throughout Asia, and nations, held in Fukuoka, Japan on with the world’s second most powerful December 13, 2008 in an effort to frame naval force and advanced air power as a common policy in response to the world well as the second largest economy, recession is illustrative of the possibilities Japan continues to prioritize itsfor East Asian regional responses to the relationship with the United States and contemporary financial and economic has been slow to exercise leadership in a crisis. The brief meeting, however, also resurgent East Asia.[35] suggests the obstacles to framing common policies at a time when world The question is whether there arerecession presents severe challenges that politically acceptable geopoliticalmay derail even—or particularly—their alternatives to the status quo for Japan’s high-flying economies with its heavy leaders at a time of political crisis other reliance on export markets and foreign than the course favored by someinvestment.[37] neonationalists, a course that would involve the renunciation of the Peace Intra-Asian conflicts, including historical Constitution’s Article 9 and an expansive memory conflicts centered around a Japanese military role throughout the Japan whose government and Asia Pacific. neonationalist elements continue to prevent it from laying to rest the divisive In recent years East Asia has taken steps memories associated with the Asia-Pacific toward interregional cooperation in War and colonial rule, could undermine numerous areas including economic and or slow these promising regional financial security, nuclearbeginnings, as indeed they did in China- nonproliferation, resource management, Japan relations in the reign of Prime fishing, counterterrorism, drug,Minister Koizumi, 2001-2006. However, smuggling, piracy, human trafficking and the most important challenge centers on organized crime control, disaster relief, resolving issues pertaining to the United environmental degradation and container States and its role in East Asian or in Asia security. The 1997 Asian financial and Pacific geopolitical outcomes, issues currency crisis provided impetus for exacerbated by the economic meltdown regional responses, the most important of that has confronted all nations and which was the currency swaps initiated regions since 2008. with the Chiang Mai initiative of May 2005 to help shore up nations facing A critical question remains concerning

20 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF the role of the US in East Asia and the Asia Pacific. David Shambaugh has noted the preponderance of the “US-led security architecture across Asia. This system includes five bilateral alliances in EA; non-allied security partnerships in SEA, SA and Oceania; a buildup of US forces in the Pacific; new US-India and US-Pakistan military relations; and the US military presence and defense arrangements in SW and CA.”[38] That formulation can be supplemented by recognizing the importance of the Helicopter escorts Chinese ship off Somalia, January 2009 multiple US military bases throughout the region and beyond, the USSigns abound of the weakening of militarization of space where again it has American power in East Asia and a virtual monopoly, the fact that as of globally. While the collapse of the Soviet 2006 65% of US sea-launched ballistic Union left the US without serious missiles were deployed in the Pacific geopolitical constraints, the rationale for maritime region, and the expansive permanent stationing of US forces—in conception of the US-Japan Security Japan/Okinawa, in South Korea, in Treaty which has led Japan to extend its Taiwan, and in Guam, for example—was military reach to the Indian Ocean and to simultaneously weakened in the eyes of explore security arrangements with India almost everyone except Pentagon and Australia which can only be directed planners. The US, moreover, lost against China.[39] In early 2009,international credibility as a result of moreover, both China and Japan have failed protracted wars in Iraq and responded to Somalian piracy with the Afghanistan and the heavy pressures it dispatch of ships to patrol off the coast of imposed on other nations to pay for those Africa, and South Korea is considering wars and support them militarily. To be similar actions, involving a majorsure, no nation or group of nations has expansion of the military posture of each attained the military power to directly of these nations. challenge US might or to effectively challenge the international primacy of the US. Yet US ability to effectively dominate geopolitics has been undermined by successive stalemated wars and the immense costs that will be required if the US is to overcome the present economic and financial crisis. The Obama decision to dispatch 30,000

21 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF additional troops to fight a failed war in period in which Asia’s high-flying export- Afghanistan, with larger trooporiented economies too confront deployments scheduled to follow, makes economic and financial reverses after clear that the problem transcends the several decades of sustained expansion. Bush legacy. Occurring, moreover, at The prospects for the Asia Pacific surely precisely the moment when the nations of include a substantial American role in East and Southeast Asia have taken both geopolitical and economic strides toward regional accommodation perspective. Yet the ability of the US to and addressing of the spectrum ofdominate the geopolitics and political problems that confront the region, the economy of East Asia and the Pacific has Obama administration’s expansion of the been fundamentally and perhaps Afghanistan-Pakistan War, could have the irrevocably weakened. effect of strengthening proponents of It is too soon to tell whether East Asian East Asian regionalism. nations will devise regional solutions to Paradoxically, Mark Beeson observes, deal effectively with the most serious “the legacy of the Bush administration economic recession of the postwar era may be that U.S. foreign policy effectively whose consequences are already so undermined the multilateralclearly visible in the sharp downturn of transnational basics of American power exports and GDP in early 2009, still less by encouraging the creation of regionally whether the US, casting aside neoliberal based groupings with which to represent premises in favor of a new Keynesian and protect local interests.”[40] East Asia gospel, will succeed in overcoming the confronts multiple problems at a time challenges of the recession.[41] Still less, when the meltdown of the world economy whether structural problems inherent in has discredited the core principles of Asia’s, and above all China’s neoliberal economics on whichdevelopmental surge will be able to Washington banked its claims to world address effectively the massive leadership over the preceding three environmental and social challenges decades. To be sure, the weaknesses of inherent in the race for growth. What is other emerging regional formations certain is that the verities of the postwar including ASEAN + 3 and the Shanghai world will now give way to a new order or disorder in which East Asia is likely to Group (China, Russia and four Central play an increasingly significant role and Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, US primacy to be called into question. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mongolia asConclusion observers), are palpable. New regional bonds, moreover, will face moreThis essay has highlighted important demanding tests as the world economy steps that East Asia has taken to enters its most difficult period since the overcome the fragmentation associated depression/World War of the 1930s-40s, a with several centuries of colonial rule and

22 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF the postwar US-Soviet division tosocial inequality that is particularly reassert its position as a major world notable in China, sidetrack the high region. The combination of deepening growth economies of the region.[42] intraregional economic bonds in the world’s most dynamic economic zone, We have briefly surveyed three historical together with region-wide efforts that models for organizing East Asia: a Pax th th have begun to confront acuteSinica (16 to 19 century), the divisions environmental, territorial and security and conflicts of an era of China’s issues, suggests possible futuresdisintegration, colonialism, war and compatible with substantially reduced revolution (1840-1970) dominated US- and US-Japan-dominated dynamics respectively by Japan and the US, and the and momentum toward expandedresurgence of Asia and the sprouts of a regional coordination. dynamic regionalism since the 1970s.

The growing economic strength of the Does the Pax Sinica offer insights into the region is a foundation for recent steps possibilities for regional harmony or toward autonomy and multilateralhegemony in a period of peace in East coordination. If the US continues to hold Asia in the new millennium? It was, of important cards, its weaknesses, and the course, a hierarchical model predicated importance of East Asia for the US and on a China-centered order and global economy are readily apparent. prioritizing the bonds of Asian states with China. At its height in the 18th century, At the same time, intra-Asian conflicts East Asia enjoyed an era of protracted are evident not only in responding to US peace and relative prosperity fueled in demands and unilateral actions, with part by exchange through tributary-trade respect to wars and the war on terror, bonds and a favorable position in world but also in myriad conflicts inherent in or trade networks, as well as a hegemonic exacerbated by China’s rise as a regional politics predicated on a relatively power, unresolved legacies of divided nonintrusive approach to the peoples on nations (Korea and China/Taiwan) and China’s East Asian peripheries. Both the other territorial conflicts rooted in WW II, subsequent Japan- and US-centered and historical memory issues that pit models, for all their dynamism, proved Japan against her neighbors overincapable of ending endemic war or unresolved issues that are the legacy of creating effective regional bonds, each the epoch of colonialism and war. Equally prioritizing bilateral relations with the important, questions of the sustainability dominant power and prioritizing its own of economic growth patterns that exact a military primacy and security during horrendous toll on the environment, and epochs of permanent warfare. If the conflicts among neighboring nations over emergence of wide-ranging and deep water, energy, and emissions, could, in mutual economic relations across East combination with global economic and Asia, including but not limited to the financial problems and the rampant greater China constellation comprised of

23 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF both China and the diaspora, provides issues that continue to divide China, foundations for a new regional order, Japan and Korea. China will surely be central to it. In contrast to the 18th century, however, Our discussion has centered on Asian China, after decades of high-speedregionalism in three epochs. The present growth, remains far behind such major conjuncture, however, suggests one other competitors as Japan and the US in its important theme that differentiates the level of development as measured by per present era from that of both the Pax th capita income, including calculations in Sinica of the 18 century and the Pax terms of purchasing power parity.Nipponica of the first half of the Equally important, with its own deep twentieth century. In both of the earlier developmental problems, above all the epochs, East Asia was embedded in the enormous toll on land, water and air global economy, yet the geopolitical associated with Chinesereach of its dominant powers remained developmentalism, and internal divisions centered in East Asia. In the new of region, ethnicity and class, and with millennium, both China and Japan are challenges to the regime compounded by carefully weighing the global reach of the economic downturn of the coming their economies, as exemplified by years,[43] China’s continued dramatic China’s engagement in Africa, the rise is far from assured. Above all, with extension of Chinese and Japanese naval Japan and the US as major powers in the power to the Middle East and the African region, China is unlikely to play acoast, the global search by both nations for critical energy resources, and their hegemonic role comparable to that of the heavy stakes in the US and European earlier epoch or, for that matter, of economies. But China and Japan are also, subsequent eras of Japanese and US in their own ways, eying wider global primacy, in coming decades. In contrast geopolitical roles. The possibility of to realist international relations analysts regional and global realignment looms, such as John Mearsheimer, who project particularly in an epoch of economic the emergence of a hegemonic China in malaise that cannot but affect all East Asia based on assumptions about nations.[45] China’s economic growth, a more likely prospect is a regional order in which the pace of development slows and no single nation reigns supreme.[44] Meanwhile, Mark Selden is Senior Research immediate challenges both to national Associate in the East Asia Program, development trajectories and to regional Cornell University, and a coordinator of accord will come from economicThe Asia-Pacific Journal. His recent books recession, geopolitical conflicts of which include War and State Terrorism. The a divided Korea remains the mostUnited States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific dangerous, American challenges to Asian in the Long Twentieth Century (with regionalism, and historical memoryAlvin So) and China, East Asia and the

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Global Economy. Regional and historical Industrial Development in Western Europe perspectives (with Takeshi Hamashita from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: and Linda Grove). Cambridge University Press, 1969) (2nd edition, 2003); W. W. Rostow, The Stages Recommended Citation: Mark Selden, of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist “East Asian Regionalism and its Enemies Manifesto (Cambridge; Cambridge in Three Epochs: Political Economy and University Press, 1962). Geopolitics, 16th to 21st Centuries” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9-4-09, February [2] China was arguably the geopolitical 25, 2009. center of East Asia in the 18th century, but it is important to note that at that time, as during the Mongol dynasty earlier, China See other articles by Mark Selden: was ruled by a steppe people, the Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Manchus, thereby lending a distinctive Nationalism: War, Historical Memory and the character to the Qing empire and its Future of the Asia Pacific dealings with peoples on its borders, notably the Mongols, Tibetans and Japanese and American War Atrocities, Uyghurs of Central Asia but also the Historical Memory and Reconciliation: World War II to Today peoples of Southeast Asia as well. [3] For an overview of work by the A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing postwar generation of Japanese scholars Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese and translations of major articles, see Cities and the American Way of War from Linda Grove and Christian Daniel, eds. World War II to Iraq State and Society in China: Japanese Perspectives on Ming-Qing Social and Economic History (Tokyo: University of Ching Kwan Lee and Mark Selden, Tokyo Press, 1984). This literature, China's Durable Inequality: Legacies of together with a Eurocentric modernization Revolution and Pitfalls of Reform literature, provided the prelude to the Notes revisionist thrust by Takeshi Hamashita and others whose work is examined here.

[4] Takeshi Hamashita, edited by Mark * I am indebted to Mark Beeson, Peter Selden and Linda Grove, China, East Asia Katzenstein, two anonymous reviewers, and the Global Economy: Regional and and especially Uradyn Bulag for criticisms historical perspectives (London: of earlier drafts of this paper. Routledge, 2008); Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden, eds., [1] The quintessential works in thisThe Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 literature are David Landes, The Unbound and 50 year perspectives, London: Prometheus. Technological Change and Routledge, 2003; R. Bin Wong,China

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Transformed: Historical Change and the Sugihara Kaoru’s edited collection on the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca: links between Japanese development, Cornell University Press, 1997; Kenneth intra-Asian trade, and the Asian Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, economies, Japan, China and the Growth Europe, and the Making of the Modern of the Asian International Economy, World Economy, Princeton: Princeton 1850-1949, Oxford: Oxford University University Press, 2000; Andre Gunder Press, 2005. For an important recent Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Chinese interpretation, see Wang Hui, The Asian Age, Berkeley: University of Politics of Imagining Asia: Empires, California Press, 1998; Gary Hamilton, Nations, Regional and Global Orders, Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8,1, 2007, pp. Societies, London: Routledge, 2006;1-34. Hidetaka Yoshimatsu,The Political Economy of Regionalism in East Asia. [5] An important issue that we do not Integrative Explanations for Dynamics and address here is the fact that the Qing Challenges, Basingstoke: Palgraveempire that carried China to a peak of th Macmillan, 2008; Mark Beeson,peace and relative prosperity in the 18 Regionalism and Globalization in East century was the product of Manchu Asia: Politics, Security and Economic leadership, thus raising important Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave questions about the multiethnic character Macmillan, 2007; Timothy Brook,The of the Chinese state and nation, and its Confusions of Pleasure; Commerce and relations with Central Asia and the steppe Culture in Ming China, Berkeley: regions generally, as well as with East and University of California Press, 1998;Southeast Asia. Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies: [6] Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Technology and Development in Asian Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 vol.2, p. 33. Societies, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985; Nola Cooke and Li Tana, eds., [7] Chapter 4: “Silver in Regional Water Frontier: Commerce and theEconomies and the World Economy: East Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, Asia in the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth 1750-1880, Lanham MD, Rowman and Centuries.” Translation by J.P. McDermott. Littleﬁeld, 2004; Anthony Reid,Southeast China, East Asia and the Global Economy. Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 Cf. Andre Gunder Frank,ReORIENT , (2 vols), New Haven: Yale University especially pp. 131-64; Kenneth Pomeranz, Press, 1988 and 1993. The issues have The Great Divergence, espec. pp. 159-62, been sharply debated by historians and 267-74. economists in symposia in The Journal of Asian Studies, American Historical[8] See for example Saskia Sassen, The Review, and Modern China among others. Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, They have also been examined by a range Princeton: Princeton University Press, of Japanese scholars. See especially 2001 2nd.ed); Saskia Sassen, Cities in a

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World Economy, 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, The Asia-Paciﬁc Journal: Japan Focus. California: Pine Forge, 2006. [13] Angus Maddison, Maddison,The [9] China achieved the peak of territorial World Economy: Historical Statistics, expansion during the 18th century, Paris: OECD Development Centre, 2003, extending the reach of empire north and cited in Booth, Table 3. west into Inner Asia including incorporation of Tibet, Mongolia and [14] Samuel Ho, "Colonialism and Xinjiang, and China’s informal reach Development: Korea, Taiwan, and extended into Southeast Asia as well. Kwantung" in Ramon H. Myers and Mark Most of China south of the Great Wall, and R. Peattie, Eds., The Japanese Colonial particularly coastal China, by contrast, Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton: Princeton enjoyed protracted peace. University Press, 1984, p.382.

[10] Alain Gresh, “From Thermopylae to [15] Booth, “Did It Really Help to be a the Twin Towers: The West’s Selective Japanese Colony,” Table 11. Booth shows Reading of History,” Le Mondethat the pattern of metropolitan Diplomatique, January 2009. domination of the trade of the colonies was not universal. While the model well ﬁt [11] Kaoru Sugihara, “The East Asian path the Philippines (United States), in the late of economic development: a long-term 1930s, trade dependence on the perspective” and Kenneth Pomeranz, metropolis was less than twenty percent “Women’s work, family, and economic in the case Malaya (Britain) and Indonesia development in Europe and East Asia: (Holland). long-term trajectories and contemporary [16] Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai,Taiwan in comparisons,” in Arrighi, Hamashita and Japan’s Empire Building. An institutional Selden, eds., The Resurgence of East Asia, approach to colonial engineering, London, pp. 78-172. See also Giovanni Arrighi, Routledge, 2009. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London: Verso, [17] Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann, 2007; Mark Elvin, “The Historian aseds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese Haruspex,” New Left Review 52, History. Colonialism, regionalism and July/August 2008, pp. 83-109; Akiraborders, London, Routledge, 2008). Hayami, “A Great Transformation: Social and Economic Change in Sixteenth and [18] Mark Selden, “Japanese and Seventeenth Century Japan,”Bonner American War Atrocities, Historical Zeischrift für Japanologie, 8, 1986, pp. Memory and Reconciliation: World War II 3-13. to Today,” The Asia-Paciﬁc Journal: Japan Focus. [12] Anne Booth,” Did It Really Help to be a Japanese Colony? East Asian Economic [19] Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, Performance in Historical Perspective,” eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-

27 7 | 9 | 4 APJ | JF century History, New York: The New Press, of American Finance; Kosuke Takahashi 2009. and R. Taggart Murphy, The US and the Temptation of Dollar Seignorage;James [20] Priya Satia, “The Defense ofFallows, “Be Nice to the Countries That Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Lend You Money,”Atlantic Monthly, Idea of Arabia,”American Historical December 2008. Review Vol 111, No. 1, 2006, pp. 16-51. The author finds it superfluous to remind [28] The shift to Central Asia and the readers that the same applies to the Middle East certainly seems correct American war in Iraq eight decades later. pertaining to American wars, but other military conflicts of course continued in [21] John W. Dower, War Without Mercy. Africa and Latin America and the Race and Power in the Pacific War, NewCaribbean. York: Pantheon Books, 1986. [29] This is not to suggest that rapid [22] In purchasing power parity terms, in economic growth can only occur in a 2007, China ranked 1st, Japan 2nd, South peaceful milieu. Japan’s post-WWII th Korea 3rd and Taiwan 7. Wikipedia recovery and economic growth was in Figures for nominal GDP in 2007 in part a product of an industrialization Wikipedia For per capita GDP (PPP) figures fostered by the US as a means to support see here. For per capita GDP (nominal) the Korean and Vietnam wars. Japan’s figures see here. gain was bought at the price of [23] Yu Zhou, The Inside Story of China’s devastation of Korea and Indochina. High-Tech Industry. Making Silicon Valley [30] For recent discussion of the in Beijing, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, Kondratieff moment see Immanuel 2008. Wallerstein interviewed by Jae-Jung Suh, Capitalism’s Demise? and, especially [24] Yu-huay Sun and Eugene Tang, Taiwan, China Start Direct Links asRobert Brenner interviewed by Jeong Relations Improve, Bloomberg December Seong-jin, Overproduction not Financial 15, 2008. Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis: the US, East Asia, and the World [25] To be sure, progress toward rapprochement has slowed under South [31] Douglas H. Brooks and Changchun Korean Pres. Lee Myung-bak. Hua, “Asian Trade and Global Linkages,” ADB Institute Working Paper No. 122, [26] US Treasury Department. December, 2008, “Intra-regional Trade of Major Regions (1988-2007), Fig. 6, p. 10. [27] Mark Landler, “Dollar Shift: Chinese Pockets Filled as Americans’ Emptied,” [32] Other instances that merit The New York Times, December 25, 2008; comparative analysis are the Geneva R. Taggart Murphy, Asia and the Meltdown Conference on Indochina of 1955 and the

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Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung in the [37] Xetrade, “Japan, South Korea, China: same year, proclaiming the importance of trilateral ties, tensions; Brad Setser, This newly emerging nations in a post-colonial Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea and world. China Exports Tank, Japan Focus.

[33] See, for example, Suisheng Zhao, [38] David Shambaugh, “China Engages “China's Global Search for EnergyAsia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” Security: cooperation and competition in International Security 29.3 (2004), pp. the Asia-Pacific,” Journal of Contemporary 64-99. China, issue 55, 2008, pp. 207-27; [39] Peter J. Katzenstein, “Japan in the Michael Richardson, A Southward Thrust American Imperium: Rethinking for China’s Energy Diplomacy in the South Security,”; Richard Tanter, The Maritime China Sea andDavid Rosenberg, Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Managing the Resources of the China Ocean: Afghanistan, NATO and Japan’s Seas: China's Bilateral FisheriesPolitical Impasse; Mel Gurtov, Reconciling Agreements with Japan, South Korea, and Japan and China;Gavan McCormack, Vietnam, Japan Focus "Conservatism" and "Nationalism": The Japan Puzzle. [34] Client State: Japan in America’s Embrace, London: Routledge, 2007. [40] Beeson, East Asian Regionalism and the Asia-Pacific: After American [35] The combination of Japan’s military Hegemony. power and the aspirations of neonationalist politicians suggests other [41] Brad Setser documents the sharp possible outcomes. The MSDF presence in downturn of Chinese, Korean and the Indian Ocean since 2003 tasked with Taiwanese exports in December 2008. refueling US and allied ships in the Afghan This Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea War, now showing signs of becoming a and China Exports Tank permanent presence, means that Japan’s In that same month, Japan’s GDP fell 9.6% year navy has taken up positions critical to on year and in January the bankruptcy rate guaranteeing its oil supplies from the rose by 16% tp 1.360, the highest level in six Middle East. Similarly, plans are under years. Mure Dickie, “Japanese economy faces review for an active military role in big squeeze,” Financial Times, February 9, 2009. response to Somali hijacking of Japanese ships. See Michael Penn, Political Winds [42] Ching Kwan Lee and Mark Selden, Drive Japan to the Gate of Tears“Inequality off and Its Enemies in Somalia. Japan Focus. Revolutionary and Reform China,” Economic and Political Weekly, January [36] Mark Beeson, East Asian Regionalism 13, 2009, pp. 27-36. and the Asia-Pacific: After American Hegemony, Japan Focus. [43] On the environmental obstacles to

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China’s continued rise seePaul Harris, become a wealthy nation. See Mark Confronting Environmental Change in East Beeson’s astute discussion of hegemony and Southeast Asia: Eco-politics, Foreign in postwar East Asia,Hegemonic “ Policy, and Sustainable Development (UN transition in East Asia? The dynamics of University Press, 2005). Chinese and American power,” Review of International Studies (2009), 35, pp. [44] John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of 95–112. Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 402. This is Mearsheimer’s [45] Uradyn Bulag drew attention to the assumption about a China which succeeds potentially expansive global roles of both in extending its developmental drive to China and Japan.

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