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Economic Nationalism and Regionalism in Contemporary East Asia 現代東アジアの経済的国家主義と地方主義

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Economic Nationalism and Regionalism in Contemporary East Asia 現代東アジアの経済的国家主義と地方主義 Volume 10 | Issue 43 | Number 2 | Article ID 3848 | Oct 28, 2012 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Economic Nationalism and Regionalism in Contemporary East Asia 現代東アジアの経済的国家主義と地方主義 Mark Selden Introduction Bruce Cumings observes, the US is the first world power to exploit the fact that it borders Regions are socially constructed areas defined both the Atlantic and Pacific—is a defining by state, supra-state, and societal agents, with question for the emerging regional and global shifting territorial, economic, and socio-conjuncture and a direct challenge to the political parameters. In contrast to theeconomic nationalism that shapes important dominant literature, which has focused on outcomes (Cumings 2009). In short, given states and state-constructed regions, we assess competing definitions of East Asia and the East multiple forces in defining, constructing, and Asian region, our approach, which weds deconstructing regional formations in an epoch geopolitics and political economy, highlights in which competing definitions of, andthe tensions among them. approaches to, region and nation challenge the reigning order (Katzenstein and Shiraishi 1997; Gamble and Payne 1996; Hamanaka 2009). Political, geostrategic, economic, social, and cultural factors may all shape a regional order and its position in the world economy. In light of competing claims of national, regional, and global forces, we inquire into the possibility of contemporary region formation that does not rest on the hegemony of a single nation or power, that is, an imperium whether formal or informal, and which serves, in varying degrees, the interests of the nations and peoples that comprise it. In particular, consider the interplay between economic nationalism and region formation, including China, Japan, Korea, and the United States. The territories that comprise East Asia as defined here are China, Japan, the Koreas, Given competing definitions of East Asia’s North and South, and Taiwan. Our focus is on emerging regionalism, spatial conceptions of the burgeoning economies, and the deepening the region remain contested. While it is obvious economic interpenetration of all of the above to discuss the East Asian countries, especially with the exception of North Korea, which alone in the context of the region’s economichas been excluded from the regional growth dynamism and China’s economic might and and economic interpenetration of recent growing political influence, why include the decades. In geopolitical terms it is important to US? The relationship between East Asian include North Korea since Korea’s division, regionalism and the continued salience of together with the China-Taiwan division and American power or Pacific Ascendancy—as the geopolitical dominance of the US in East 1 10 | 43 | 2 APJ | JF Asia and the Asia Pacific, are the heart of and international capital. China, as we will see, regional and global tensions that both define well illustrates the range of possibilities. the region and drive economic nationalism. Above all in geopolitical terms, but also in However, in contemporary East Asia an array economics, regional dynamics cannot be of historical legacies including territorial and grasped without due attention to the role of the cultural conflict, war, and international United States. geopolitics drive economic nationalism and threaten to undermine regional harmony. In East Asia as a region is notable because of its recent years, sharply juxtaposed images of the recent resurgence to a position at the center of regional future have surfaced: including the global economy following a protracted deepening intraregional economic and financial decline from the heights achieved during a ties on the one hand and on the other, renewed previous period of regional peace andgeopolitical challenges that pose mounting prosperity under the China-centered tributary risks of war in the wake of clashes involving trade system of the eighteenth century (Arrighi, Japan and South Korea over the Hamashita and Selden 2003; Hamashita 2008). Dokdo/Takeshima islands, North and South Following a brief survey of East Asia in the era Korea at sea near the Northern Limit Line, the framed by the Sinocentric tributary trade China-Japan imbroglio over the Senkaku/Diaoyu system (sixteenth-eighteenth century), I show islands, and clashes involving China and how the stage was set for the decline and various nations in the South China Sea. In each subsequent resurgence of East Asia and how of these, geopolitical conflict is intertwined the character of regional geopolitics and with economic conflict, notably issues of oil and political economy changed in the current epoch fishing. A central fact pertaining to these of economic nationalism, region formation, and clashes is that they are not merely bilateral. globalization (Yoshimatsu 2008; Beeson 2007; The United States, and to a lesser extent Sugihara 2005; Wang 2007; Duara 2010). This Russia, play a major role so that the arena of historical survey permits consideration of conflict extends to the Asia-Pacific and the whether economic nationalism should be world. understood as a specifically modern concept or whether its roots can be traced to earlier The paper is divided into three main sections. dynamics. In section two I show that East Asia was already an economic and geopolitical center The interaction and tension between economic and a major actor in the global political nationalism and regional and global forces that economy from at least the sixteenth to the are integral to the resurgence of the region eighteenth century. In section three I examine have deepened linkages among the nations that the interplay and tensions between economic comprise the region and fostered growing nationalism and regional and global forces in bonds with neighboring regions including driving the economic resurgence of East Asia Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia and since the 1970s, with an eye to defining the global economy. However, such links do not distinctive features of the region and the imply the demise, or even a reduction of interplay of economic nationalism, regional, economic nationalism. Rather they point to the and global forces. Section four shows that the changing character of economic nationalism, historical legacies including territorial and which may be pursued through policies that are cultural conflict, war, and international rivalry statist, collective, and autarchic, but can also in the context of economic and financial be directed in ways compatible with anintegration of the region continue to fuel expansive market and wide scope for domestic economic nationalism and geopolitics that 2 10 | 43 | 2 APJ | JF threaten to undermine regional harmony. century, lend plausibility to this perspective. Today several emergent clashes over competing claims over neighboring islands Between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, pose new geopolitical challenges for the Asia- at the dawn of European capitalism, East Asia Pacific, including the US. was the center of a vibrant economic and geopolitical zone with its own distinctive Historical perspectives on East Asiancharacteristics. Among the most important regionalism linkages that shaped the political economy and geopolitics of the East Asian world was the Throughout the nineteenth and well into the China-centered tributary trade order,1 pivoting twentieth century, the dominant view in both on transactions negotiated through formal state East and West privileged a dynamic Western ties as well as providing a venue for informal world order over a weak, inward-looking and trade conducted at the periphery of tributary conservative East Asia that collapsed in the missions. The system was also sustained by a face of an expansive Western capitalism cum wide range of legal and illegal trade, much of it imperialism. This Eurocentric world vision linking port cities that were beyond the reach reified the perspective of the colonial powers of the Chinese imperial state. Korea, Vietnam, and their successors and ignored thethe Ryukyus, and a number of kingdoms of substantial long-term developmental trajectory Central and Southeast Asia actively engaged in of East Asia and its parity with Europe as tributary trade with China. recently as the eighteenth century (Landes 1969, 2003; Rostow 1962. The essentialist East Asian linkages with the world economy presumption that continues to pervade a from the sixteenth century forward, via both substantial literature—that Western superiority the land silk road and the sea, transformed is a historical constant, once and forever East-West trade as well as the domestic immutable—is now being tested. Chinese and regional economies. Silver flows, to pay for tea, silk, ceramics, and opium among An alternative paradigm recognizes East Asia other products, bound Europe and the as an economic and geopolitical center and a Americas with East Asia, particularly China, major actor in the global political economy with Manila as the key port of transit. Indeed, from at least the sixteenth to the eighteenth the large-scale flow of silver from the Americas century or even the mid-nineteenth century. to China beginning in the sixteenth century and Interestingly, the avatars of this approach, peaking in the mid-seventeenth century linked frequently framed as a China-centeredmajor world regions and transformed both perspective on East Asia and the worldintra-Asian trade and China’s domestic economy, emerged not primarily from Chinese economy. If the dominant
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