Expanding Networks of Cooperation in East Asia

The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley presents a discussion of new networks of cooperation in East Asia

Speaker: T. J. Pempel, Professor, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Moderator: Taeku Lee, Professor, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)

It may seem bizarre to talk of ‘expanding networks of cooperation in East Asia’at a time when Japanese Prime Minister Abe is telling the Davos World Forum that relations between China and Japan are analogous to those between Britain and Germany in 1914—the outbreak of World War I. Certainly, in recent years, unresolved and increasingly tense maritime; expanding defense budgets; contrasting ‘historical memories;’ and the American ‘repositioning’ in East Asia are but a few of the headline grabbers suggesting that East Asia is ‘ripe for rivalry.’

Yet, financial, trade and regional production linkages across East Asia have never been deeper, nor expanding more quickly. Equally, formal regional organizations such as the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN plus Three, are exploding in number and influence.

This talk will examaine this apparent disjuncture. Much of the explanation, Pempel will argue, lies in how countries answer the question ‘who is my enemy?’In Northeast Asia particularly, on issues of hard security and military matters, the leaders of China, Japan and both Koreas uniformly point fingers are one another. That is far less true in Southeast Asia. And on matters of finance and economics, most East Asian leaders are less skeptical of one another and more likely to identify external finance and bodies such as the International Monetary Fund as their largest threat, leading them to greater cooperation with one another.