China and Southeast Asia: Global Changes and Regional Challenges

7. THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF “EAST ASIA” IN CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS by Alice D. BA

170 Alice D. BA 7 THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF “EAST ASIA” IN CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS Alice D. BA Since the late 1980s, East and Southeast Asia have been adapting to changes associated with the ending of the Cold War, especially the reprioritization of U.S. economic and strategic interests in Asia. Those changes introduced new realities in Southeast Asia’s relations with Northeast Asia, including new security concerns, the intensification of economic and trade linkages, and general blurring of lines between Southeast and Northeast Asia. China’s growing economic and political presence is considered an especially significant development that is compelling a reorganization of the regional political economy. In particular, these changes, along with the challenges of a fastpaced and changing global economy, have generated growing momentum behind a reorganization along East Asian lines. For the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the emergence of “East Asia” made up of both Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian states1 offers as much challenge as opportunity. On the one hand, “East Asia” promises the thirty-plus-year-old organization and its economies a chance at economic and political revitalization at a time when China’s economy looms especially large and at a time when ASEAN itself is undergoing a period of reevaluation. On the other hand, “East Asia” also holds out the danger that ASEAN and its voice will eventually be subsumed 07 China & SEA Pt III/Ch 7 20/1/05, 12:23 PM 170 The Politics and Economics of “East Asia” in China-ASEAN Relations 171 within a larger grouping that also includes larger powers. Also, though relations between China and ASEAN have improved in significant ways, many in ASEAN remain wary and concerned about China’s growing economic and political influence. This chapter examines the economics and politics of “East Asia” in the context of ASEAN-China relations. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of China’s particular economic challenge to the ASEAN economies and the ways that this challenge is recentering a regional political economy that had been built upon Cold War relationships and priorities.The chapter then turns to a discussion of ASEAN’s and China’s respective and evolving views of “East Asia”. Particular attention is paid to how the economics and politics of their relations, especially since 1997, are affecting the lines along which East Asia’s reorganization is taking place and the prospects for an East Asian regionalism. While economic developments, especially the demands and dilemmas of competing in an ever more challenging global political economy, are compelling a rethinking of regional growth strategies and regional co-operation along East Asian lines, developments also point to important reservations about this East Asian trend. Politics remains the most important complicating factor in regionalization processes (economic and political); however, politics may also provide additional arguments for “East Asia”. CHINA’S ECONOMIC CHALLENGE The 1990s were a time of much change for China and ASEAN. In particular, shifting U.S. priorities in East and Southeast Asia underscored long-standing questions about U.S. security guarantees and compelled ASEAN states to rethink their relations with China. Political-security preoccupations loomed especially large over relations. Competing claims and conflicts over the Spratly Islands, along with military modernization efforts on the parts of both China and ASEAN, were perhaps the two issues that most defined ASEAN-China relations in the 1990s. Despite predictions of conflict, however, relations have mostly stabilized and indeed improved in significant ways. Post-Cold War uncertainties also created new incentives on the parts of both China and ASEAN to increase and expand their engagement of one another. In part, the ASEAN states, especially, saw bilateral and regional engagement processes as important fall-backs should there be further U.S. retrenchment. ASEAN states, for example, saw engagement processes as serving important reassurance functions that could ease relations with China 07 China & SEA Pt III/Ch 7 20/1/05, 12:23 PM 171 172 Alice D. BA in the event of weakened U.S. security guarantees. As for China, though at first suspicious of regional processes, it saw expanded engagement as a way to stabilize its periphery and to ensure a peaceful regional environment conducive to growth and development. Economic and trade incentives also supported ASEAN’s expanded engagement of China. The attention paid to the political-security aspects of relations sometimes obscures the fact that by the early 1990s, economic and...