Abstract
‘[T]his book looks at how the Asia-Pacific region is shaping the world’ (p. 9). While this bold statement may seem somewhat grandiose – considering that it is a region that includes the world’s three largest economies, about half of the global population and eight of the 10 largest military forces (p. 3) – the ability of the Asia-Pacific region to lead is less fanciful. The book aims to assess the interaction between Asia-Pacific regionalism and globalisation. It seeks to examine the key developments in regional governance, integration and international relations within and across the Asia-Pacific (including South America).
The book is divided into five parts with the introductory chapter comprising Part I. Part II focuses on economic aspects of economic integration in the region. This comprises chapters on Japanese foreign direct investment in Mexico (Melba Falck Reyes), economic reform in Mexico and South Korea (José Luis León-Manriquez), and the development of regionalism through the North American Free Trade Agreement (Arturo Santa-Cruz). Part III looks at issues of regional and global multilateralism relating to the Asia-Pacific. This includes chapters on bilateral versus multilateral (John Ravenhill) and bottom-up versus top-down (Yao Chaocheng) approaches to regionalism and chapters on the impact of the G20 and the Global Financial Crisis on Asia-Pacific regionalism (Hugo Dobson; Hong Yongsheng and Fang Qing; and Jörn Dosch). The final chapter examines North-east Asian geopolitics, comparing Japanese and South Korean strategies for engaging China (Cheol Hee Park).
The next part of the book includes chapters on China’s geopolitical and industrial engagement with the world, examining how China and the other East Asian states are influencing the transformation of international development norms and practices. Jeffrey Henderson considers China’s role in globalisation. He argues that a ‘Global Asian Era’ may be emerging, with China and other Asian states shaping a new form of globalisation based on the Chinese form of capitalism. Minglu Chen and David S.G. Goodman examine how China is exporting its economic model of authoritarian governance and economic transformation through its international development assistance strategies. Extending this argument, James Reilly argues that China, Japan and South Korea are promoting a model of international development assistance that is reflective of their own development experiences and is challenging the Western-dominated norms of international aid. China’s high-tech innovation strategies are examined in the chapter by Richard P. Appelbaum and Rachel Parker. They argue that China is demonstrating regional leadership in high-tech innovation policy by initiating a series of ‘leapfrog’ development programmes to promote local Chinese innovation.
Part V looks at the social perspectives of the Asia-Pacific and the global system. This includes a chapter by Simen Anderson Øyen on the Chinese use of soft power to influence regional and global policies. In particular, Øyen argues that the Chinese, through the 2010 Shanghai World Exposition (EXPO), sought to present the Chinese economic model as an alternative to the Western model. Finally, Christopher M. Dent examines how East Asian regionalism will influence the debate over how the future international system will be structured. He argues (pp. 274–275) that the East Asian model of regionalism is closely interlinked with the development of the global economic (trade, investment and finance), sociocultural (middle-class consumerism and popular culture) and socio-political (non-governmental organisation network formation) phenomena.
While the editors offer a very good introduction, especially in summarising the theoretical development of regionalism, the individual chapters do not relate to each other or to the broader aims claimed by the editors. All the chapters are worthy pieces of academic research and many offer key insights into their particular topics. However, there is little that unites them apart from a broad categorisation as being on an aspect of Asia-Pacific economic regionalism. A second chapter to the introduction expanding on the theory of regionalism may have helped to develop this. The book is a result of a two grants from the World University Network (WUN) and the establishment of the WUN Asia-Pacific International Relations Network. The chapters were first presented at a resulting conference in Leeds in the UK and, as such, the coherence of the book suffers as it reads more as conference proceedings than a single thematic text. The book’s value is more as a collection of individual papers rather than as a potential textbook for a course on Asia-Pacific regionalism.
What is missing from the book is any coherent definition of what the Asia-Pacific region is. While the editors note that they include Latin America in their conception of the Asia-Pacific, there is no analysis of the nature of the South American states’ level of engagement with the wider Asia-Pacific. They do include some Latin American examples in individual chapters, but here the focus is on comparison with East Asian examples rather than analysis of Latin America’s relations with the Asia-Pacific. Finally, the focus of some of the chapters is on East Asia rather than the broader Asia-Pacific, with no explanation as to what the boundaries of each are, or why this may or may not be important when determining whether the ‘Asia-Pacific’, ‘Asia’, ‘East Asia’ or even China will shape the world.