Regional Community Building in East Asia

This volume is a collection of papers written by nationals or former nationals of the respective country in ASEAN and Northeast Asia. Unlike other works written by scholars outside ASEAN or East Asia, it offers an insider's point of view of the 10 ASEAN states, China, Japan and South Korea on regional community building. While a nationalist perspective may permeate throughout the study, it is also clear that pursuing regional cooperation is considered to be important by the respective author, denoting the non-exclusivity between nationalism and regionalism and the mutual reinforcement of the two. Each author of this volume has made a deliberate effort to introduce and survey the developmental challenges and experiences of his or her country from a historical perspective. All authors, without exception, have emphasized the importance and advantages in staying with ASEAN or linking up with ASEAN by China, Japan and South Korea in political-security, economic and socio-cultural terms. Their papers also reveal that the self-help and self-strengthening mechanism emphasized by the ASEAN Plus Three process will take time to bear fruits. In the meantime, it seems that bilateral interactions and cooperation between ASEAN and Northeast Asian states remain to be more dominant as shown in this study. One can argue that bilateral interactions are the building block of multilateralism interactions. To be sure, there is a deliberate effort in this study to highlight "unity in diversity" in East Asia in general and ASEAN in particular.

Lee Lai To is Founding President and Advisor of Political Science Association (Singapore), and former Head of Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore Zarina Othman is Associate Professor and Head of the Program of Strategic Studies and International Relations, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM/ National University of Malaysia), Bangi, Malaysia.

Introduction - Brunei Darussalam: Participation in ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three - Cambodia: From isolation to involvement in regional community building - Indonesia: Maintaining a leading role in the making of the ASEAN and APT community - Laos: Economic and social development towards the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) - Malaysia and the development of Asian regionalism - The Republic of Union of Myanmar and the ASEAN and APT processes - The Philippines: Everything in place - Singapore: The dynamics of city state development and relations with ASEAN and APT - Thailand: Political, economic, and social development towards a closer community - Viet Nam in ASEAN Plus Three: Cooperation for a better future - China: An emerging power in the making of the APT community - Japan: Living in and with Asia - Major Perspectives of South Korea and ASEAN Cooperation