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China's Rise, Developmental Regionalism and East Asian Community Building: Cooperation Amid Disputes in the South China Sea

  • Original Article
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East Asian Community Review

Abstract

Why the rapid rise of China coincides with peace and cooperation in East Asia? The paper argues for a distinctive form of regionalism practiced in East Asia, which can be called developmental regionalism. It means that regional processes are development-oriented and development-focused, featuring pragmatism, flexibility and developmental security. In development-oriented regionalization, practices and institutions coevolve for progress. Practices of developmental regionalism nurture the habit of cooperation and promote community building. As the growth engine in the region, China facilitates developmental regionalism. The paper takes the South China Sea disputes in the past few years as a case to illustrate how conflicts were averted and cooperation maintained and deepened between China and ASEAN and in East Asia even in a most sensitive area of territorial disputes and in the context of the dramatic change in regional power structure with China’s rapid rise. In conclusion, the paper also briefly discusses conditions and implications of developmental regionalism in world politics.

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Notes

  1. “East Asia” discussed in this paper refers to 10 ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and ROK (ASEAN Plus Three).

  2. Calculated by the author with data from the World Bank and ASEAN Secretariat, https://data.worldbank.org/country/china, http://www.aseanstats.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ASEAN-Statistical-Leaflet-2017_Final.pdf, accessed 23/01/2018.

  3. Quoted from Mahbubani (2010, 37).

  4. For discussions of diplomatic working routine, see Neumann (2007).

  5. For a brief review of the history of the arrangements and exercise of sovereign rights over Nansha Islands from the colonial years to the end of World War II, see Fu and Wu (2016).

  6. Such as the Convention on the Continental Shelf and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

  7. Term adopted from China’s official document, see Chinese Foreign Ministry (2016b).

  8. Quoted from Firestein (2016).

  9. China Foreign Affairs University is China’s focal point for NEAT, NACT and NTCT. The author witnessed the establishment and growth of the three regional track 2 groupings and participated in almost all the major activities.

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  1. China Foreign Affairs University, Xicheng District, Beijing, China

    Ling Wei

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Wei, L. China's Rise, Developmental Regionalism and East Asian Community Building: Cooperation Amid Disputes in the South China Sea. East Asian Community Rev 1, 19–32 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s42215-018-0002-8

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