Years of Poems and Spirits

Book Review: Remapping East Asia, by Pempel, et al.

In “Remapping East Asia”, T. J. Pempel proposed a new framework to appraise the strength of Asian “regionalism”. Other authors contributed to this theme with researches in their own fields. In summary, Pempel’s framework can be described as having “two-directions” and “three-factors”. Two-directions reflects how regionalism in Asia is coming to being: from top-down, by means of governmental and political measures, and from bottom-up, through organic cooperation among nongovernmental communities (academic, business, civil, etc.) and organizations (NGOs). The three factors: function, identity and geopolitical weight, are considered driving forces behind regionalization.

There are many interesting ideas and valuable statistics in the book. The last section of Etel Solingen’s essay (“Comparative Dimensions of East Asia Institutions”, p49-53), for example, is a badly needed comparative study of regional and global institutions. I also read McNicoll’s “Demographic Future” with great interest. The issues in the article: population aging, immigration, urbanization and gentrification are all of seismic proportions and ramifications. Furthermore, the environmental concerns discussed in Laura Campbell’s essay could be expanded into a separate topic of its own. I came upon the forest fire issue this past summer when I saw pictures of Singapore in the haze. I’ve also heard about water disputes and land reclamation contentions between Singapore and Malaysia. But I am not sure whether they are environmental or political issues?

Nevertheless, the book leaves me with the impression of a cheerleading squad on a perennial losing team. Pempel started the book with a long apologist description of how diverse the region is, or why we should not compare East Asia to Europe. Solingen even went so far as to trace ASEAN’s “talkshops” back to the “plethora of consultations and meetings … held” in Javanese village society (p39). Jared Diamond, in his popular “Guns, Germs and Steel”, identified 4 different organization types, each associated with a particular development stage: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom and State. Solingen’s characterization would put ASEAN squarely into “Chiefdom” category.

The inference may not stand, but it does allude to a larger point that the sorry state of Asian regionalism reflects the immaturity of the member nations themselves. One of the “directions” in Pempel’s framework is “bottom-up”. However, most East Asian countries are either not democratic or not liberal. In such a case, there may no be much a nongovernmental coalition to speak of. If one looks around the civil organizations landscape, the region is full of dysfunctional groups like China’s “Labor Union” or “Patriotic Church”, or some Japanese or Singaporean NGOs that are perpetually in the political wilderness. Even if we include commercial ties in the non-governmental fusion, there is still no guarantee, in the short run at least, that regionalization will travel far along the bottom-up direction. There are many reasons why I say so. First, not all nations have strong and influential business community. Second, whereas Europe and America have entered “post-national” age, Asian countries are still struggling to grow out of their nationalistic instincts. All the above is most clearly demonstrated in the recent anti-Japan unrests in China. Although Chinese economy and commerce are so closely linked to Japan, the entire business community was dead silent during the rampage. Is there really an “indigenous” business community in China? Is it influential enough to institutionally impact policy making? Or is it strong enough to face down nationalistic fervor? The answers to those questions are probably not what the regionalists like to hear.

Compared to the “Beyond Bilateralism” book, this one leaves a lot to be desired. For example, although Pempel and Evans both agreed that there is a difference between “regionalism” and “regionalization”, their definitions of each seemed to be miles apart (Pempel, p19 versus Evans p196). The “domestic ruling coalitions” theory by Solingen (p40) was cryptic, convoluted, and not all that convincing. Besides, I thought Dennis Tachiki’s “Japanese Production Networks” was promoting just the wrong type of regional integration. In comparison, Walter Hatch’s article in the “Beyond Bilateralism” was on the same subject but came up with a pointedly different conclusion. Last but not least, Tsunekawa’s “Drug Control” (p116) section had some serious holes in it. For example, in discussing the methamphetamine problem in Japan, he focused on the smuggled quantity, but failed to mention how much methamphetamine was produced domestically. If an issue is not multilateral in nature but we frame it as such, we may be picking the wrong measure to gauge the effectiveness of regional cooperation.