“Chineseness” as Socialization: China and the ASEAN in East Asian Regionalism

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many researchers on regional studies in international relations (hereafter IR) ¹ have turned their attention to a new wave of regionalism (Buzan and Ole, 2003; Katzenstein, 2005). This new wave of regionalism(s) is sweeping around the globe and has become a distinctive perspective for reinterpreting dynamic structures of the international system at the regional level (Mansfield and Helen, 1999; Breslin, Hughes, Phillips and Rosamund, 2002; Soderbaum and Shaw, 2003). It has almost become the conventional wisdom that all major rising powers on the world stage engage in regional exertion in one way or another, at least around their immediate peripheries. But the different patterns in which they interact with regional countries in relation to such regionalism efforts are inadequately-explored within established IR theoretical frameworks. So, existing mainstream theories or perspectives in regional studies are criticized by Johnston as being dominated by “trans-Atlantic” IR traditions (Johnston, 2012). In other words, to date, the conversation on regionalism has been hijacked by Western voices, so discussion of East Asian regionalism “rarely steps outside [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] ASEAN’s lodestone” (Kavalski, 2009: 14).