ABSTRACT
The new multilateral regional institutions explored in the previous chapters may or may not presage the emergence of a new diplomatic order in Asia centered on China, but they have certainly redirected China’s attention from the amorphous “third world” and its preoccupation with relations with the USA and other world powers to its home region of Asia and the Western Pacific. Given China’s previous relative diplomatic isolation and its inexperience in institutionalized cooperation, these institutions, based not on common political ideologies but on a shared sense of economic interest and collective security among national elites, and an embryonic complex balance of power involving China and several other major regional states, have provided mechanisms for China and its neighbors to work together and mitigate incipient conflicts. Positive policy outcomes for China from the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 10 + 1/10 + 3 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in particular have strengthened the voice of integrationists or institutionalists within the country, leading to calls for further active Chinese participation in regional multilateral initiatives. 1
The ultimate purpose of institutionalization is to give prolonged expression to an organization’s shared norms and interests, and also at the same time, structure the organization’s shared norms and interests, by regularizing mid-to high-level contacts, maintaining and expanding areas of cooperation, providing channels for airing and addressing differences, and presenting a united front of sorts toward non-members. Institution-building was a key feature of European integration, from the experience of which the theories and measures of institution-building, as pursued in this book, were derived. The European Union (EU) developed a multinational entity in charge of defending economic integration within a democratic framework, a mechanism for compensating the losers, and a common jurisdiction to resolve outstanding issues. 2 Its federal structure has a system of laws that are uniformly applied throughout the EU and subjected to interpretation by a European Court of Justice, a directly elected European Parliament to make those laws and approve the EU budget, and an executive European Commission with the authority to conduct foreign affairs and external trade negotiations on the
organization’s behalf. Due to cultural differences and political concerns, the initiatives to achieve integrative regional processes in Asia may never be as legalistic in approach, bureaucratic in structure, intrusive in intent, or cohesive in outcome as those of Europe. Yet, since the mid-1990s, not only has the political will to undertake such initiatives occurred among regional governments, but also a lot of the push to stabilize and coordinate economic and security policies seems to have come from China, and despite its ever-present sovereignty concerns, so has much of the push for the institutionalization of these regional processes.
