ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a framework for examining the dynamics of the East Asian political economy and the new regional environments over the past three decades. It puts forth two main propositions. First, the predominant nation-state framework in analyzing the political economy of the East Asian region has become inadequate to interpret the profound transformations resultant from heightened pace of cross-border movements of people, practices, ideas, and capital. I proposed a geo-cultural concept of ‘Transnational Asia’ as an alternative to fill the gap neglected by the mainstream nation-state-oriented literature. Second, by going beyond the conventional state–society dichotomy and the rigid theoretical divide between statism and institutionalism, this chapter argues that transnational networks and regional governance serve as bridges to these divides and as useful analytical tools in deciphering the new dynamics of the East Asian political economy. The first section examines the cultural, historical, and institutional foundations in the making of Transnational Asia, within which China has occupied an increasingly important, albeit not unchallenged, position. The second part looks at the changing approaches to the East Asian political economy and calls for bringing network and governance into a center of analysis. The third section employs empirical examples of changing patterns of interactions between the state and networks in China and Singapore to underscore the growing power of transnational governance.
