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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Précis: This paper examines the dominant forces at play in East Asia in an effort to chart regional dynamics within a global non-Eurocentric framework in the course of three epochs. In the first era, spanning the 16th to the early 19th century a China-centered tributary trade order provided a geopolitical framework within which private trade could also flourish. At its height in the 18th century, as East Asia linked to a wider regional and global economy, core areas achieved high levels of peace, prosperity and stability. The second period is notable for dislocation, war and radical transformation spanning the years 1840-1970. In this era profound transformations were the product of system disintegration, colonial rule, world wars, and anti-colonial wars and revolutions. With the collapse of the regional order, bilateral relations, colonial and postcolonial, predominated. Since the 1970s there have been signs of the emergence of a third epoch notable for progress toward the formation of a new East Asian regional order resting on foundations of dynamic economic growth. From the perspective of East Asian integration, the US-China opening of 1970 marked both the end of a century of war and polarization and the emergence of economic complementarity and geopolitical restructuring that have transformed both East Asia and the world economy. In assessing the resurgence of East Asia and the emerging character of East Asian regionalism, emphasis is placed on relations among China, Japan and Korea as ascending regional-global powers and the position of the United States as a powerful but declining superpower. The analysis considers the interplay of geopolitics and political economy in structuring hierarchies of wealth, power and position both within Asia and in the world order or disorder. Is the emergence East Asian regional order a basis for regional independence or a new framework for US penetration? What insights can the past offer toward the emergence of a viable regional order in East Asia, or, at a minimum, pitfalls to skirt?
* I am indebted to Mark Beeson, Peter Katzenstein, two anonymous reviewers, and especially Uradyn Bulag for criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper.
[1] The quintessential works in this literature are David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) (2nd edition, 2003); W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1962).
[2] China was arguably the geopolitical center of East Asia in the 18th century, but it is important to note that at that time, as during the Mongol dynasty earlier, China was ruled by a steppe people, the Manchus, thereby lending a distinctive character to the Qing empire and its dealings with peoples on its borders, notably the Mongols, Tibetans and Uyghurs of Central Asia but also the peoples of Southeast Asia as well.
[3] For an overview of work by the postwar generation of Japanese scholars and translations of major articles, see Linda Grove and Christian Daniel, eds. State and Society in China: Japanese Perspectives on Ming-Qing Social and Economic History (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1984). This literature, together with a Eurocentric modernization literature, provided the prelude to the revisionist thrust by Takeshi Hamashita and others whose work is examined here.
[4] Takeshi Hamashita, edited by Mark Selden and Linda Grove, China, East Asia and the Global Economy: Regional and historical perspectives (London: Routledge, 2008); Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden, eds., The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives, London: Routledge, 2003; R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Gary Hamilton, Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies, London: Routledge, 2006; Hidetaka Yoshimatsu, The Political Economy of Regionalism in East Asia. Integrative Explanations for Dynamics and Challenges, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; Mark Beeson, Regionalism and Globalization in East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure; Commerce and Culture in Ming China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985; Nola Cooke and Li Tana, eds., Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750-1880, Lanham MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004; Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 (2 vols), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988 and 1993. The issues have been sharply debated by historians and economists in symposia in The Journal of Asian Studies, American Historical Review, and Modern China among others. They have also been examined by a range of Japanese scholars. See especially Sugihara Kaoru's edited collection on the links between Japanese development, intra-Asian trade, and the Asian economies, Japan, China and the Growth of the Asian International Economy, 1850-1949, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. For an important recent Chinese interpretation, see Wang Hui, The Politics of Imagining Asia: Empires, Nations, Regional and Global Orders, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8,1, 2007, pp. 1-34.
[5] An important issue that we do not address here is the fact that the Qing empire that carried China to a peak of peace and relative prosperity in the 18th century was the product of Manchu leadership, thus raising important questions about the multiethnic character of the Chinese state and nation, and its relations with Central Asia and the steppe regions generally, as well as with East and Southeast Asia.
[6] Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 vol.2, p. 33.
[7] Chapter 4: “Silver in Regional Economies and the World Economy: East Asia in the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” Translation by J.P. McDermott. China, East Asia and the Global Economy. Cf. Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT, especially pp. 131-64; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, espec. pp. 159-62, 267-74.
[8] See for example Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001 2nd.ed); Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge, 2006.
[9] China achieved the peak of territorial expansion during the 18th century, extending the reach of empire north and west into Inner Asia including incorporation of Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang, and China's informal reach extended into Southeast Asia as well. Most of China south of the Great Wall, and particularly coastal China, by contrast, enjoyed protracted peace.
[10] Alain Gresh, “From Thermopylae to the Twin Towers: The West's Selective Reading of History,” Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2009.
[11] Kaoru Sugihara, “The East Asian path of economic development: a long-term perspective” and Kenneth Pomeranz, “Women's work, family, and economic development in Europe and East Asia: long-term trajectories and contemporary comparisons,” in Arrighi, Hamashita and Selden, eds., The Resurgence of East Asia, pp. 78-172. See also Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London: Verso, 2007; Mark Elvin, “The Historian as Haruspex,” New Left Review 52, July/August 2008, pp. 83-109; Akira Hayami, “A Great Transformation: Social and Economic Change in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Japan,” Bonner Zeischrift für Japanologie, 8, 1986, pp. 3-13.
[12] Anne Booth,“ Did It Really Help to be a Japanese Colony? East Asian Economic Performance in Historical Perspective,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
[13] Angus Maddison, Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, Paris: OECD Development Centre, 2003, cited in Booth, Table 3.
[14] Samuel Ho, “Colonialism and Development: Korea, Taiwan, and Kwantung” in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, Eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p.382.
[15] Booth, “Did It Really Help to be a Japanese Colony,” Table 11. Booth shows that the pattern of metropolitan domination of the trade of the colonies was not universal. While the model well fit the Philippines (United States), in the late 1930s, trade dependence on the metropolis was less than twenty percent in the case Malaya (Britain) and Indonesia (Holland).
[16] Hui-yu Caroline Ts'ai, Taiwan in Japan's Empire Building. An institutional approach to colonial engineering, London, Routledge, 2009.
[17] Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History. Colonialism, regionalism and borders, London, Routledge, 2008).
[18] Mark Selden, “Japanese and American War Atrocities, Historical Memory and Reconciliation: World War II to Today,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
[19] Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History, New York: The New Press, 2009.
[20] Priya Satia, “The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia,” American Historical Review Vol 111, No. 1, 2006, pp. 16-51. The author finds it superfluous to remind readers that the same applies to the American war in Iraq eight decades later.
[21] John W. Dower, War Without Mercy. Race and Power in the Pacific War, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
[22] In purchasing power parity terms, in 2007, China ranked 1st, Japan 2nd, South Korea 3rd and Taiwan 7th. Wikipedia Figures for nominal GDP in 2007 in Wikipedia For per capita GDP (PPP) figures see here. For per capita GDP (nominal) figures see here.
[23] Yu Zhou, The Inside Story of China's High-Tech Industry. Making Silicon Valley in Beijing, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
[24] Yu-huay Sun and Eugene Tang, Taiwan, China Start Direct Links as Relations Improve, Bloomberg December 15, 2008.
[25] To be sure, progress toward rapprochement has slowed under South Korean Pres. Lee Myung-bak.
[26] US Treasury Department.
[27] Mark Landler, “Dollar Shift: Chinese Pockets Filled as Americans' Emptied,” The New York Times, December 25, 2008; R. Taggart Murphy, Asia and the Meltdown of American Finance; Kosuke Takahashi and R. Taggart Murphy, The US and the Temptation of Dollar Seignorage; James Fallows, “Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2008.
[28] The shift to Central Asia and the Middle East certainly seems correct pertaining to American wars, but other military conflicts of course continued in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.
[29] This is not to suggest that rapid economic growth can only occur in a peaceful milieu. Japan's post-WWII recovery and economic growth was in part a product of an industrialization fostered by the US as a means to support the Korean and Vietnam wars. Japan's gain was bought at the price of devastation of Korea and Indochina.
[30] For recent discussion of the Kondratieff moment see Immanuel Wallerstein interviewed by Jae-Jung Suh, Capitalism's Demise? and, especially Robert Brenner interviewed by Jeong Seong-jin, Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis: the US, East Asia, and the World
[31] Douglas H. Brooks and Changchun Hua, “Asian Trade and Global Linkages,” ADB Institute Working Paper No. 122, December, 2008, “Intra-regional Trade of Major Regions (1988-2007), Fig. 6, p. 10.
[32] Other instances that merit comparative analysis are the Geneva Conference on Indochina of 1955 and the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung in the same year, proclaiming the importance of newly emerging nations in a post-colonial world.
[33] See, for example, Suisheng Zhao, “China's Global Search for Energy Security: cooperation and competition in the Asia-Pacific,” Journal of Contemporary China, issue 55, 2008, pp. 207-27; Michael Richardson, A Southward Thrust for China's Energy Diplomacy in the South China Sea and David Rosenberg, Managing the Resources of the China Seas: China's Bilateral Fisheries Agreements with Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, Japan Focus
[34] Client State: Japan in America's Embrace, London: Routledge, 2007.
[35] The combination of Japan's military power and the aspirations of neonationalist politicians suggests other possible outcomes. The MSDF presence in the Indian Ocean since 2003 tasked with refueling US and allied ships in the Afghan War, now showing signs of becoming a permanent presence, means that Japan's navy has taken up positions critical to guaranteeing its oil supplies from the Middle East. Similarly, plans are under review for an active military role in response to Somali hijacking of Japanese ships. See Michael Penn, Political Winds Drive Japan to the Gate of Tears off Somalia. Japan Focus.
[36] Mark Beeson, East Asian Regionalism and the Asia-Pacific: After American Hegemony, Japan Focus.
[37] Xetrade, “Japan, South Korea, China: trilateral ties, tensions; Brad Setser, This Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea and China Exports Tank, Japan Focus.
[38] David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security 29.3 (2004), pp. 64-99.
[39] Peter J. Katzenstein, “Japan in the American Imperium: Rethinking Security,”; Richard Tanter, The Maritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean: Afghanistan, NATO and Japan's Political Impasse; Mel Gurtov, Reconciling Japan and China; Gavan McCormack, “Conservatism” and “Nationalism”: The Japan Puzzle.
[40] Beeson, East Asian Regionalism and the Asia-Pacific: After American Hegemony.
[41] Brad Setser documents the sharp downturn of Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese exports in December 2008. This Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea and China Exports Tank
In that same month, Japan's GDP fell 9.6% year on year and in January the bankruptcy rate rose by 16% tp 1.360, the highest level in six years. Mure Dickie, “Japanese economy faces big squeeze,” Financial Times, February 9, 2009.
[42] Ching Kwan Lee and Mark Selden, “Inequality and Its Enemies in Revolutionary and Reform China,” Economic and Political Weekly, January 13, 2009, pp. 27-36.
[43] On the environmental obstacles to China's continued rise see Paul Harris, Confronting Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia: Eco-politics, Foreign Policy, and Sustainable Development (UN University Press, 2005).
[44] John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 402. This is Mearsheimer's assumption about a China which succeeds in extending its developmental drive to become a wealthy nation. See Mark Beeson's astute discussion of hegemony in postwar East Asia, “Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power,” Review of International Studies (2009), 35, pp. 95–112.
[45] Uradyn Bulag drew attention to the potentially expansive global roles of both China and Japan.
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