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The purpose of this paper is to critically review the current discourses on "global governance" and to suggest an East Asian view of alternative governance mechanism from the perspective of "soft power. " This paper argues that many countries in the East Asian region have been either reluctantly or unknowingly following the global governance building, led by the "Western" countries, and therefore have failed to build a safety net for themselves in the form of a "region" or regional cooperation. Global governance is connected to the realm of soft power as it affects the preferences and behaviors of the actors while regarding the actual use of physical coercive forces as a last resort. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the discourse of global governance to include the discussion of soft power, and the East Asian region may need to develop its safety net by creating its own soft power and regional governance mechanism. Here, speech acts and standard setting are the prerequisites in developing East Asian soft power. Therefore this paper argues that East Asian actors use the concepts like the "East Asian Governance," "East Asian Standard," "East Asian Consensus" more frequently and intensely than before even if those terms still do not have concrete substances and contents to be intersubjectively taken by the actors in the region. As people use and speak of the terms more often and intensely, there will be more concrete efforts by the East Asian actors to substantiate the concepts, and the contents of East Asian governance will gradually evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration into, out of, and within East Asia (comprising Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia) will undoubtedly increase as we continue into the twenty-first century. We need sustained research to provide fresh insights into transnational migrants' changing subjective positions and power as they move in/out of East Asia, constructing complex social locations as they live their lives transnationally. The papers in this special issue focus on three issues that are of pertinence to the transnational migrations and the resulting migrant transnationalisms of those who move for work, education, marriage and retirement, and as refugees, in the context of East Asia: the power structures (including the institutional regulatory frameworks of sending and receiving societies) within which migrants must operate; migrants' multiple and shifting social positions as they move; and the transnational connections and networks they maintain over the course of their migration journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the wake of the global slump, China emerged as a major „winner" of worldwide economic and political rebalancing. The paper tries to evaluate the effects of the ascent of China with special regard to current power relations in East Asia. Although China gains in importance and has spearheaded several of the steps toward regional cooperation, there will be no far-reaching political integration under the hegemonic leadership of Beijing in the foreseeable future. In a world marked by economic turbulence, nationalist backlash and American and Japanese challenges to „Sinocentered" Asian regionalism, disintegration tendencies and rivalries will not easily come to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]