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This paper examines economic integration in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). Even though market forces, the Sino-Japanese rivalry, and functional cooperation may help drive regionalism forward, the foundation of any significant integration in the East Asian trading system will be the ASEAN+1 FTAs with China, Japan, and South Korea. It is therefore important to examine the way in which these agreements structure cooperation. This study examines some of the major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (AJCEPA) and the ways in which these choices might help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. If AJCEPA is to be anything more than an umbrella for Japan's bilateral FTAs with ASEAN members, it must achieve greater uniformity in coverage of issues and, especially, rules of origin. The comparison of Japan's bilateral FTAs that closes the paper suggests the magnitude of this challenge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old debate of whether regional trade agreements are a stepping stone or a stumbling block for global trade liberalisation has become particularly pertinent today with East Asia's largest economies joining the rush to preferential trade. China is currently studying, negotiating or implementing FTAs with over 20 countries or regions. This notable development in China's economic diplomacy has caused other countries, especially those in the Asia Pacific, to embark on preferential trade agreements as well, causing concern from the WTO over the proliferation of discriminatory FTAs. This paper analyzes China's bilateral free trade agreements (FTA) and discusses their implications for the WTO. The focus will be on Chinese perspectives on the relationship between FTAs and the WTO, Beijing's motivations behind its activism in FTAs, China's approach to FTA negotiations, and the domestic roots of China's FTA policies. The implications of China's FTAs for the WTO include whether China has abandoned multilateralism for bilateralism for its international trade cooperation, whether Beijing hopes to facilitate trade liberalization under the WTO through the FTAs, and whether Beijing has tried to keep its FTAs compliant with WTO rules. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International institutions increasingly affect each other’s development, maintenance and ef-fectiveness. Research so far has merely focused on the issue of effectiveness and broader con-sequences. The paper argues firstly that theoretical progress could be promoted by integrating variables explaining the formation and maintenance of international institutions into a dynamic and complex model of institutional interplay. Secondly, research ought to be extended to institutions governing issue areas like trade, finance, and standards as well as their respective interactions. Thirdly, East Asia is a highly interesting region regarding regime interaction, since regional cooperation is slowly but steadily evolving in different issue areas as a reaction to institutional operations on the global level of governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the most salient aspects of the recent shift towards financialisation and neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s have been the restructuring of global production towards China, and the growing threat to workers’ livelihoods posed by increased capital mobility. Both of these trends can be seen as capital’s response to the crisis of profitability that has arisen from the unsustainable global social accord between workers and capital that was inherent in post-War US hegemony. Transnational manufacturing capital sought ever cheaper sites of cheaper and non-unionised labour, whilst there was at the same time a tendency for capital to withdraw from productive investment altogether and enter the financial market. This paper will seek to explore the implications of these developments for the working classes of East Asia as a region, and will take examine the present transformations from the perspective of Polanyi’s depiction of social responses to earlier periods of financialisation. The emergence of China as the ‘workshop of the world’ has had profound effects on working classes in the rest of East Asia, and have changed the parameters within which political challenges can be mobilized. Similarly, the viability of the recent restructuring of the East Asian regional political economy is highly contingent upon how working class movements develop in China, and whether China can continue to act as a “spatial fix”. Through an examination of the empirical evidence on what kind of strategies are being adopted by labour movements within the East Asian countries, the paper will attempt to adopt an explicitly regional view of the transformations of regional capitalism which overcomes the limitations of national-level analyses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across a range of issues, from views of a rising China, Japan's role in East Asia, and the status of Taiwan, to the causes and consequences of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, East Asian states tend to view international relations differently than do Westerners, particularly, Americans. In this paper, I argue that without explaining the intentions and ideas of East Asian states, one cannot properly explain why the pattern of East Asian relations. Power is an important component, of course -- but the ideas that inform East Asian beliefs about international relations are more powerful explanatory factors. This perspective has implications for how we use social science to explain East Asia, and in particular, for our theories of international relations. This paper is not an argument for Asian exceptionalism; rather, it points to the importance for sound social science and the proper use of measurement and falsification in theory-building. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, trade diplomacy in East Asia has undergone tremendous change. Not only did China finally gained membership into the WTO, but very soon afterwards opened talks about further regional integration with ASEAN nations. Indeed, one of the most remarkable trends in East Asian trade diplomacy is the unprecedented move by some of the largest regional powers ?most notably Japan and China- to experiment with minilateral or bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). This paper seeks to explain the birth of a Japanese FTA strategy by addressing three important questions. First, why is East Asia now willing to experiment with economic bilateralism given that in the past, most Asian countries rejected formal integration schemes? Second, what are the causes (domestic and international) behind Japan’s recent endorsement of preferential trading? And third, based on Japanese free trade negotiations with Singapore and Mexico, what kind of regional integration is Japan seeking with its new trade diplomacy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's accession to the WTO (Dec.2001) and the speeding up of FTA negotiations in East Asia has seems to have changed the ways by which East Asian countries settle trade/investment disputes between them. In trade area, trade remedy measures authorized under the WTO, anti-dumping and safeguards in particular, have become a standard means of dealing with adjustment issues brought by enhanced trade liberalization, which used to be dealt with through voluntary export restraint (VER). In addition, countries in East Asia are seriously thinking of settling their trade disputes, including those relating to trade remedy measures - e.g., seaweeds safeguards (Japan vs. Korea, China), semiconductor countervailing duty (Japan vs. Korea) - through the dispute settlement procedure of the WTO. In investment area, ever increasing free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties(BITs) in the region provide for the settlement of investor-to-state disputes through arbitration, either by ICSID, or by UNCITRAL, or ICC. Consequently, as a formal policy, East Asian countries seems to have 'legalized' the settlement of trade/investment disputes. However, we must scrutinize the 'substance' of this policy change through empirical survey and hearings from government authorities and private sector. This paper will try to evaluate the extent of legal governance in East Asia in trade/investment dispute settlement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The desire for regional integration in East Asia has seen increased intra-regional trade, on-going negotiations regarding the expansion of free trade, as well as a growing consensus among ASEAN+3 nations that increased monetary and financial cooperation ( ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asia has experienced various institution building initiatives ranging from the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) boom to regional currency initiatives since the late 1990s, all of which are rapidly redefining the regional institutional map. What is puzzlin ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks of bilateral trade arrangements are steadily growing in numbers and are gradually evolving into systems of regional governance in East Asia. However, these micro-processes or interactions form non-linear and dissipative dynamical macro-structures ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are states in East Asia moving away from the multilateral trading system, in favor of regionalism and bilateralism? To what extent do prevailing patterns of trade confirm such a trend, and what are their implications? Finally, do East Asia's trade patter ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the implications of expanding economic regionalism in East Asia for security and geopolitics? Why has China?s continued rise not led to a security dilemma with the rest of East Asia? Surely, given the anticipatory nature of the pessimistic arguments -- that states prepare for future contingencies today ? China?s growth should already have prompted a reaction from East Asian states. Although realpolitik pessimists see China?s rise as inherently destabilizing, in the realm of economics states continue to attempt to gain access to the Chinese market as either producer or consumer. I argue that China?s expected emergence as the most powerful state in Asia has been accompanied with more stability than pessimists believed in part because of the continued economic integration in the region. Although much of the literature emphasizes that a rising power poses potential costs, just as importantly a rising power also offers potential benefits to secondary states. While a rising power may demand concessions or territory from the secondary state, it may also offer benefits from a growing economy and lower defense spending if relations between the two are warm. Thus, a secondary state?s decision will depend in part on the tradeoff between the costs and benefits the rising power potentially provides. Most Asian states see China?s threat as relatively low, but also see the benefits of having warm relations with it as relatively high. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]