1 - ASEM and the Development of an Asian Regional Identity

Summary

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) has been associated with the development of a regional identity in Asia. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the inter-regional characteristic of the ASEM process played a significant role in facilitating the identity construction among East Asian countries involved in ASEM (Lee and Park 2001; Liu and Régnier 2003; Gilson and Yeo 2004; Gilson 2002, 2005; Terada 2006). Until 2008, ASEM's Asian partners were confined to countries from East Asia. The regional relations in East Asia, which involves ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries, with Japan, China, and South Korea, generally known as ASEAN Plus Three (APT), have intensified since the end of the 1990s. Although regional integration has not been an immediate goal of APT, the intensification of the regional relations has encouraged the emergence of a “we” feeling among the APT. The development of regional identity building in Asia is a significant regional and global phenomenon because of its impact on shaping Asian regional affairs and the increasing Asian participation in global politics as well as global economics.

Linking ASEM with the process of constructing an East Asian identity is one of the salient views gleaned from the interview data of this thesis. The data also reveal ASEAN countries’ “achievement” to incorporate the big states in the Northeast Asian countries in constructing the Asian side in ASEM and to transcend the “we-ness” in ASEM to other regional initiatives. What makes this thesis different from previous studies is the richness of the interview data that provides broad range insights into the cognitive processes of ASEM forums. The in-depth interviews with elites from Southeast Asian countries have enabled this research to identify not only the problems and concerns about the development of an Asian identity in the ASEM process, but also the hopes and aspirations for ASEM.