Global East Asia is one in a series of edited books from the University of California Press on “The Global Square,” intended to examine how regions and individual nation-state actors interact with the rest of the contemporary world.
Although slight references are made to Taiwan and Mongolia, for all intents and purposes Global East Asia is about the “core” of East Asia, Japan, China, and Korea. The Global Square concept means that the book is not about globalization, per se, but more about how these three nation-states interact with the rest of the world. These disparate chapters, although organized by themes of history; culture; science, education, and technology; mobility; and the rise of China as a superpower, demonstrate how difficult it is to build a cohesive framework for globalization when approached from a regional perspective. One of the most important aspects of the book is making it clear that analyzing globalization in East Asia is a daunting task as no region, or states, represent the problems facing globalization more than China, Japan, and Korea. As Pieke and Iwabuchi write in their introduction, these three states have “…a very strong and very deep civilizational self-consciousness fused with hypermodernity, wealth, influence, and power” (p. 1). Yet all three simultaneously have depended on globalization for their advancement and will continue to do so. All three countries also have very strong self-identities, whether they be as a distinct people and culture or, in the case of China, as a nation-state driving toward superpower status. If globalization entails opening to the world, all three are some of the least open cultures, peoples, and states in various ways, but especially in terms of inward migration.
Any book on globalization these days is a fraught undertaking, not just because of the pandemic that occurred after most of this work was written, but because what was once seen by members of my generation, those of us who came of age intellectually in the 1970s, as an inevitable progression from nation-state system to global unity and is no longer perceived as such. One takeaway from Global East Asia is that the postwar international system that promised a forward march toward transnationalism and a global world order based upon mutually agreed upon rules of security, trade, finance, open media, migration, and liberal values was a Western chimera. Not only has the nation-state firmly retained its central place in the international relations system but many citizens prefer it that way, e.g., Trumpism and Brexit. If the center of the international relations system is “pivoting” from the West to East Asia, then globalization as imagined by an idealistic Western graduate student like myself will not come to pass. The question is, then, what will be an East Asian globalization? Many of these chapters make it clear that, if China is successful, it will be a Sinocentric globe.
While purportedly tied together by theme, the individual chapters in some sections have little relation to each other and lack a sense of flow or sequence. However, if one can get over the expectation of overall continuity, most of the chapters have a great deal to offer either on the macro or micro level. There are too many chapters to examine in detail, but I will examine a few based on their relationship to globalization.
Taken as a whole, the best of Global East Asia are Pieke's and Iwabuchi's introductions and summaries, and they alone are worth the price of admission. The introduction to the book succinctly brings together insights into the rise of globalization, East Asia's role in that rise, and the interrelationship between the two. They make the important point that globalization is not “a remedy against conflict between great powers; it was rather a consequence of its (temporary) absence” [in the 1990s] (p. 5). I am not sure I agree with them, but it is worth serious consideration. While it explains the rise of globalization, it also makes clear the reasons why globalization is under siege in East Asia, and in all other regions
Part One, “Global East Asia, Past and Present,” is the least coherent of the five parts, and is only vaguely tied together by the concept of history: many chapters in the other four parts deal with the history of their subjects to about the same degree. It comprises chapters on the socio-political conditions of postwar Okinawa; jazz and nightlife culture in Shanghai; the impact of Maoism outside China; the postwar development of Japanese ODA; and interregional relations and the influence of the United States. I found Hiroshi Kan Sato and Akiko Hiratsuka-Sasaki's “Japanese Development Aid and Global Power,” and Lindsay Black's “Conflict and Cooperation in Global East Asia” to be the two chapters most related to the central theme of the book. Both Japan in the 1980s and contemporary China use(d) ODA as soft power to advance their status and hard power. However, Japanese ODA policy was linked to domestic values and economic policies, while Chinese ODA policy is more directly linked to advancing itself as a world power.
Part Two, “East Asian Global Cultures,” comprises chapters on the ways in which foods are adopted and adapted; a fairly standard look at the export of South Korean popular culture in the United States; and the global political nature of Ai Weiwei's art and his personal migration to Germany as a result. Sidney C. H. Cheung's “Hybridity and Authenticity in Global East Asian Foodways” is a wonderful example of what we might perceive as minor cultural borrowing which reflects a much more important change in the way we can open to, and adapt to other cultures. Cheung, from Hong Kong, takes a personal look at his experiences of Chinese food in Japan and how the cuisines of China and Japan have influenced each other, and the world. Is the average fare found in a Chinese restaurant in Japan somehow lesser because it has been adapted to Japanese tastes? And how does the change in cuisine reflect changes in the society. In my own experience, I still marvel at the Japanese demand for kimchi when 40 years ago it was rarely found outside Korean restaurants. Or, more amusingly, the old insult for a Japanese who acted too much like a foreigner was, “You stink of butter,” but now Japanese line up outside the French butter store in Marunouchi to buy it. We are what we eat and authentic cuisine from other cultures is an integral part of cultural integration.
Part Three, “Education, Science, and Technology,” comprises chapters on global competition in higher education and research in China, Japan, and Korea; education-based migration from South Korea; the development of life science research in East Asia; and the spread and influence of Traditional Chinese Medicine outside China. I will declare a bias toward this chapter as I have spent much of my professional life in Japanese universities and have been actively involved in creating an American college degree program in China. The key chapter in this section is Futao Huang's “China, Japan, and the Rise of Global Competition in Higher Education and Research.” Globalization can only take place if we educate the new generation to its realities, how to manage it, and to become global citizens. Cross-national education programs, whether short-term study abroad or full degree programs, are the best way to get people to understand the other. However, it is also one of the most effective means of soft power. When Japan was dominant in the 1980s it spent its resources in building Japanese studies programs abroad, just as China has built its Confucian Institutes. The one problem I have with this chapter is that it tends to take government pronouncements and statistics at face value.
One important element of this book is to remind us that while we focus on the power of states, whether soft or hard, globalization as transnationalism will succeed or fail by the interaction of people and cultures. As Pieke writes in his introduction to Part Four, “Even more than the flows of goods, finance, information, or data, the mobility of people is at the core of globalization and transnationalism” (p. 159). “East Asian Mobilities and Diversities,” comprises chapters on the history and signification of being Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Korean diaspora in the United States, the Japanese diaspora in the Americas and return migration, Chinese labor migrants in Asia and Africa, the uncertainties of Chinese-Foreign children's citizenship in China, the making of transnational Hmong-Miao solidarity, and the situation of Xinjiang and non-Chinese in China.
Humans may be individuals, but they define themselves by the groups with which they identify, and the groups with whom they do not identify. The question is whether we can bring ourselves to not only identify with groups larger than present ethnic and national groupings; and whether we have the ability to accept fluidity in our own, and in others', identifications. Kwee Hui Kian's “Of Married Daughters and Caged Chickens: The History and Signification of Being ‘Chinese’ in Southeast Asia” gives a poignant insight into the traumas of being ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia during its postwar development, as non-Chinese native populations became empowered and perceived Chinese immigrant populations as a potential fifth column for a growing People's Republic of China. But it also is a story of generational change in the perception of identity of today's descendants of earlier Chinese migration as both Chinese and, in this case, Indonesian. Elena Barabantseva, Caroline Grillot, and Michaela Pelican's “Uncertain Choices of Chinese-Foreign Children's Citizenship in the People's Republic of China” deals directly with the most intimate aspects of personal identity, race, gender, social stereotypes, and state-sanctioned identity by examining three Chinese-foreign case studies; Chinese-Russian, Chinese-Vietnamese, and Chinese-Cameroonian.
Although the book is about the interrelations of the three core East Asian countries, and the United States, fourteen of the twenty-four chapters deal either solely, or in large part, with China. This is fitting given the reality of China's role as the dominant country in East Asia for most of the last two millennia, as well as its current ambition to move from regional power to dominant global superpower. Lindsay Black quotes (p. 67) past foreign minister Yang Jiechi when angered by pushback from ASEAN, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.” Much of the writing about China concentrates on its use of soft power to project itself as the dominant force in the region, and the nation-state that will bring about a new order in the world. China aspires to be a nation-state that does not have to play by the rules written by Western states, especially the United States, in the creation of the postwar international system.
Part Five, “The Rise of China and East Asia,” comprises four chapters directly related to the use of soft power including the interrelation of Chinese business internationalization and the state, China's cyber diplomacy, the expansion of Chinese correspondents around the world, and the Chinese use of public diplomacy and soft powers as a means to advance its global agenda, as well as a chapter on the American policy of economic de-coupling and the potential for a new cold war. Ingrid d'Hooghe and Frank Pieke's “State-Led Globalization, or How Hard is China's Soft Power?” does an excellent job of explaining the types of soft power deployed by China, as well as the purpose and means of its deployment. Finally, Richard McGregor and Hervé Lemabieu's “Decoupling the US Economy: Preparations for a New Cold War?” is an excellent examination of the merits and demerits of decoupling for both states, as well as the probabilities of decoupling leading to a new, and this time truly East-West, Cold War.
In summary, I can highly recommend Global East Asia as a general reader for anyone interested in either East Asian relations or globalization. More specifically, many chapters in this book will make excellent reading assignments for a variety of courses on either East Asia or globalization, depending on the subject matter and the chapter.
