FINAL ESSAY

Belén Hua López Albaladejo (Student NO 2024-81465)

When we are studying the history and dynamics of some regions, it is easier to compare
it with something we are more familiar with or more known. That is the case of East
Asia. The implementation of some liberal precepts, the successful growth of the region
through the decades and the democratisation of their institutions in some of the
countries of the region and the creation of some regional institution and projects like the
ASEAN or the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), have allow us to make
comparisons with the Western. Some concepts like regionalism, pan-Asianism, Welfare
State or States Rights are being used to explain some situations and developments in the
area, comparing their process with the process of regionalisation in Europe or the
democratisation of Western States. Nevertheless, this is far from being an accurate
comparison. There are so many factors of why the developments that have happened in
the region are unsuitable for Asian societies.
Some factors like imperialism had a big impact on how these countries had developed.
The historical memory still having a big presence in the way the countries of East Asia
see each other, conceptualising it as a ‘Geopolitics of Memory’1 . That also affects how
the countries are willing to cooperate between themselves, explaining why most of the
alliances are commercial ones and not focused on other aspects like the security of the
region or common civil regulations. Their perspective of seeing themselves as a unique
region is not very popular, and something which has certain imperialist conceptions2;
for example, Japanese imperialism had a lot of influence in how many of their
neighbours see these kinds of concepts like regionalism or sovereignty and relations
with them, like South Korea and China. It is important to understand that there are still
some post-colonial and historical damages which have not been addressed and therefore
tensions have continued to exist. Although some other regions like Europe had so many
historical struggles to deal with, the differences in their history and context had played
in the Asiatic area an important role in how the environment of cooperation took part.
Some important ties are based on used to be colonial powers from outside the region.
The influence of the Western, especially US, is an important factor when we talk about
regionalism and cooperation between the Asian countries. The occupation of the

1
Álvarez, M. D. P. (2015). Historia de las relaciones políticas entre Corea del Sur y Japón desde la teoría
sistémica de Samuel Kim:¿ Hacia una geopolítica de la memoria?.
2
Duara, P. (2010). Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a region for our times. The Journal of Asian Studies,
69(4), 963–983.

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Western countries in the region had influenced the process of modernization of the
region, but also generated some internal problems. The need to assimilate certain
precepts that were not yet very well digested caused certain disparities in which
anachronistic models coexisted with the more modern ones 3. Some models and values
like neoliberalism have become a guide for countries like South Korea or Japan;
countries that had experienced a big aperture and a growth in their economy.
At the same time, the investment of Europe and North America in the Asian countries
has help to maintain the presence and have some influence in the decisions of the
country4. This limits the countries to act in a more freely way and to have the complete
authority to make some decisions related to their position in the region and the relations
they can make in with their neighbours, which most of the time makes integration
projects in the area difficult or there are fragmenting tendencies in order not to lost the
external support.
This fact also affects due to the US and China’s tensions. The fight for world hegemony
between these two powers is causing some fragmentations between the countries. In
which countries that are allies with the US, like Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, reject
any kind of formal alliance with China fearing US distance or retaliations.
In parallel, new ways of colonialism are emerging, and there exist some many emerging
countries in the region that fall into a kind of subordination relationship due to the
influence that more powerful countries exert on each other. We can notice it with the
Belt and Road Initiative, in which even countries related to the Chinese regime have
expressed nowadays certain insecurity regarding an alliance with China. Indonesia and
Vietnam have shown some reluctance about the BRI project for fear of finding
themselves in a debt trap 5. That shows that also the asymmetrical growth in the region
affects how the countries see some cooperation initiatives. Whilst some countries opt
for balancing in order not to subordinate themselves because maybe their position in the
scenario allows themselves to have some capacity for action, the existence of less
developed countries in the area causes them to fall in dynamics of bandwagoning,
making them dependable and with a very low margin of action; meanwhile appeasing or
hedging could be maybe the most desirable way to approaching with a powerful country

3
Madrigal Muñoz, E. (2015). Globalidad, modernidad y movimientos sociales: China y Asia Oriental
frente al colonialismo europeo (1850-1900). Revista De Lenguas Modernas, (23).
4
Chang Kyung-Sup (2014): Asianization of Asia: Asia's Integrative Ascendance through a European
Aperture, European Societies,
5
Dung Viet Trinh (2022) South East Asian countries’ policies toward a rising China: lessons from
Vietnam’s hedging response to the Belt and Road Initiative, South East Asia Research, 30:2, 237-54,

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and there is really an attempt to make an approach between the countries of the region.
The different ways of approaching in there are due the differences and inequalities
between the countries in the area make also even more complicated to talk about a
common growth or a pan-Asianism; that without a common institution with enough
power to create synergies through mechanisms of mutual developing makes these
differences continue to perpetuate.
The inequalities and social problems inside the countries are also important when we
talk about the region. Although western countries have to face some internal problems
too, in some countries like South Korea, the abrupt economic aperture had created a
society focused in continuous growth that have even the implementation of democracy
execute in a partial way or there still being some important deficiencies6. This has also
provoked that even democratic regimes in the area start to talk about concepts like
Welfare State in recent years, since the demands of citizens have been based more on
rights of a more individualistic nature than on demands for the strengthening as a whole
. With that we can explain why at the end we cannot affirm Asian countries have
followed the same path as Western countries, even Western countries have their
particularities between them. But Asian democracies have been more oriented in
economic development and still being young ones. Not only South Korea but the rest of
Asian democracies like Singapore or Indonesia has going through some struggles like
the clientelism in its institutions and fragmentations in their different actors7.
The existence of different regimes in the region is an elemental thing when we establish
differences between western countries and East Asia. In the Asian region autocratic
regimes and democratic ones are considered equally, whilst Western countries, even
though some of them, like Hungary or Poland, have some democracy deficiencies, are
still democratic countries. That kind of scenario also makes it even harder to talk about
East Asia as a region, in which cooperation is not suitable for some topics like civil
rights, joint legislation capacity or common citizenship.
Even factors such as the large size of the continent as well as the existence of opposing
interests in certain strategic points of the area such as the disputes in the South China
Sea can make us glimpse that the interests in the region are far from being common.
Other factors such as culture, the influence of ways of thought such as Confucianism

6
Kyung-Sup Chang (2012) South Korea's condensed transition from class politics to citizenship politics,
Citizenship Studies, 16:1, 1-12,
7
Aspinall, E. (2013). A NATION IN FRAGMENTS: Patronage and Neoliberalism in Contemporary
Indonesia. Critical Asian Studies, 45(1), 27–54.

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mean that certain more modern notions are not completely assimilated. Even the
confluence of currents of thought and cultures such as Islam in Indonesia, Christianity
in Philippines etc. are factors that make a region complex to be able to talk about it as a
whole.
To sum up, we can say there is not only a main factor of why we cannot tell Asia seems
to have the same precepts as the Westerns in order to experience a growth in the region.
But they are more economic relations based and a self-growth oriented vision of each
country which has allowed the region to reach a continuous progress of their economies
and relations in the area. It could be the immediacy with which these countries had to
open to the outside that has also meant that certain concepts are still quite new and have
not been completely assimilated. These ideas coming from foreign cultures have also
turned out to be a disruptive element in the ancestral cultures of these countries, whose
perceptions have developed in a completely different way; all of this has also been able
to make Western precepts that have been given in accordance with a context and a series
of thoughts, difficult to assimilate for cultures with other types of traditional currents of
thought. It is the mix of different things that prevent us from talking about some
important concepts we have to refer to when we talk about Western like regionalism,
democracy etc. The imperialism had caused fractures between the countries of the same
region that nowadays has made certain mechanisms of joint growth, like the cession of
sovereignty. That also makes some regional institutions to have limited relevance in the
decision-making of the countries. The colonialism and presence of western powers also
had affected how the region has been developing. That has created some disparities in
their societies and institutions, creating some hybrid systems in which sometimes the
culture aspects predominate over more modern Occidental concepts. Also, influence
than Western countries continue doing nowadays is also an impediment for some
countries of the region to have the power to act in a more independent way. The
US-China tensions has put the region into a crossroads, in which many countries still do
not fully trust Chinese power as an ally, but a tramp. The asymmetries between the
countries of the region also makes that without a strong regional institution that could
help to make a convergence between them, some of them end up falling into
neo-colonial relations or, on the contrary, rejection and distrust. The existence of
different regimes is also an important fact of difference. Is much more difficult to get
cohesion in the region with the coexistence of autocratic and hybrid regimes with
democratic ones.

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Despite the fact some Western Areas have experienced similar things, the context and
the existence of some strong regional and international institutions made these countries
develop in a different way.
We can say the growth of the East Asia countries is due more to certain opportunities
that the countries have had more individually than to the creation of synergies or strong
alliances between these. That is why we cannot associate this region with western
precepts. It is important to know the concept of Asia is something given by the outside
of the region and, even though it has been an approach between the countries, the
tendency is to act in a more individual way rather than jointly. The complexity of the
relations in the zone are somehow paradigmatic, it only remains to be seen if the search
for a common economic convergence with the intention of creating a strong and
powerful block in the region can serve to create new organizations or cooperation
mechanism which allow us to talk about the regionalisation of the area.