Asian

Regionalism
The Contemporary World
 Introduction: Defining
Regionalism
Regionalism refers to the decentralization of political powers or
competencies from a higher towards a lower political level. More
specifically, it distinguishes between top-down from bottom up regionalism
where top - down regionalism describes the decentralization of
competencies or the establishment of regional institutions by the state
while bottom -up includes all patterns of endeavors toward political
decentralization from within the particular region.
Globalization is the intensification of economic,
political, social, and cultural relations across
borders and a consciousness of that intensification,
with a concomitant diminution in the significance
of territorial boundaries.
 Views of Globalization
in the Asia Pacific and
South Asia

Globalization is an external phenomenon being pushed

into the region by world
powers particularly the United States and Europe.
From this perspective, globalization
can be understood as a process that transforms the Asia
Pacific and South Asia. It is a
force for good bringing economic development,
political progress, and social and cultural
diversity to the region.
The Asia Pacific and South Asia refer together to
the regions of East (or Northeast)
Asia, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and
South Asia. It includes some of the world’s
most economically developed states such as
Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan,
and highly impoverished countries such as
Cambodia, Laos, and Nepal. It also includes
the largest and most populous states on the
globe including China and India and some of
the world’s smallest such as the Maldives and
Bhutan
The Asia and South Pacific has emerged over
the past decade as a new political force in the
world. The economies of Japan, Korea,
Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan have
strategic relevance in today’s global system.
They are the focused of global powers outside
of the region.
 Asia Pacific and
South Asia’s Impact
on Globalization

Asia was the central global force in the early

modern world economy. It was
the site of the most important trade routes and in
some places more advances
in technology that West such as science and
medicine.
Japan embarked on procuring raw materials
like coal and iron at unprecedented
economies of scale allowing them to gain a
competitive edge in the global
manufacturing market
as well as globalized shipping and
procurement patterns which other countries
modeled
China pursues similar pattern of
development at present and is now the
world’s largest
importers of basic raw materials such as
iron and surpassed Japan, the US and
Europe in steel
production. It also surpassed the World
bank in lending to developing countries. It
had an
enormous impact on the availability and
consumption of goods around the world
(135). This simple
scale of China’s development is shaping
and furthering globalization.
India opened -up and emphasized an
export-oriented strategy. Textiles and other
low
wage sectors have been a key part of the
economy with highly successful software
development
exports. It also plays a key role in global
service provisions as trends in outsourcing
and
offshoring increase (136).
India and China have also become a major
source of international migrant labor,
which
is also one of the fundamental
characteristics of the era of globalization.
This includes the
migration of highly skilled labor into the
high- tech industry based in Silicon Valley.
India, China
and the Philippines were three of the top
four recipient states of migrant
remittances.
The trend of the rising regional free
arrangements in the Asia Pacific and South
Asia. This kind of regionalism would mean
as bulwark to globalization or as
compatible and even pushing forward the
process of global economic integration.
Regionalism can promote learning, assuage
domestic audiences to the benefits of free
trade, and form the institutional framework
to
scale up from regional cooperation o global
cooperation (137). Regionalism can act as
springboard
for globalization.
One distinguishing feature of regional
institutions in Asia Pacific and South Asia
is the
adoption of “Open Regionalism” which
aims to develop and maintain cooperation
with outside
actors. This is meant to resolve the tension
between the rise of regional trade
agreements and
the push for global trade as embodied by
World Trade Organization (WTO) (138),
the only global
international organization dealing with the
rules of trade between nations (139).
In culture and globalization in the region,
the source of a wide variety of cultural
phenomena that have spread outward to the
West and the rest of the world is the region.
 The Region-Making in
Southeast Asia and Middle-Class
Formation:
The Third Wave
Regionalization entails complex and dynamic
interactions between and among
governmental and nongovernmental actors which
resulted to hybrid East Asia. The main
engines of hybridization are explained by the
successive waves of regional economic
development that is powered by developmental states
and national and transnational
capitalism that nurtured sizeable middle-classes that
share a lot in common in terms of
professional lives and their lifestyles, in fashion,
leisure, and entertainment, in their
aspirations and dreams.
The product of regional economic development in the
post war era are the middle
classes in east Asia. Regional economic development
took place within the context of
the American informal empire in “Free Asia”, with the
US-led regional security system
and the triangular trade system as its two major pillars.
The first wave of regional economic development took
place in japan from
mid1950’s to the early 1970s and led to the emergence
of a middle-class by the early
1970s. The second wave took place between the 1960s
and 1980s in South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong and
Singapore and led to the formation of middle -class
societies in
these countries by the 1980s.
 Two salient points in the history
of east Asian middle-class
formation.
1. Middle class formation in Southeast Asia was driven by
global and regional
transnational capitalism working in alliance with national
states while middle class in
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were created by
developmental states and national
capitalism.

2. New urban middle classes in East Asia, whether in Japan,

South Korea,
Taiwan, or Southeast Asia, with their middle-class jobs,
education, and income, have in
turn created their own new lifestyles commensurate with
their middle-class income and
status.
 Middle Classes in The
Philippines

New urban middle classes emerged in the post 1986

Philippines. They were
created through growth in retail trade, manufacture, banking,
real estate development,
and an expanding range of specialist services such as
accounting, advertising,
computing, and market research.
Regional Implications of Middle
-Class Formation in East Asia

Complex historical forces shaped new urban middle

classes. They are product of
regional economic development, which has taken place
in waves under the U.S. informal
empire over a half century, first in Japan, then in
South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, and
Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and
Philippines, and now in China. They are
product as well for development states.
The political consequences of the rise of East Asia
middle classes vary. The
cultural and political hegemony of the South Korean
middle classes is embodied by
single generation, while that of the Taiwanese middle
classes manifest itself in the
political assertiveness of an ethnic majority.
Southeast Asian middle classes also
exemplify the diversity and complexity of class
formation. Thai middle classes are
coherent socially, hegemonic culturally, and
ascend politically; their counterparts in
Malaysia and Indonesia are socially divided,
dependent on the state, politically assertive and
vulnerable; and the Philippine middle classes
are socially coherent, less dependent
on the state, culturally ascendant, but politically
vacillating.
 Presented by John Ley Vasquez, Lheorick Atienza, and Nikko Causapin

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