Further development of Asian regionalism: institutional hedging in an uncertain era

ABSTRACT Currently, the confrontation between two global giants, the United States and China, in trade and technology advancement and hegemony in international politics is escalating. The possibility of a Sino-U.S. economic “war,” or the so-called “new Cold War,” not only indicates the escalation of this confrontation but also symptomizes the international order’s transformation as a result of the change in power balance and rise of a challenger against the existing United States–led international liberal order. Most IR specialists focus on the prospects of this confrontation and its uncertain worldwide circumstances and are concerned about its impact on East Asian/Asia Pacific regional circumstances. Among them, prospects regarding regionalism and regional institutions in Asia seem pessimistic. However, Asian regionalism was activated following the decline in United States’ power and rise of China as a global power, and the international liberal order’s retreat became visible toward the end of the 2000s. Furthermore, even under the uncertain situations created by the Sino-U.S. confrontation, regional powers, including China, Japan, and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), are promoting their multilateral approach by proposing and advancing various regional frameworks. This indicates that each regional power is adopting the “institutional hedging” strategy to ensure that their individual interests are satisfied and the regional order is comfortable for themselves. This paper verifies that regionalism and regional institutions have become important as measures of regional power for countries’ institutional hedging strategies to overcome the challenges posed by the beginning of regional uncertainties and that Asian regionalism is more active today than ever before.