Introduction to this Volume

Abstract

The East Asia region has drawn global attention. China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula and the ASEAN countries have been developing their economies and strengthening their participation in the global economy. Contrary to this smooth process, the region possesses a number of unresolved territorial issues and suffers from a lack of a security complex. The volume presents a series of papers dedicated to the East Asian countries' development. The volume is divided into three sections: dimensions of regionalism in East Asia, China's external and internal development and Japanese domestic affairs. The first part is initiated by Roger Chao of Hong Kong University and presents the perspectives and realities on East Asian regionalism. In this region economic regionalism is highly developed, while other key components, especially the regional political and security framework, are stagnating and even regressing. These questions were raised in the second paper by Anna Walkowiak of Warsaw University, who mainly focuses on the regional insecurity complex in Northeast Asia. The key problem in this region seems to be linked to the nuclear ambitions of Pyongyang as well as the intentions of the two major players in the region, that is China and Japan. Joanna Dobkowska shows the relationship between Australia and Japan as a key issue in balancing China's rising power. This paper argues that Australia and Japan, taking a cooperative approach, are able to successfully reshape the regional security architecture in the Asia-Pacific. Contrary to the hard security issues Marta Kosmala-Kozłowska, from Warsaw University, offers an issue on human rights within the ASEAN countries framework. The paper touches upon the important issue of culture and institutional frameworks for ensuring and securing basic human needs. Pawel Raja, a young scholar from Wroclaw presents the cultural issues regarding institutions in a Muslim country-Malaysia. He mainly introduces factors that forced the government to make institutional changes and improvements. In the second part we present China's internal and external development. China, as some say, will be the superpower of this century. Kao Pei-shan from Chiao Tung University presents the Sino-U.S. relationship via the concept of interdependence. She offers insights on trade relationship as a key factor in bilateral relations. Next, Michal Lubina from the Jagiellonian University touches upon the issue of Burma in China's foreign policy.