China and East Asian Regionalism
European Law Journal, Vol. 17, No.5, September 2011, pp. 611-629.
19 Pages Posted: 18 Sep 2013
Date Written: September 1, 2011
Abstract
East Asia is steadfastly marching towards regional economic integration through a number of regional trade agreements (RTAs) and China is a major driving force behind this movement. This paper analyzes China’s RTAs and their impact on regionalism in Asia. It addresses the criticisms that China’s RTAs are politically but not economically driven, that China’s RTAs create the hub-and-spoke bilateralism, and that China’s RTAs are not WTO consistent. It discusses China’s position on East Asian regionalism, pointing out that China wishes East Asia to pursue regionalism on multitrack and at multispeed, that China tends to “do easy things first” with low integration and liberalization and then gradually move to deeper liberalization and integration, and that China’s definition of “open regionalism” does not include outside countries such as the U.S. and EU. The paper makes suggestions for improving China RTAs in the interest of establishing an East Asia FTA.
Keywords: FTA, Regionalism, China, Asia, WTO, Trade law
JEL Classification: F13, K33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation