New Interregionalism? The EU and East Asia

322 Julie Gilsonoccur, by developing an ongoing agenda and a familiar pattern of terminology.This acts a as a shorthand, so that bilateral engagements can be spenton more targeted aims and focused bargaining. It is now accepted that EastAsia and the EU ‘matter’ to one another, as trade between them hassurpassed that of EU–US trade and as, during the 1980s and especially the1990s, regional trade agreements, as opposed to global ones, became “morepolitically desirable and feasible due to increased familiarity and comparablecultures, business practices and legal systems” (Yeung et al. 1999, 20).Role of RegionsSecond, and linked to the management of change, it reinforces the role ofregions as actors. Changes in the global economy and the scale of trans–border activities mean that regions have acted themselves into significance.However, those not in the interregional listings are excluded from the benefitsthat accrue from membership. The exclusion, not only of Australia andNew Zealand, but also of indubitably ‘Asian’ states such as India andPakistan, demonstrates the development of a certain kind of economicallydeveloped East Asia. 17 Assumptions about the nature of this East Asia areeasily maintained, as EU Commissioner Manuel Marín noted: “We don’toperate like the Americans. In our search for compromise, we work almostlike the Asians” (Ton 1998). Linked to this point, the very notion of regionnessis embedded in the process of Asia–Europe interaction, as the EastAsian regional self acts itself into being, in part through its acceptance as aregion by the EU. This is not to argue that East Asia has solely been definedthrough the interregional mechanisms of ASEM, rather to suggest that theexplicitly interregional process has been important in further delineating thecontours of Asian regionness and in highlighting, albeit in a post factomanner, how processes such as the APT and regional financial initiativeshave become part of a regional discourse that is most visible in its interregionaliteration.Two–Way InterregionalismThird, the ASEM process provides the possibility for two–way interregionalism,whereby region–to–region processes may affect intra–regionaldevelopments themselves. Interregionalism should not be regarded simply asregion–to–region dialogue, incorporating two rational actors, which are“created and recreated in the process of global transformation” as “territorialbased subsystems of the international system” (Hettne et al. 1999, xv).Rather, interregionalism has the additional potential to establish a regionalprofile beyond one’s own confines (as in the EU’s search for recognition inEast Asia), or affect the development of the intra–regional identity of one ofits participating actors. In this way, it provides a focused and interactive self/other nexus, by locating two regions in a situation of parity. This is alsoimportant for determining the types of region likely to emerge in the mediumterm, as the EU utilizes new channels to demonstrate its deepening and