The Imagined Community of East Asia

(Abstract: This paper argues that the proposed East Asian Community is an imagined community. To describe it this way is not to dismiss it as an illusion, or to deny its potential for transforming East Asia’s future, but to emphasize the bold aspirations that underlie the notion, aspirations which seek to transcend powerful physical, political and even cultural barriers confronting them. The imagined community of East Asia has a long way to travel before it translates itself into to a living and breathing institution. Happily for those outside, it is not entirely driven by negative impulses. Most acts of imagination involve some element of wishful thinking. The East Asian Community could turn out to be more wishful than most such regionalist dreams in world politics. The challenge for its proponents is to prevent this by resolving questions about its membership, objectives, and institutional mechanisms and by demonstrating a genuine desire for togetherness.)