China, regional institution-building and the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area

ABSTRACT

This article uses the concepts of critical juncture and feedback effects in historical institutionalism to examine China's role in promoting a China–ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA). The first section examines the specific combination of structural factors and key intervention from Chinese policymakers that triggered the CAFTA process. The second section outlines the details of the CAFTA negotiations, analyzing the feedback effects that shaped the path and eventual outcomes of the CAFTA Agreement. Attention is given to China's initiation of a programme of ‘early harvest’ agreements that were added to the CAFTA Agreement Framework in order to help persuade the hesitant states in the region to enlist in the China-led conception of Asian regionalism.

KEYWORDS:

• China–ASEAN Free Trade Area
• China
• ASEAN
• free trade agreements
• East Asian regionalism
• critical juncture
• feedback effects
• institution-building

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is a much revised version of a paper prepared for the International Studies Association Conference, San Francisco, USA, 26–29 March 2008. We would like to thank the many government officials and analysts in China and Southeast Asia who shared their assessments of the CAFTA with us. We would also thank Vinod K. Aggarwal, Alice Ba, Paul Bowles, Jean Michel Montsion, Helen Nesadurai, Saadia Pekkanen, Grace Skogstad, Takashi Terada and especially John Ravenhill for comments on earlier drafts of the paper and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its research support. We thank the anonymous referees and the editors of this journal for their constructive comments. The authors alone are responsible for any errors in fact or judgement in the analysis.

Notes

1. ‘Formal’ resistance or contestation refers to ‘state-level’.

2. We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for highlighting this point.

3. Kwei (2006) also argues that it is mainly political and diplomatic considerations that lay behind the Chinese decision to negotiate a trade agreement with ASEAN, despite the apparent absence of strong economic complementarities.

4. Solis and Katada (2007: 250) note that: ‘Governments frequently simultaneously pursue inter- and intra-regional negotiations. What happens in one negotiating front can affect what ensues in the other.’

5. Zhu Rongji and this core trade policy team also formulated China's WTO accession strategy.

6. This finding challenges the understanding heretofore that the Chinese side did not seriously research the FTA idea until after announcing their intentions at the Singapore Summit. See discussion in Sheng (2003).