Building a Neighborly Community, available for the first time in paperback, explores the political economy of post-cold war East Asian co-operation by examining the history of intra-regional co-operation, against the background of China's rise and Japan's relative decline, both real and perceived. The book in particular examines how East Asian states have dealt with the South China Sea as a region-wide security challenge and the imperative for self-help after the 1997 economic crisis. The book builds on the explanatory strength of analytical eclecticism, and ultimately concludes that China, South Korea, Japan, and ASEAN states have aimed for constructing a neighborly community. The fundamental differences between a neighborly community and the kind of community that has emerged in Europe and North America are that qualification for membership is not conditional, the process of routine interactions is itself one of reassurance, the aim of inter-state interactions is to foster acceptance of each other, and changes in a member's foreign policy behaviour are accepted.

This book examines East Asia's inter-state collaborative energy projects to address energy vulnerability. It focuses on projects that have demonstrated effectiveness in addressing vulnerabilities faced by the ten states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan, and South Korea in Northeast Asia. Including case studies on uncertainties in external sources of oil and gas supply, maritime piracy, continuation of energy poverty, and geographical barriers to cross-border electricity interconnection, expert contributors highlight how collaborative energy projects have been more successful than the traditional state rivalry in energy-related issues. The book develops the framework of energy vulnerability, avoiding usual securitization approaches, instead examining non-traditional security conceptualizations in studying energy policies to examine how issue-specific cooperation efforts between states arise and develop. Using East Asia as a starting point, contributors introduce a framework that advances the study of international energy cooperation. Managing Regional Energy Vulnerabilities in East Asia will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, sociology, development studies, and international political economy particularly the political economy of East Asia, energy and development studies, regional and global governance of energy and the environmental economics.

Most people believe China's foreign behavior is driven by its growing power status in world politics. Chinese leaders still firmly uphold some traditional values in foreign policy such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national unification. However, it is often neglected that China's behavior is also shaped by its changing perception of the globalizing world and, to a large extent, is a result of external pressure on China. By examining the dynamics of paradigm shifts in China's foreign policy thinking, this book explores the ideological sources of China's international relations in the new century. With growing economic interdependence with the outside world, which creates both constraints as well as incentives to adapt to the prevailing norms in contemporary international relations, authors of this volume analyze indigenous Chinese sources of intellect on the paradigm shifts. The concepts studied in this volume include national identity, nationalism, globalism, multilateralism, sovereignty, and the role of international law in Chinese foreign policy. This volume helps to shed new light on how the dynamics of paradigm shifts affect China's behavior in international affairs.