Political Economy Of East Asian Monetary Cooperation

As the start-up of Euro and dollarization of North America put great influenceupon international monetary structure, it becomes a significant issue for Asia how tocomply with the regional monetary integration. Facing the incessantly politicaldisputes in the region, East Asian monetary integration has made use of the successfulexperience of European monetary integration, and exceeds the jumping-off line ofEuropean monetary integration on the basis of regional monetary policy coordination.At the beginning of twenty first century, East Asia and other parts of the worldwere provided with more feasible and favorable policy choices by the development ofmonetary regionalism. Due to historical factors, there independently existconfucianism, Islamism, Christianity, etc, and it results in cultural faultage in EastAsia. It has affected the process of monetary cooperation by "10+3"(ASEAN 10countries plus China,Japan and Korea),caused the frequent conflicts of value conceptbetween East Asia and the West, and made East Asian countries necessarily considerthe lash from outside force in the process of the monetary cooperation. Therefore, it isa great challenge for the development of East Asian monetary regionalism how toattemper the conflict caused by different civilizations.The essence of money is politics, and monetary relations ultimately reflectstruggles for power and regime among nations. It is impossible to carry out monetarycooperation without benignly and practicably political basis. The struggle amonggreat powers always puts the decisive influence upon East Asian monetarycooperation as well as international situation. As the further development of EastAsian monetary cooperation under the global financial integration, national monetarysovereignty faces more challenge than ever. Therefore, it is a significant issue for EastAian nations how to keep or modify the traditional sovereignty.There are bothopportunities and challenges for all members in East Asian monetary cooperation tomake common-shared monetary sovereignty transfer but not simply compelled to doso, from which all the members can obtain more gains.In a viewpoint of international mechanism, the purpose of East Asianmonetary cooperation is to build the institutional agreement, which is some certaininternational economic regulation. It usually appears economic unilateralism in theprocess of setting down international economic regulation, in particular, a great powerexclusively constitutes international economic regulation, and makes it accepted by other members. It results in "regime dilemma", every member considers how tocontain other's objectives and increase its own absolute gains but not collective gains,then international mechanism came into being a state of unbalance.According to the theoretical frame and practical operation, US dollar hegemonyin international financial system has not fallen to pieces. East Asian monetarycooperation steps into an era of post hegemony, a state of spontaneous butdoing-nothing cooperation, an ideal mode of regionalism is still under development andimprovement, and whether it is the final choice of all nations in East Asia underglobalization has still to be proved by time.Driven by both national and regional common benefits, China has participated inEast Asian monetary cooperation, therefore it is the regional common benefits thatdetermines the vitality and continuality of East Asian monetary cooperation. China hasto solve some issues in the process of East Asian monetary cooperation such as how todevelop the status of Renminbi, how to plan the innovation of Renminbi exchange ratemechanism, and how to manage the hegemonic stability theory dilemma of providinginternational public goods. Like that of China's sustainable development, the prospectof East Asian monetary cooperation pushed by China will be full of opportunities andchallenges under the financial globalization.