On East Asian Transnational Corporations Influence Upon Regional Integration Process

Transnational Corporation is the most powerful economic entity of the current world. Its transnational behavior has broken the barrier of nation-state and blurred the traditional boundary of "preliminary politics" and "senior politics". It is difficult for individual countries to control the behavior of transnational corporation, whereas, this provides the multilateral mechanism cooperation with opportunities and conditions to deepen regional integration.According to the theory of investment development path, for the East Asian countries which are in different economic levels, the foreign direct investment behavior of their transnational corporations is distinctive. However, it has direct and obvious influence on the regional trade growth, the formation of industrial division system, technological advance and financial cooperation. Moreover, the growth of direct investment also brings other benefits for the regional cooperation spillover, reinforcement of collective identity, providing platform for the regional countries' governments to carry out institutional cooperation, and the policy coordination of balanced benefit distribution. In a word, the regional direct investment of East Asian Transnational corporations can achieve the meaning of "senior politics". Therefore, the integration of East Asia inevitably begins with economic integration. Furthermore, the key for the realization of economic integration is the insurance of investment liberalization and its core propelling force is the East Asian transnational corporations' direct investment within the region.As a responsible Power of East Asia, China should encourage its qualified transnational corporations to enlarge their direct investment within the region. This not only concerns the competition for the leadership of East Asian integration, but also favorable to the region and the countries to realize the situation of common win.