China-ASEAN Free Trade Area

The study of the relations between China and ASEAN has attracted much attention with the rise of China and flourishing of regionalism. In the 1990s of last century, Realism was the most popular perspective on China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. After South-East Financial Crisis, the perspective of Constructivism exceeded Realism and became the most popular one. Although these researches were fruitful, Asia, including China of course, has its own characteristics in politics, economy, culture, and so on which are different from those in the western. Therefore, it would be one-sided to understand and explain China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement from only one perspective, no matter realism or constructivism. This article will do its best to do some contrastive analysis between realism and constructivism, in order to enable us to better understand and explain China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.