The New Asian Renaissance and Its Discontents: National Narratives, Pan-Asian Visions and the Changing Post-Cold War Order

Abstract

This article provides a critical retrospective on the influential Pan-Asian visions that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to explain and celebrate the economic dynamism of a growing number of East Asian states. Both the dominant East Asian-based narratives and many of the cultural explanations provided by commentators outside the region rested and/or continue to rest on a dubious distinction between East and West and on generally fixed notions of culture/race. The promotion of a New Asian Renaissance is best explained in terms of its relationship to the vicissitudes of particular state-mediated national development projects against the backdrop of the wider transformation of Asia. The growing irrelevance of APEC, the continued and growing economic importance of China, the IMF's handling of the Asian financial crisis, and the emergence of ASEAN+3 have all provided sustenance for revised, albeit more cautious, forms of Pan-Asianism that reflect the unfinished character of the history of New Asian Renaissance.