International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

February 2002 (Volume 2, No. 1)

 

Cosmopolitan Democracy and the National Identity Question in Europe and East Asia
by Baogang He

Abstract

This paper seeks to apply the idea of cosmopolitan democracy to the question of national identity in a comparative context in the European Union and East Asia. The application of the idea of cosmopolitan democracy to East Asia is constrained by a number of factors, and hence cannot be understood as a universal concept, but rather as a contingent regional phenomenon that is dependent on certain conditions. The paper concludes that East Asia will find its own approach to the question of national identity and that this has been demonstrated to some extent by China's handling of Hong Kong.