Cosmopolitan democracy and the national identity question in Europe and East Asia

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