ABSTRACT
Until 1989, the Asia-Pacific region lacked any formal or intergovernmental arrangement for regional economic cooperation. Fourteen years on, the situation has altered dramatically. Today, the Asia-Pacific is a region where a bewildering array of regional agreements is in place, with more anticipated over the next few years. While the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum established in 1989 and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) initiated in 1992 were the sole economic cooperation arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region until about 2000, a number of new regional economic arrangements have emerged since then, among them the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area and a variety of bilateral free trade areas (FTAs). New proposals for more bilateral and multilateral FTAs have also been announced.
