ABSTRACT
The Asia-Pacific region occupies an increasingly prominent place in the international relations system. The interactions between first Japan, and more recently China and the United States have been some of the key drivers of intra-and inter-regional relations for more than 50 years. All other things being equal, it seems certain that China will replace the United States as the largest economy in the world by the middle of the century,1 and possibly trigger a far-reaching re-ordering of the international system as a consequence.2 In such circumstances, the institutional architecture of the region-be it the Asia-Pacific or East Asia-has the potential to play a critical role in deciding whether such a shift in the relative standing of the world’s two largest economies will be orderly or traumatic. Although it is impossible to know precisely how such events will play themselves out, the potential consequences of such changes are of such importance that it is worth trying to isolate some of the factors that are likely to determine the outcomes. While some of what follows is necessarily speculative, a number of
the key challenges with which regional policymakers must wrestle are already painfully clear. Indeed, many of the key issues are familiar and have already been the subject of political attention. If the past is a guide to the future, however, then the prospects and the challenges look rather sobering. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, China is at the center of the discussion because of the sheer scale of its developmental process and its consequent impact on every aspect of regional development. As a result, a good deal of this final chapter is devoted to an assessment of the sustainability of the “rise of China” and the implications this may have for its relations with East Asia generally and the U.S.A. in particular. The optimistic story is about economic development, political cooperation and institutional consolidation; the pessimistic version is about increasing tension and a potential descent into chaos that regional institutions will have little capacity to prevent. A measured assessment
of the challenges may, however, better equip the region’s nascent institutional architecture to rise to them.
