ABSTRACT
In Chinese the term for ‘crisis’ combines two symbols: the first, wei, meaning ‘danger’ and the second, ji, opportunity. 1 This dialectical conception of crisis, coming as it does from Asia’s most important indigenous language, helps us to grasp the nature of the current circumstances of the Asia-Pacific region. Now, and into the early decades of the next century, the Asia-Pacific region and the world economy and inter-state system more generally are indeed in crisis in the Chinese sense. Economic development has been profoundly uneven in the region, compounding pre-existing tendencies towards socio-political fragmentation. It has also brought with it untold ecological damage, of which travellers to even one of the region’s most advanced territories – Hong Kong – become immediately aware. Additionally, and attempts to develop regional institutions for economic governance notwithstanding (Chapters 7 and 13), the processes now afoot could well lead not only to cut-throat economic competition in the region, but to geo-political conflict as well. In these senses and more, then, the immediate future of the Asia-Pacific region is one fraught with danger.
