Introduction

Within the past two decades, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a major development in international politics has been the formation and development of multilateral arrangements in Asia and the Pacific, with which China’s involvement in regional cooperation and integration is closely associated. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has even been perceived as the main initiator in the institutionalization of several regional multilateral processes in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Pacific Ocean, or at least an active participant. There seems to be little doubt that China has, in the words of a China scholar, “become a born-again regional multilateralist.” 1 This book will explore the meaning, scope and implications for neighboring countries of a rising China’s drive for institutionalizing multilateral cooperative processes in the Asia-Pacific region, and the extent to which its actions are motivated by concerns of politics, economics or security.