ABSTRACT
Since the late 1980s, surges in intra-Asian trade and direct investment have created an East Asian economic network and led to de facto regional integration. The so-called ‘Asian regionalism’ has brought the rise of Pacific Asia, along with North America and Western Europe, into a trilateral global economic gravity. The bilateral links between poles of triangle, however, have not been developed under the same path. The concurrent US effort in establishing the North America Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and its active participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) in the early 1990s, on the one hand, reflected the strong US leverage over regional integration in North America, and on the other hand, strengthened the base of US transregional expansion in Asia. In contrast, the European Union has exemplified a mature case of de jure regional integration in Western Europe but had only developed relatively weak bilateral links to Asia. Bilateral dialogues between the EU and ASEAN have had the longest institutional history. Nevertheless, the recent EU’s initiative of New Asia Strategy in 1994 and the establishment of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in 1996 Have begun a new Asia-Europe relationship that moved beyond the early framework of ASEAN-EU dialogues.
