The Japanese Journal of Political Science published a special issue, ‘Ideas of Asian Regionalism’ in Vol. 12 (2) (August 2011). In the papers that follow, Rosemary Foot and Gilbert Rozman focus on angles they each see as not being adequately addressed in the special issue.

Rosemary Foot focuses on the feeble and non-binding feature of regional institutions prevalent in the Asia-Pacific region. As she sees it, regionalist ideas abound in Asia but most of them do not pay much attention to what can lead the region to construct and consolidate institutions and how resultant institutions can help nurture the spirit of regionalism and resolve issues of conflicting interests and beliefs. It is the issue of governance that the region must seriously address, even at the articulation stage of each country-focused idea of Asian regionalism with an anticipation of the synthesizing stage of potential member-states deliberation.

Gilbert Rozman takes up the issue of the rise of China, the country that, according to him, unilaterally claims Chinese core-interests – economic and security – in wide-ranging domains with the characteristically Chinese self-assertiveness. Gilbert Rozman argues that it is as if China regarded the Asian region as slowly and steadily falling under Chinese territorial, cultural, economic and/or military influence. It is the Chinese challenge that poses itself as forging multilateral regional institutions without sharing the convergent norms and values of potential member-states.