International trade and investment of East Asian countries have been significantly regionalising and, to support this development further, efforts for regional integration have flourished in the forms of bilateral and regional free trade agreements and the ASEAN+3 and East Asia Summit processes, among many others. This book is a compilation of papers and discussions originally presented at the international symposium held in the midst of the recent global financial crisis. The symposium aimed to shed light not only on the usual economic aspect but also others of the multidimensional phenomenon called "regional integration", thus the authors in this volume explore the relationship between the U.S. influence and East Asian regionalism, the characteristics of East Asian integration, the politics of inclusion/exclusion in the integration process as well as point out some "missing links" in integration efforts such as co-operation in the areas of logistics, finance, trade in services, infrastructure and human resource movement. As the global financial crisis did not deter integration efforts (rather, it has encouraged them), this book serves as a guide for the future East Asian integration in terms of what to expect and what to be done.
