Abstract
East Asia is increasingly becoming a coherent and prominent region in the international system. This book presupposes that the two big powers in the area, China and Japan, will somehow take a leadership role in shaping the region. How they exercise this leadership will have implications for the whole region and is a complex issue, just as the Japanese-Chinese relationship is in itself. Even defining an East Asian regional community is not an easy task. Should it be based on ASEAN Plus Three or the East Asia Summit, which also includes India, Australia, and New Zealand? Here China and Japan have different ideas, and who takes the leadership and how this is done will affect the development of the region.