Recentering Pacific Asia

The Pacific Rim of Asia - Pacific Asia - is now the world's largest and most cohesive economic region and China has returned to its center. China's global outlook is shaped by its regional experience first as a pre-modern Asian center then displaced by Western-oriented modernization and now returning as a central producer and market in a globalized region. Developments since 2008 have been so rapid that future directions are uncertain but China's presence population and production guarantee it a key role. As a global competitor China has awakened American anxieties and the US-China rivalry has become a major concern for the rest of the world. However rather than facing a power transition between hegemons the US and China are primary nodes in a multi-layered interconnected global matrix that neither can control. Brantly Womack argues that Pacific Asia is now the key venue for working out a new world order.