Asia aims to find its own economic solutions

Plans for a regional free-trade zone, existing currency-swap arrangements and moves towards closer economic cooperation indicate that East Asia is already building a new world structure.

Although the meeting of Asian leaders at Pattaya this past weekend turned into a farce and had to be aborted, it is impossible to ignore either its intentions or the portents.

The richest and fastest growing countries in Asia seem to have looked at the turmoil afflicting the rest of the world and decided that it's not for them. Instead, they perhaps see this as an opportunity to shift the axis of the world, or rather confirm the centre of the global map to where China has always believed it to be.

A central part of the East Asia Summit, to be held in the Thai ...