Today, events in Asia Pacific are forcing China, Japan, and the United States to reassess their individual bilateral relations and the trilateral relationship in order to successfully manage the transition from old, cold war patterns of interaction to a post-cold war structure of regional international relations. The exchange of summits between China and the United States, the Asian financial crisis, and the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan redirected the security agenda of the Asia Pacific region in 1998. In 1999, trilateral relations were further complicated by the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, China’s bid for entry into the WTO and US allegations of Chinese espionage.

The nine essays collected in this volume analyze these new dimensions of the China-Japan-US relationship and evaluate the status of such traditional factors as the Korean peninsula, Taiwan, and the US-Japan security alliance. The eight authors, all of whom are seasoned observers of international relations, recognize that three-way dialogue among China, Japan, and the United States is essential as the countries of Asia Pacific shed traditional approaches to security to forge a new set of stable and cooperative regional relationships. How China, Japan, and the United States—the three countries with the greatest influence in the Asia Pacific region—conduct their interrelations and deal with regional issues will affect the future of Asia Pacific.

The study was conducted as part of the China-Japan-US Research and Dialogue project, part of the Global ThinkNet Fellows program and the broader Asia Pacific Agenda Project (APAP).