China’s rise will be long-term punitive for the rest of Asia. Across all aspects of Asian geopolitics and economics, China’s ascendency to regional hegemonic status will result in the decline of its neighbours’ political independence, economic dynamism and future growth potential. Any short-term benefits of China’s growth, such as increased trade, will be transitory. The longer-term implications of its emergence as the regional hegemon will be greater economic and financial dependencies and vulnerabilities, the large-scale shift of business activity to within its boundaries and its increasing geopolitical influence across the region. The challenge for China’s neighbours is how to respond to these evolving dynamics, especially as their strategic options are increasingly limited and few of the potential future scenarios are long-term positive. China’s rise, therefore, be Asia’s decline.

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed the emergence of globalized markets accompanied by an uneven process of national and international deregulation and re-regulation. The combined activities of transnational corporations in manufacturing industries (moving towards the global factory) and the newly privatized businesses in the energy, telecommunications and transportation sectors have fuelled an unprecedented growth in global markets and international business networks. The unexpected but now well established development of capitalism in eastern Europe and the boom in China's special economic zones have added still further to the opportunities and risks inherent in the rapidly developing global economy. For lawyers, economists, and political scientists one of the most significant aspects of the emergence of global markets is the question of regulation: how to regulate market access, product safety, consumer protection laws, financial services, probity and capital adequacy as well as anti-trust and competition laws and policies. Businesses complain that regulatory requirements frequently hinder the development of new markets. At the same time greater public awareness and concern, especially over other global issues such as environment protection, have raised the cost implications of regulatory requirements, sometimes astronmically. The essays in this volume attempt to address the success of efforts in the European Community, the US and elsewhere in the world to regulate in such a way as to accomodate both the interests of business and the wider interests of the public. The volume is divided into several sections, the first which deals with the globalization of regulatory processes. Other sections examine regulatory competition in the field of company law, self-regulation and competition in US corporate law; regulatory regimes in the European Union and the issue of regulatory coordination affecting economic and social insterests. This is an original and wide-ranging collection of essays which will attract a broad readership both in the US and Europe.