In the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, East Asia’s efforts to enhance regional financial cooperation raised the possibility of East Asia playing a more assertive role in global financial governance. However, despite the region’s increased voice in governance and economic weight, East Asian financial systems and markets have mostly adapted to global norms developed in New York, London, and Washington, DC.

In a 2020 journal article in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, William N. Kring and William W. Grimes argue that the failure of East Asia to push an alternative vision of financial governance reflects both the lack of regional political unity and, more crucially, the divisions of interests both between and within key East Asian economies. Despite nearly universal regional dissatisfaction with global standards and institutions in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, these two factors have combined to prevent the development of a distinctive regional model that could be promoted at the global level.