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Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been reorganizing itself, moving away from the global issues to other forms of international politics such as regionalism. The European Union (EU) is an example of successful regionalism. Asia, on the other hand, is often cited as a failure for regionalism: the strongest regional organization, ASEAN, is still weak. Yet this argument only makes sense in terms of formal institutions: European integration theory generally discusses the role of institutions in the broadening and deepening of regional structures. To understand regionalism in East Asia, it is necessary to look in a different place: informal socio-economic and socio-cultural regional networks. While many stress that informal regionalism in East Asia grows out of ethnic ties of Chinese communities in Greater China, this paper will stress the ethics of Asian regionalism. Rather than being regulated by rules (EU), or motivated by exclusionary ethnic ties (Greater China), regionalism in East Asia is best described in terms of the ethics of people-to-people relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]