Ideas of regionalism play constructive roles in guiding directions, providing visions, and setting up principles for organizing and creating regional communities. They touch upon the fundamental question of what kind of regional organizations should be formed, and how they should operate.

In the first part of the twenty-first century, the process of regionalism has been speeded up and many proposals and ideas concerning regionalism have been put forward. In 1984, Japanese scholars proposed an Asian economic circle, which was later supported by the Japanese Government (Japan Research Institute 1988; Yotaro 1991). The South Korean Government in 1987 put forward an idea of a Yellow Sea economic circle (Jeong and Choe 2001). In 1987, Chen Kuiyao, a Hong Kong scholar, suggested that mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong should establish a Great China circle. In 1987, Indonesia suggested triangular economic cooperation among ASEAN, Japan and South Pacific countries. In 1990 the Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (1995) proposed an East Asian Economic Caucus that drew both praises and criticisms. Singapore has strongly advocated the free trade zone of ASEAN. At the ASEAN business and investment summit in Bali, Indonesia on 6 October 2003, Singapore's then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong called for the building of an ASEAN Economic Community: a single production base and a single market, with free movement of goods, services and capital. In 2008, the Rudd government proposed an “Asia Pacific Community” (APC) by the year 2020. In 2009, Yukio Hatoyama, former Japanese Prime Minister, proposed an East Asian Community, based on the European Union model, to rival the APC.

In the above context, it is surprising that China often does not talk about its greater vision of regionalism. The absence of China's grand vision of regionalism can be traced to the idea of regionalism in the early twentieth century. In this context, it is vital to understand Sun Yat-sen's idea of Pan-Asianism which provides Chinese perceptions of regionalism and valuable sources.