The call of East Asia Summit

The East Asia Summit (EAS) will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Oct 30, with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attending it as "special guests". The EAS, an important regional leadership forum to promote cooperation in East Asia, was first held in 2005.

After World War II, the economic miracles of Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons (the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan and Hong Kong) enabled East Asia to exert its influence on the world. Since the 1990s, powered by China's fast economic development, the East Asian economy has maintained strong growth and promoted regional economic cooperation.

In recent years, important global powers have converged in East Asia because they want to cash in on the region's fast development. That the US and Russia will become formal EAS members from next year, even though geographically they are outside East Asia, and their active participation at the summit prove the importance of the region.