Ⅰ.Introduction The age in which multilateralism was championed by Northeast Asia — China,Japan and South Korea — has long gone with the emergence of several bilateral and plurilateral free trade agreements (FTA) and economic partnership agreements (EPA) initiated and implemented by these countries.Initially, it was a defensive response to the spread of economic regionalism and FTAs elsewhere in the world,but it soon evolved to be useful tools to achieve trade and investment liberalization to support the sophisticated production networks in the region.