East Asia must lead the way on regional economic integration

China's use of economic coercion has put it on a collision course with the United States and its allies. China's trade integration with regional partners is seen as a vulnerability by some governments and commentators. But open and contestable markets blunt the effect of intervention for political or economic gain by providing alternative markets and suppliers. Multilateral rules constrain the use of raw economic power and lessen the costs of such interventions. A priority is to work out how to strengthen them. On this, leadership must come from East Asia, where the major global geopolitical, economic and security fault lines…