The world increasingly looks to China. A Beijing Consensus is an appealing alternative to the Washington Consensus for many outside the shrinking West.

But where is the leadership the US offered the world in 1944 at Bretton Woods? An East Asian monetary regime could anchor a reformed global monetary order with the institutional and financial ability to enforce uniform standards for capital adequacy and transparency, and provide balance of payments financing with realistic conditionalities and expertise.

It might offer sound development assistance for the least developed. A Global Monetary Fund might back a global currency unit or (the dream of Maynard Keynes) a global currency.

Work on East Asian financial regionalism has been underway since the 1997 crisis. Research has accumulated, much of it within the Asian Development Bank and Institute. But many complex issues need to be addressed, including the relationship of the yen and renminbi and the accommodation of countries at different levels of development. The integration of an East Asian regime in a global regime raises more issues. But winds are stirring. A new Prime Minister of debt-laden Japan is speaking warmly of an East Asian "community" and developing ties to China.

Europe's ongoing experience is instructive. It created a central bank and common currency, but not a monetary fund. It may be forced to turn to the IMF. President Sarkozy of France is calling for a new Bretton Woods. The US could lose privileges associated with maintaining the world's reserve currency - but that is its own doing. All countries would gain from global monetary stability. American realists are calling for "new thinking."

China is the great creditor nation today, and will soon have the world's largest economy. It should convene a new Bretton Woods and take the initiative in East Asia and the world, inviting other nations to join it in a cooperative effort to create a new monetary order for a new world.

The author, a former US senator, is an honorary professor at Renmin University of China.