ONE fruitful way of understanding 'globalisation' is to see it as a term necessitated by the fact that global influences are no longer unidirectional, that is, coming largely from the West.

No doubt the model of a bipolar world in which the Soviet Union and the United States fought wars by proxy lives on in certain quarters, and seeks re-enactment.

The dualistic tradition of understanding the world is too long and entrenched to suddenly disappear - good against evil, the faithful against the infidels, Jedi knights against stormtroopers.

While one can see a general tendency to recreate a bipolar world in which a veritable replacement for the Soviet Union is sought - either in terrorism, Islam, the Axis of Evil or a rising China - it has become increasingly necessary to admit the growing multipolarity of the post-Cold War world.

An adjusted view was presented in Samuel Huntington's influential essay Clash of Civilisations. Here the aggressive bipolarity of the Cold War is replaced by several poles - civilisational core states -arrayed against the West.

It caught the imagination of many for a while, and still excites some today.

Within the concept of globalisation, we are faced with a need to depict global dynamics in ways that will not lock us into old habits of thought, and that do not assume conflict and competition as the wherewithal of international relations.

Handling the phenomenon of a 'rising China' is crucial to this task. One should not forget that the China that is economically growing is not communist China. In fact, it is to the extent that China has stopped acting like a communist regime that it has developed economically.

It is a non-communist China that is on the rise.

The fact that a leader of the Kuomintang now visits the mainland and is given the red-carpet treatment testifies to this. Communism is being understood by most as a pragmatic solution taken in a historical context, and that is now in turn being replaced by other pragmatic solutions.

Indeed, 'rise' connotes threat only to those privileged by the status quo.

The economic might of China should therefore not be confused with the might of a militant communist regime obsessed with global ideological goals. The lifting of hundreds of millions above the poverty line in the past decade is to be applauded and should not be seen reflexively as a threat. China's influence will grow by default, independent of its political agenda.

What is happening at lightning speed today is that a network of trade ties and friendly diplomatic relations across East Asia is being constructed at a rate unthinkable not many years ago. Indeed, an optimist may understand the recent flare-up between Japan and China to be the start of the final confrontation needed - at least at government-to-government level - for the peaceful dissolution of tensions inherited from World War II. It may be just what is needed to enable the forging of mutually beneficial ties.

Momentous events are happening in Asia today. The Bandung commemoration in Jakarta last month was a milestone in that it saw a kind of meeting of the leaders of Asia and Africa that differed greatly from the first 1955 meeting, no ideology divided them. There was no reason for dispute or aggression and cooperation seemed the only thing for them to discuss.

Recent developments in intra-Asia ties such as Chinese aid to Indonesia and to the Philippines, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-Neighbourly Relations between China and Pakistan, Chinese-India trade cooperation, India-Pakistan dialogues, Malaysia-Singapore solutions of bilateral issues, and free-trade agreements in all directions suggest a strong emerging pattern in contemporary globalisation.

Australian initiatives to build ties with Indonesia is part of what it deems to be a necessary adjustment to accommodate multidirectional forces - which include nature's disasters.

The upcoming East Asia Summit in December in Kuala Lumpur is significant in this context. It brings together the major players throughout East, South-east and South Asia, and the synergy likely to emanate from this in the future is causing New Zealand and even Australia to reconsider the basis of their relations with South-east Asia.

This flow of events occurs alongside other networks of regional bodies formed and being formed throughout the world, and the inter-regional economic connections between these regions are also strong and robust.

Clashes between them, and clashes within them, are no longer rational.

Instead of a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar world, we may be seeing the coming into being of a bola takraw world.

Like that rattan ball popular in the Malay world, there are so many poles that the lines of linkage are more obvious than the points they join.