“The rise of China” is a critical issue of the twenty-first century’s world politics. China is leading the new bipolar system in the post-Cold War period with the US. As the American dominance in East Asia became weaker, the old containment could not be fully implemented anymore. As a result, a new comprehensive strategic initiative covering the whole Pacific coastal States is being adopted. The outcome of this transformation is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was reached on October 5, 2015. This article aims to analyze the newly arisen TPP as a post-Cold War strategic alliance of East Asia. The TPP is a mega regional trade agreement. Its predictable legal setting is thus indispensable for the peaceful coordination of competition between both sides. The TPP could be a firm ground for the stability of this region, sharing the vision of cooperation, not confrontation in the future.

The market competition of express package deliveries in Korea is severe because a large number of companies have entered into the market. This study thus suggests an approach to the reconfiguration of express service networks with respect to the strategy partnership of closing/keeping service centers among companies involved and the adjustments of their cutoff times. For this we propose an integer programming model and a genetic algorithm based solution procedure for allowing companies involved to maximize their incremental profit. An illustrative numerical example is presented to demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of the proposed model.