The Olympics held by China, Japan and Korea have in common in the sense that they were strategic choices in order to boost their industrialization process which is usually characterized as being driven through strong intervention by developmental states. However, the three Asian countries were faced by financial crises after the successful conclusion of Olympics even though the interval between the Olympics and financial crisis varied by country. This paper argues that an intermittent occurrence of the Olympics and financial crisis in the region shows that the Olympics helped expand the influence of the East Asian country on the global politics and economy and the financial crises held it back again. Meanwhile, the East Asian regionalism tends to be institutionalized more systematically after the financial crises.