According to Yoichi Funabashi, the term concerted unilateral action (CUA) emerged from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where he says it had the pejorative connotation of “big boys doing what they want to do”. Its meaning in the Asia-Pacific security discourse is quite different. The term was used extensively in discussions leading up to the 1994 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Meeting in Bogor and was formally introduced in APEC's Osaka Action Agenda in 1996. It has declined in use in recent years, but the concept continues to have influence within APEC.

Concerted unilateralism is a process whereby states gather together to identify specific common objectives, but subsequently take steps to pursue those goals unilaterally and voluntarily. This distinguishes it from other modes of economic liberalization such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which rely on concessions made through complex and legally binding multilateral negotiating processes. Japanese MITI official Hidehiro Konno has described CUA as “a new type of trade liberalization process … on a peer pressure basis”. One Chinese scholar has identified three separate elements to concerted unilateralism.