Regional Integration in East Asia: Achievements and Future Prospects

Economic integration in East Asia has been largely market driven. Attempts in the late 1980s to establish an East Asian regional economic grouping failed to materialize for a number of reasons. The financial crisis in 1997–1998 has strengthened the realization of regional countries that they need to have some self‐help mechanisms to overcome that crisis and to prevent future crises. This led to the development of several functional integration programs, including the network of bilateral swap arrangements known as the Chiang Mai Initiative. However, progress remains slow. The question that has arisen is how far these efforts need to be supported by institutional integration. Should the ASEAN Plus Three, the main regional cooperation process in East Asia involving the 10 South‐East Asian countries plus China, Japan, and South Korea, be deepened institutionally? Meanwhile, the region has seen the establishment of a new process, the East Asia Summit, involving the above 13 countries plus Australia, India, and New Zealand. How will these different arrangements contribute to East Asia's economic dynamism and prosperity as well as peace and political stability?     

Window of Opportunity Opens: Asian and American Views of the International Economic Architecture

This paper compares US and Asian views of the international economic architecture including Asia's evolving regional institutions. Lessons from the global financial crisis are used to assess reforms of the financial institutions better to prevent and manage future crises. While G-20 leaders have increased the resources of the International Monetary Fund, much work remains to restore its legitimacy and independence and to define clearly the Financial Stability Board's mandate to strengthen financial oversight and regulation. The paper critiques proposals for a global super-regulator and concludes that while the global architecture is important, the tests of its success will be fewer government actions to self-insure and the willingness to heed warnings of future problems and take timely corrective actions.     

US Foreign Direct Investment in East Asia: Strategy and Policy Issues

East Asian trade and investment policies have attracted US investment into the region, but these policies should be fine-tuned for the region to compete effectively for US investment inflow and increase their global share of US foreign direct investment. The changes should consider the needs of the US investors and East Asia's own economic development. Bilateral free trade agreements with the US are the likely channel for these changes, but the question is whether East Asia is ready for a comprehensive and deep liberalization. East Asia should work toward a regional investment policy framework to facilitate and expand the regional production network developed by the US foreign direct investment.     

A SEARCH FOR CLOSER ECONOMIC RELATIONS IN EAST ASIA

In recent years, growing interdependence in East Asia through trade and financial cooperation heightened the need for East Asian Economies to engage in closer regional economic relations. This paper attempts to discuss emerging economic integration efforts in East Asia with special reference to bilateral and regional free trade agreements. It discusses backgrounds for recent developments of East Asian regionalism in terms of deepening intraregional economic dependence and financial cooperation, and South Korea's position towards FTAs with major trading partners as well as East Asian economic integration. Important issues and challenges for an East Asian FTA are presented.     

Asia and the Reform of Global Governance

Asia's growing economic weight in the world economy is unlikely to produce substantial changes in global economic governance. National economic capabilities are not easily translated into influence over governance outcomes or institutions. Governments must deploy strategies of engagement with key institutions; incumbent powers will attempt counterstrategies. Coalition-building within and outside the region confronts substantial obstacles that reduce Asia's bargaining leverage. Asian preferences over institutional design and policies are unlikely to diverge from the status quo. A more pessimistic scenario includes resistance to global surveillance, spillover from other issue-areas, and defensive regionalism that undermines global institutions.     

Financial Integration in Emerging Asia: Challenges and Prospects

Using both quantity‐ and price‐based measures of financial integration, the paper shows an increasing degree of financial openness and integration in emerging Asia. Assessing the impact of a regional shock relative to a global shock on local equity and bond markets, the findings suggest that the region's equity markets are integrated more globally than regionally, although the degrees of both regional and global integration have increased significantly since the 1997/1998 Asian financial crisis. However, emerging Asia's local currency bond markets remain generally segmented, being neither regionally nor globally integrated. There are potential benefits from increased regional integration of financial markets. Financial integration at the regional level allows for the region's economies to benefit from allocation efficiency and risk diversification. Policymakers in the region must strike the right balance between maximizing the net benefits from regional and global financial openness, and minimizing the potential costs of financial contagion and crisis.     

中亚国家区域经济合作现状及发展缓慢的原因分析

鉴于对外贸易和区域经济合作对本国经济增长和可持续发展的重要性,中亚五国纷纷发挥各自的自然资源优势,将发展外向型经济和加强对外贸易作为经济发展战略,但总体上说,中亚区域经济合作还较为分散,尚未形成合力。中亚国家政治诉求和经济利益目标不同,相互间贸易量小且投资很少,导致中亚经济体内部经济联系减弱,加之西方大国的利益角逐和对“主权”的敏感性,这些都减缓了中亚区域经济合作的进程。     

Connectivity in East Asia

As Asian economies have become more connected through physical and institutional infrastructure, the region's trade has grown and changed. Intraregional trade has increased its share, in large part through the expansion of trade in intermediates in connection with development of global value chains. At the same time, as part of the same process and as part of the structural transformation that underlies most economic development, the share of services in Asia's trade has risen. Policies that support the development of regional infrastructure and the flow of goods and services, as well as factors of production, can increase the benefits from connectivity. Meanwhile, regional cooperation has a key role to play in mitigating negative impacts that may arise from the vulnerabilities that accompany greater connectivity.     

Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Integration: Developments and Challenges

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed in 1967 for geopolitical reasons, but faced with the competitive threat from the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Single Market, it embarked in 1992 on the ASEAN Free Trade Area in goods, followed by liberalization of services trade and investment flows. A subsequent competitive threat from the rise of China and India led to the ASEAN Economic Community in 2003, targeted at creating a single market and production base and a competitive region with equitable economic development and integrated with the global economy. The ASEAN Economic Community is not quite a common market as it allows for only freer flows of capital and free flows of skilled labor. ASEAN's economic diversity led to difficulties with implementation and the need to narrow the development gap. ASEAN's dependence on global markets and investors led to the emphasis on open regionalism, support of the World Trade Organization, and free trade agreements with its major trade and investment partners.     

American Economic Relations with Asia

The USA and Asia have an enormous stake in each others' continuing prosperity. This outcome is linked to the preservation of the open international economic order, which in turn faces challenges at both the interstate diplomatic level and at the domestic political level. The global financial crisis is probably the worst since the Great Depression and the domestic politics makes it increasingly difficult to formulate a constructive trade policy. In the absence of adequate reform at the global level, the alternative could be further fragmentation into competing regional blocs. Asia holds the key, combining both dissatisfaction with existing global arrangements with the resources to reconstitute, at least at the regional level, an alternative set of institutions and practices. How Asia responds, acting to strengthen reformed global institutions or undermine them in favor of regional alternatives, will partly depend on the policies of the dominant global power, the USA.     

后危机时代的亚洲经济改革与发展——第四届亚洲经济合作与创新论坛综述

在＂后危机时代的改革与发展研讨会暨第四届亚洲经济合作与创新论坛＂上,国内外近百位专家学者深入探讨了此次全球金融危机的原因、危机对经济金融理论发展的影响、后危机时代的亚洲经济合作与创新、环境保护与经济增长等理论和实践问题。     

Free Trade Agreements and the Prospects for Regional Integration in East Asia

Trade policy in East Asia has switched from non-discriminatory unilateral liberalization, reinforced by General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) commitments, to discriminatory free trade agreements (FTA). The paper surveys the FTA activity of the major regional players: China, the ASEAN countries, Japan, and South Korea. It concludes that emerging FTAs are weak and partial. A hub-and-spoke pattern of dirty FTAs will not drive regional economic integration or further integration with the global economy. Rather, it could be a force of regional economic disintegration – especially if the multilateral trading system weakens further. At the same time, FTA activity is distracting attention from the WTO, and, more fundamentally, from unilateral liberalization and domestic structural reforms. Hence, East Asian trade policies need to be rebalanced, with better-quality FTAs and more focus on the WTO. However, more important than the WTO and FTAs is a fresh spurt of unilateral liberalization and structural reform outside trade negotiations.     

Japan and Asian Monetary Regionalisation: Cultivating a New Regional Leadership after the Asian Financial Crisis

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 left many marks in the political economy of Asia, among which is the (re)emergence of Japan's interest in taking a leadership role in defining and strengthening regional monetary cooperation. Japan's new interest stems from its perspective on the causes of, and appropriate solutions to, the Asian crisis, especially in contrast to US-IMF views and responses which directly challenged Japan's economic and ideological interests in the regional economy. A journey to regional monetary leadership for Japan has just started, and it is not going to be an easy one. Much of the fate of Japan's regional monetary leadership hinges on whether or not Japan succeeds in cultivating a constituency among Asian members for its initiatives.     

US Credit Crisis and Spillovers to Asia

We review key highlights of the global credit crisis. We then consider how financial turmoil in the largest advanced economies might be transmitted to East Asia. The focus is on foreign trade links, international capital flows, currency market pressures and mismatches, financial sector fragilities, and countercyclical monetary and fiscal policy actions. We introduce a set of vulnerability indicators and explore whether an ordinal ranking of East Asian economies according to these vulnerability indicators seems to be related to the cross-country differences in estimated slowdowns of economic growth during the crisis. Finally, we discuss how Asian economies might encourage the adoption of a stronger regulatory and supervisory framework in the USA and whether some Asian economies and the USA might pursue a more “balanced” growth strategy after the crisis.     

China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the exports of the developing economies of East Asia: a computable general equilibrium approach

There is a general perception particularly among the developing countries of East Asia that China's WTO membership would spell bad news for their exports. The ASEAN countries in particular are quite concerned about its likely negative impact on their export and growth potentials. In this light, the main objective of this paper is to empirically assess the trade implications of China's WTO membership for these countries. Only few studies, using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach, have addressed the issue of China's WTO membership trade implications. Further, these studies have not adequately addressed the issue from the perspective of the developing countries of East Asia, particularly the ASEAN countries. Using the latest version of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and based on the latest tariff reduction commitments by China, the results showed that, contrary to the current perception and previous studies, almost all of the developing countries of East Asia are likely to benefit from China's WTO membership overall, after allowing for anticipated price adjustments. Without the price adjustments, the Philippines and Singapore would have come out as net losers. These findings have confirmed the need for economic and export restructuring among the ASEAN countries and the importance of accelerating their economic integration. They have also highlighted the importance of promoting trade and investment cooperation between China and ASEAN countries.     

基于中国东盟自由贸易发展的金融体系构建

现代贸易的发展建立在高效运作的金融体系基础之上,从分析金融体系对贸易发展的支撑作用入手,结合中国东盟区域金融发展的现状,分析存在的问题,从宏观经济合作机制、区域金融市场建立、汇率制度合作、金融监管和救助等方面提出构建中国东盟区域金融体系的设想。     

亚洲金融区域主义的政治逻辑

本文探讨了"合法性"与"权力"在金融区域主义方面的因果效应。当前以G7为主导的全球体制中合法性的明显缺失和国家间权力格局的变化影响了东亚的政策决策。东亚国家寻求"抗衡性"的战略,也即在保持着与以G7为中心的全球金融体制合作关系的情况下,通过发展自身的区域性制度(或其他潜在方案)以避免对前者的过度依赖。上述观察意味着,除非现存全球金融体制解决了合法性问题,并且当前(有利于东亚的)权力转移发生逆转,亚洲新兴经济体不会将应对国际金融问题的全部希望寄于全球性的解决方案。     

自由贸易的形成及其在东亚的发展趋势

2003年12月12日,日本与东盟10国发表了旨在加强日本与东盟各国经济、政治和安全关系的《东京宣言》和《行动计划》,并首次提出了建立东亚共同体的概念。这次峰会预示着日本同东盟的区域经济关系将出现新的飞跃,是东亚自由贸易区发展进程中值得关注的新动向。本文从区域经济一体化的类型入手,深入探讨了WTO框架下自由贸易区在全球的发展状况及其原因,指出日本对东亚区域经济合作战略和方针的调整是东亚自由贸易区发展进程中值得关注的新动向,对东亚经济一体化进程将产生深远影响。     

中国对东亚经济合作的影响——基于中国地区能力结构差异以及与东亚其他国家的匹配性

基于贸易引力模型、相互依赖理论以及“支配-依附”理论，研究能力结构对区域经济合作的影响，通过对中国地区能力结构的差异分析和东亚其他国家能力结构的评价，说明中国能与东亚不同能力结构的国家开展持续稳定的经济合作，并通过实证予以证实。中国能够对东亚区域经济合作的持续性和稳定性发挥重要作用，中国的参与是东亚经济合作的“稳定器”。     

基于消费风险分担模型的中国——东盟金融合作程度的实证分析

自中国-东盟自由贸易区建成以来,中国与东盟的经贸联系日益加强,金融合作也取得了实质性的进展。本文运用衡量金融合作程度的主要方法——消费风险分担模型,对中国与东盟国家1999年-2010年的相关数据进行实证分析,得出中国与东盟金融合作程度较低,尤其是资本市场一体化程度尚处于初级阶段的结论,并对其成因进行解析,以期能够为进一步加强彼此合作提供参考。