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Regionalism and East Asian economic integration



Author(s)

YANG Pei-lei

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DOI:10.17265/1537-1514/2008.11.001

School of International Business Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China

The wave of economic globalization moves to all the countries in the world to be integrated with multilateralism and by promotion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO). Meanwhile, the growth of regional economic integration has been one of the major developments in international economic relations, and undoubtedly regionalism is a part of the global economic environment. The objective of the paper is to review the trends and highlight the prospects for enhancing economic integration in East Asia. This paper has argued that the emerging East Asian economies have achieved sustained economic development and poverty reduction through domestic structural, institutional and governance reforms as well as through market-driven integration with the global and regional markets. Though this process was temporarily interrupted by the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998, the economies have pursued further liberalization and reforms, deepened economic integration through trade, FDI and finance, and regained dynamic growth. The author argues that the reasonable choice for Eastern Asian countries is to deepen their economic integration and the optimal strategy is fostering economic integration with institutional cooperation.

East Asia; Economic Integration Area (EIA); regionalism; multilateralism