• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-79
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• 2013

The objective of this article is to explore the economic relationship between China and the surrounding dynamic Asian economies. It delves into China's influence over the Asian economies and whether this relationship is a market-led or de facto symbiosis. The three principal channels of regional integration analyzed in this article are trade, FDI and vertically integrated production networks. They are essentially based on the activities of the private-sector in these economies. China methodically expanded and deepened its economic ties with the regional neighbors. At the present juncture, China's integration with the surrounding Asia is deep. Another issue that this article explores is the so-called China "threat" or "fear" in Asia. It implies that China is crowding out exports of the other Asian economies in the world market place. Also, as China has become the most attractive FDI destination among the developing countries, it is apprehended that China is receiving FDI at the expense of the Asian economies. These concerns were examined by several empirical studies, and the inference is that they are exaggerated. This article concludes that the private-sector business activities in China and other rapidly growing Asian economies were (and are) instrumental in bringing together the production structures and real economies. The result is both convergence and integration among the dynamic Asian economies. Over the years China and its Asian neighbors has developed a close and symbiotic economic relationship and a de facto regional integration.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.385-415
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• 2013

Inter-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) - notably between Asia and Latin America - are growing in numbers and complexity. There is an absence of an agreed methodology for empirical assessments on the content of FTAs and little research. This paper proposes a framework to assess liberalization in FTAs in goods and services and new trade policy issues relating to regulatory barriers. Next, it applies this framework to studying the 22 Asia-Latin America FTAs in existence. The findings suggest that Asia-Latin American FTAs have laid the foundations for inter-regional integration by liberalizing the trade in goods and services and reducing some regulatory barriers. Deepening FTAs and adopting structural reforms will enhance Asia-Latin American integration in the future.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-65
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• 2016

This research intends to investigate the progress made in East Asian bond market integration thus far. Price-based measures (AAD indicator and beta-convergence measure), quantity-based measures and econometric techniques (co-integration test, error correction model based Granger causality test) are employed in the analysis. Even though East Asian government bond markets have become more integrated since 2001, the differentials among the markets still remain significantly high. The bond market integration process seems slow. The convergence of bond markets sped up in 2003 and after the 2008 world financial crisis, implying the important role of government policies in integrating the regional bond markets. East Asian bond market integration may need more government-directed measures.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.177-202
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• 2003

Balassian Approach of regional economic integration has been mainly aimed at improving conditions for regional trade since 1960s. After the financial crises of the late 1990s, however, the theoretical approach to regional integration will have to be a different one as regionalism have to offer enhanced protection against crises. The aim of this paper, above all, is to provide a theoretical framework for the emerging new monetary regionalism. Regions that wish to strengthen their co-operation in monetary and financial affairs today have the option of monetary regionalism without trade agreement. East Asian region will become an increasingly important domain within which to explore enhanced protection against financial crises. And as Korea seems to play a crucial role in building regional integration among ASEAN＋3(Korea, China and Japan) countries, alternative policy for Korean economy to be the North-east Asian Economic Base need to be schemed on the basis of Balassian as well as monetary regionalism.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2005

In this paper uses Kaname Akamatsu's 'Flying Geese' model to analyse Japan's role in East Asian integration. Japan made the first attempt to lead Asian countries before the Second World War. At that time, the Japanese Government embarked on a brutally expansionist policy the result of which was creation of the first gaggle of 'flying geese' under the name of the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.' During the 'flight' Japan was forcefully imposing its own ideals and values on the rest of the 'gaggle.' At the same time, the Japanese Government assumed hostile attitude toward Western countries. Japan's defeat in the Second World War signified the end of flight for the first 'flying geese' gaggle. After the war, Japan made another attempt at regional integration. This time it was done through establishing a production network in East Asia. Thus the second gaggle of 'flying geese' came into existence. During the flight of the 'second gaggle' of geese, Japan was fostering good ties with Western countries as well, especially the United States. However, some leaders of the 'second gaggle's' member-countries emboldened by their countries' economic success proclaimed that future belongs to Asia and put forward the 'Asian values' argument. The Asian economic crisis of 1997 interrupted the flight of the 'second gaggle' and effectively put an end to the 'Asian values' debate. It is interesting to note that some elements of the 'Asian values' argument resembled ultranationalist discourse that had been dominant in Japan before and during the Second World War. This paper compares historical patterns of East Asian regional integration and highlights future challenges for Japan's Asia policy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.361-383
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• 2013

We find that institutional quality of an individual country was highly and significantly correlated with its economic performance in the euro area. We argue that governance reforms proposed at present do not suffice to resolving the fundamental problems of the EMU governance system unless disparities of institutional quality in member states are dissolved. Regarding regional integration, East Asia is far behind the Eurozone not only in institutional elements of the governance system but also in institutional quality at the level of individual nations.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.129-168
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• 2016

The Asia-Pacific region is not typically seen as one geographic or socio-economic space. Yet, 58 regional economies occupying the space of 28 million square kilometers from Turkey in the West, Russian Federation in the North, French Polynesia in the East and New Zealand in the South belong to the Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). This commission provides a forum for member states that "promotes regional cooperation and collective action, assisting countries in building and sustaining shared economic growth and social equity". In 2013, ESCAP's members adopted the Bangkok Declaration to enhance efforts towards deeper regional economic integration. Yet this document neither proposes a concrete modality or modalities of achieving deeper integration, nor provides a sense of distance of individual countries to a "perceived" integrated Asia-Pacific.This paper aims to comprehensively quantify recent integration efforts of economies in the Asia-Pacific region. We provide an "index of integration effort" based on twelve metrics that measure the relative distance of a given economy to the region as an economic entity. Generally, we find that while the region has trended towards becoming integrated in general, both the level of integration and integration effort are inconsistent among Asia-Pacific economies. We discuss potential applications and extensions of the index in developing our perspective of the region's economic and social dynamics.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.303-325
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• 2023

This paper examines how APEC has transformed itself into an international forum for the vision of regional integration. It aims to quantify the documentation produced by the international organization and provide quantifiable evidence that aligns with prior knowledge rather than relying solely on intuition. For this purpose, I use various text mining techniques to extract multi-dimensional features from the text of APEC Leaders' Declarations from 1993 to 2023. In terms of interest and expectations for APEC as a forum, it is found that members have experienced two major peaks and troughs over the last three decades. It is found that the change point coincides with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the tensions between the United States and China since 2017. To explore more various aspects of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region, this study also considers how consistently APEC has been an international forum for addressing issues, which members are active, and how members have clustered based on their views of APEC.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2019

Asian countries have been striving for economic integration for decades. This effort may lead to the convergence of income level through externalities across countries. This paper investigates whether the convergence phenomenon holds for income levels in Asian countries for the periods between 1975-2015 applying the traditional methodology of ${\sigma}-$ and ${\beta}-convergence$. Although the absolute ${\beta}-convergence$ of income levels in Asian and ASEAN+3 countries do hold, ${\sigma}-convergence$ and conditional ${\beta}-convergence$ of income level generally do not exist. This suggests that the benefits of economic integration in Asian countries were not yet realized to be significant. A plausible explanation is that the economies of Asian countries are largely based on low trade openness and a high level of informal economy.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2017

The aim of the study is to assess the asymmetry of influence of factors of economic growth of national economies, which are included in the integration. Unlike previous research, the scientific significance of the obtained results consists in the use of a new method of study - external demand as a factor of economic growth, disaggregated into two components. The first is net exports mutual trade in goods within integration associations. The second is net exports of foreign trade in goods outside the integration. By use of these methods we have evaluated the contribution of these factors on economic growth of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space (CU/CES), as well as Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. In the conducted analysis of scientific research was based on the fact that the economies of the member (CU/CES) are very different in scale, economic potential and volume of foreign trade. Based on this research we conclude: integration is developing successfully and efficiently only with the rise of the national economies of the member countries; to enhance economic growth and competitiveness of the countries of the Eurasian integration it is necessary to increase the volume of mutual trade of member countries of this integration.