This book is a history of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development bank established 50 years ago to serve Asia and the Pacific. Focusing on the region’s economic development, the evolution of the international development agenda, and the story of ADB itself, this book raises several key questions: What are the outstanding features of regional development to which ADB had to respond? How has the bank grown and evolved in changing circumstances? How did ADB’s successive leaders promote reforms while preserving continuity with the efforts of their predecessors? ADB has played an important role in the transformation of Asia and the Pacific the past 50 years. As ADB continues to evolve and adapt to the region’s changing development landscape, the experiences highlighted in this book can provide valuable insight on how best to serve Asia and the Pacific in the future.

East Asian countries are now pursuing greater formal economic institutionalization, weaving a web of bilateral and minilateral preferential trade agreements. Scholarly analysis of “formal” East Asian regionalism focuses on international political and economic factors such as the end of the Cold War, the Asian financial crisis, or the rising Sino-Japanese rivalry. Yet this work pays inadequate attention to the strategies of individual government agencies, business groups, labor unions, and NGOs across the region. Moreover, most studies also fail to adequately characterize different types of trade arrangements, often lumping together bilateral accords with minilateral ones, and transregional agreements with those within the region. To fully understand this cross-national variance, this book argues that researchers must give greater attention to the domestic politics within East Asian countries and the U.S., involving the interplay of these subnational players. With contributions from leading country and regional trade specialists, this book examines East Asian and American trade strategies through the lens of a domestic bargaining game approach with a focus on the interplay of interests, ideas, and domestic institutions within the context of broader international shifts. With respect to domestic politics, the chapters show how subnational actors engage in lobbying, both of their own governments and through their links to others in the region. They also trace the evolution of interests and ideas over time, helping us to generate a better understanding of historical trends in the region. In addition to scholars of East Asian and comparative regionalism, this book will be of interest to policy-makers concerned with international trade and U.S.-Asia relations, and those interested in understanding the rich trade institutional landscape that we see emerging in the Asia-Pacific.

This book provides a multifaceted analysis of the so-called US 'rebalance' (or 'pivot') toward Asia by focusing on the diplomatic, military, and economic dimensions of the American policy shift in the Asia Pacific region.

The Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) conference series has been at the forefront of analysing challenges facing the economies of East Asia and the Pacific since its first meeting in Tokyo in January 1968. The 38th PAFTAD conference met at a key time to consider international economic integration. Earlier in the year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump as their next president on the back of an inward-looking ‘America First’ promise. Brexit and President Trump represent a growing, and worrying, trend towards protectionism in the North Atlantic countries that have led the process of globalisation since the end of the Second World War. The chapters in the volume describe the state of play in Asian economic integration but, more importantly, look forward to the region’s future, and the role it might play in defending the global system that has underwritten its historic rise. Asia has the potential to stand as a bulwark against the dual threats of North Atlantic protectionism and slowing trade growth, but collective leadership will be needed regionally and difficult domestic reforms will be required in each country.

East Asian economic integration is on the rise. In the past decade, all of the region's powers have begun negotiating free trade agreements with their neighbors. They are also exploring broader regional options, such as the creation of an East Asian summit or free trade area. These developments have not always been welcomed by observers in other parts of the world. Some fear that they mark a turn away from integration into the global economy and herald the emergence of a closed, inward-looking bloc. In this timely and important book, Naoko Munakata offers an alternative perspective, based on her experience as an economic official and trade negotiator over the past 20 years. East Asian integration, she argues, is not driven by defensiveness or anti-Western sentiment. Instead, it reflects pragmatic calculations of economic interest, as well as a desire for mutual trust and a sense of community. Munakata makes her case by analyzing developments in the region since the mid-1980s, highlighting such important factors as the evolution of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the impact of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and the rise of China. She also outlines possible future scenarios for the region and offers policy prescriptions for building on regionalism's achievements to date. Over the coming decades, the rise of China, its relationship with Japan, and the institutional arrangements that bind those countries to the United States and the countries of East and Southeast Asia will become critical factors in the global balance of power. Transforming East Asia is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots of this transformation.

Eighteen papers from a June 1996 conference on China and the Asian Pacific Economy held in Brisbane, Australia--presented here in revised form--consider the possible future roles of the Chinese economy in the Asia Pacific region. The contributions place the Chinese economy in the context of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process, and propose that the integration of the economies of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (the so-called Greater China phenomenon) has resulted in a Chinese emphasis on the northern part of APEC. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"This book assembles papers that were produced under a three year collaborative research program on 'China and APEC' undertaken by the AustraliaJapan Research Centre, in the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Management at The Australian National University and the APEC Policy Research Center, in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. ... The work on this project and the papers in the volume provide a base for developing ideas that could be helpful to the policy agenda for APEC 2001."--Preface.