This comprehensive Handbook provides an in-depth analysis of the nature of East Asian economic integration alongside thoughtful insights into contemporary issues, such as agricultural development, structural transformation and East Asian trade, alongside skills and human capital development policies of ASEAN. Contributors also provide detailed explanations on trade, poverty and Aid for Trade, institutional reforms, regulatory reform and measuring integration.

'This book offers a fascinating exploration of the contradictions of East Asian economic integration: a topic of enormous contemporary significance to observers of world political and economic affairs. The collection provides an unusually rigorous and systematic treatment of this important topic, drawing on contributions from an impressive array of experts. It will provide a valuable resource for students, scholars and other observers seeking deeper understanding of the contemporary dynamics and challenges of East Asian integration.' - Kate MacDonald, University of Melbourne, Australia 'East Asia is a crucial part of the global economy. This book analyses three key elements of East Asian economic integration: trade, investment and international finance. The authors are leading experts in their fields. Their book represents an important addition to the literature on a subject of fundamental importance both regionally and globally.' - Bradly J. Condon, ITAM, Mexico City This book analyses recent developments and likely future paths for trade and financial integration in East Asia. It suggests a more coherent, balanced way forward for regional economic integration and analyses implications for institution building in East Asia. East Asia has achieved a high degree of intra-regional trade, investment and GDP correlation, through an expanding web of free trade agreements and production networks. However, financially, most regional economies are linked more closely to North America and Europe than to each other. As trade integration has accelerated, financial and monetary integration has not kept pace. East Asian Economic Integration analyses potential reasons and remedies for this phenomenon through a multidisciplinary framework of law, politics and economics. This comprehensive book will appeal to researchers and students in political science, international relations, trade law, international finance law, and regional studies generally. It will also be of great interest to regional

A Brookings Institution Press and the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (Japan) publication 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.

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.

The growth of world trade has been stagnant in recent times; trade liberalisation now has been challenged. The recent rise of anti-globalisation calls for a better integration in East Asia. How should East Asia manage its openness? This book provides profound analyses on rules of origins, non-tariff measures, restrictiveness in services and investment. It gives insight into how East Asian countries should shape its trade, investment and industrial policies. This book helps to answer what kind of a better integration it should be, and how East Asia can realise it.

For more than half a century, East Asia has been the most dynamic and resilient economic region in the world. Following Japan's success in its post-World War Two reconstruction and industrialisation, a good number of East Asian economies flourished. The latest and the most extraordinary case is that of China's rapid economic development. As the largest economy in the region, China pledged to play a leading role in promoting regional economic prosperity. China's economic relations with its East Asian neighbours have been complex and have nonetheless grown in strength. This edited volume examines China's key economic relations and efforts in participating and promoting economic globalisation, as well as the overall development of East Asian economic integration.This book focuses on China's importance and efforts in East Asian economic integration by examining the changing patterns of the growing East Asian production network, reviewing the process and achievement of China's efforts in internationalising its currency and evaluating the efforts to internationalise Chinese firms. It elaborates China's economic relations with individual neighbouring East Asian economies such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, ASEAN, Korea and Japan. It discusses the political economy aspect of East Asian economic integration and describes the origins and processes of East Asian economic integration from the Flying Geese model to the numerous free trade arrangements involving the region.

International production networks in manufacturing, particularly in machinery industries, have rapidly developed over the last two decades, resulting in dramatic increases in intra-regional and intra-industry trade, providing a key source of regional growth, integration and development in East Asia. This book provides a better understanding on how to effectively further increase SME participation in East Asian production networks, and in doing so identifies key challenges and issues that they need to address. This book aims to not only fill the theory-practice gap, but also to lay solid foundations for designing national arrangements and a regional institutional frameworks to further encourage and support SME engagement and participation in regional and global production networks. The book contains several country case studies and by drawing upon individual country experiences, at various stages of economic development, this book demonstrates the varying difficulty faced by SMEs in ASEAN member countries attempting to participate in regional production networks and highlighting differences in needs and policy priorities. This book offers both a more focused theme on the assessment of globalization and a rather unique approach by focusing upon the particular importance of SMEs, and by utilizing micro-level data at the firm or plant level. Its policy insights and the richness and uniqueness of the empirical findings will make the book an invaluable contribution to understanding East Asian production networks.