This book asks whether a regional international society exists in East Asia and why its existence matters to both regional and global orders.

China’s trade patterns are evolving. While it started in light manufacturing and the assembly of more sophisticated products as part of global supply chains, China is now moving up the value chain, “onshoring” the production of higher-value-added upstream products and moving into more sophisticated downstream products as well. At the same time, with its wages rising, it has started to exit some lower-end, more labor-intensive sectors. These changes are taking place in the broader context of China’s rebalancing—away from exports and toward domestic demand, and within the latter, away from investment and toward consumption—and as a consequence, demand for some commodity imports is slowing, while consumption imports are slowly rising. The evolution of Chinese trade, investment, and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbors in the Mekong region. Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV) are all open economies that are highly integrated with China. Rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region, but at the same time, the CLMV’s low labor costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. Labor costs, however, are only part of the story. The CLMV will need to strengthen their infrastructure, education, governance, and trade regimes, and also run sound macro policies in order to capitalize fully on the opportunities presented by China’s transformation. With such policy efforts, the CLMV could see their trade and integration with global supply chains grow dramatically in the coming years.

This book traces the impact of the global financial crisis on East Asia, and the way that key regional states responded to the crisis. It considers the extent to which the region is decoupling from the global economy (or the West), the impact of crises on the definition of "region", and the effectiveness and functioning of regional institutions and governance mechanisms (including environmental governance). A key focus of the book is the increasing legitimacy of statist alternatives to (neo)liberal development strategies and modes of governance – or perhaps more correctly, the extent to which the legitimacy of "western" norms and practices have been delegitimized by the crisis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics

This book provides new perspectives on recent Asian dynamism which go beyond the mainstream views, by attempting to situate the recent economic expansion within a broader analysis of capitalist accumulation and the various processes that it generates both within and across economies. The contributions in the book include analyses of recent growth patterns in both China and India; assessments of the sustainability of such growth and potential constraints and pitfalls; the role of international finance in affecting both national and international growth and employment patterns; the factors determining particular accumulation strategies and the results of these strategies. These forces within the two economies of China and India are situated within a broader assessment of the impacts on the world economy, by identifying long run tendencies in international capitalism and changing patterns of uneven development. Specific issues emerging within the Asian region are identified, including not just the relations between the three large Asian economies, but also the wider geopolitical implications as well as the political economy of these changes. This book therefore provides a more comprehensive examination of the longer run dynamics of the global capitalist system in which these economies are necessarily destined to play more significant roles in future.

China's rapid and sustained growth over last thirty years has propelled it to become the world's second largest economy today and potentially the largest in the foreseeable future. As one of the first major economies pulling out of recession and the last remaining major socialist country in the world today, China presents a challenge to established thinking on the essential primacy of global capitalism and the settled nature of the world system - as China becomes more integrated into the world economy and the international system, both are themselves potentially transformed as a result of China’s involvement. This book explores a wide range of issues connected with the impact of China on the global economy and the prevailing international system. Subjects covered include China’s multinationals, international acquisitions, the exchange rate, research and development and technology transfer, China’s emerging major business groupings, and small and medium sized enterprises.

A Brookings Institution Press and Asian Development Bank publication In this collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the Asian Development Bank Institute, eminent international economists examine the increased influence of Asian nations in the governance of global economic affairs, from the changing role of the G-20 to the reform of multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. Established in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis at the ministerial level, the G-20 has served as a high-level platform for discussing economic analyses and policy responses since 1999. During the current global financial crisis, however, the G-20's role moved toward that of a global crisis management committee at the leadership level. The challenge now for the G-20 is to succeed in fostering ongoing and increasing cooperation among its members while being supportive of, rather than trying to replace, more universal institutions. After analyzing the dynamics of growth in Asia comparatively and historically, the volume appraises the scope for policy coordination among key economies. The contributors analyze financial stability in emerging Asia and then assess the implications of Asia's increasing role within the newly emerging system of global economic governance, focusing especially on reform of the international monetary structure. Contributors: Dony Alex (ICRIER, New Delhi), Kemal Dervis¸ (Brookings), Hasan Ersel (Sabanci University), Karim Foda (Brookings), Yiping Huang (Peking University), Masahiro Kawai (ADBI), Rajiv Kumar (FICCI, New Delhi), Domenico Lombardi(Oxford University and Brookings), José Antonio Ocampo (Columbia University),Jim O'Neill (Goldman Sachs)

Written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Piero Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, the papers selected and contained in Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory account for the work completed around the two central aspects of his contribution to economic analysis, namely the criticism of the neoclassical (or marginalist) theory of value and distribution, and the reconstruction of economic theory along the lines of the Classical approach. Divided into three volumes, Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory debates the most fruitful routes for advancement in this field and their implications for applied and policy analysis. This second volume focuses on the theory of output and growth as developed in the modern classical approach on the basis of the extension to the long run of the Keynesian principle of effective demand, and on the implications of the revival of the classical approach for policy analysis and for understanding the evolution of the international economic order in the last few decades.