Asia-Pacific security in the context of global economic crisis

The world crisis and its impact on Asian regional integration and economic security

The issue of Asia's regional integration has been concretely present at least since the mid-1980s. Neo-liberal economic policies, associated with the Reagan-Thatcher era, created an intra-Asian race for FDI. A sudden increase occurred in transpacific and intra-Asian trade for industrial and consumer goods. From these spontaneous developments, regional integration arrived on the policy agenda when Japan and Australia put forward the concept of APEC in the late 1980s. For Japan the move towards regional integration was a question of evading protectionist pressures and "Japan-bashing" from the United States, and MITI supported it over objections by MOFA in the name of the U.S.-Japan alliance. For Australia it was a vital reorientation of its economic interests towards Asia, led by Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans, who were active in many other Asian issues such as the international settlement of the Cambodia conflict. In a sense, China was always on board the integration process throughout this period, at least from the point of view of concrete economic exchange: it had developed its own "special economic zone" concept since 1979, and by the mid-1980s the amount of FDI going to China had already exceeded post-war amounts to South Korea or Taiwan.....Click here for more.

This paper was issues by the Institute for National Policy Research (Taiwan) for the Asia-Pacific Security Forum 2009.