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.