Regionalisation, Regionalism and East Asian Economic Cooperation

• Date: 01 March 1994
• Author: Colin Kirkpatrick
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.1994.tb00818.x
• Published date: 01 March 1994

Regionalisation, Regionalism and

East Asian Economic Cooperation

Colin

Kirkpat

rick

1.

INTRODUCTION

striking feature of international economic relations over the past decade has

been the growing economic strength and importance of the market economies

of East Asia. The remarkable growth performance of the East Asian countries has

been accompanied by a significant increase in mutual interdependence among the

constituent economies, through regional trade and investment flows.

The rapid regionalisation of trade and investment flows has in turn fuelled

interest in closer regional economic cooperation. Although the idea of Asian

economic cooperation is not new

-

the Association of South East Asian Nations

(ASEAN) was established in

1967,

and the semi-official Pacific Economic

Cooperation Conference (PECC) began in

1980

-

the process has accelerated in

recent years, with several important initiatives aimed at encouraging East Asian

regionalism. In early

1992

the proposal for an ASEAN Free Trade Area, with a

common external tariff to be introduced within a fifteen year period, was

adopted. In the same year, the members

of

the Asia-Pacific Economic

Cooperation (APEC) group agreed to the establishment of a permanent

secretariat, in Singapore, to support Asia-Pacific trade cooperation.

These moves towards closer economic cooperation between the countries

of

East Asia

-

which in this paper consists of Japan, the newly industrialising

economies

of

Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and five members of the

Association of South East Asia Nations (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the

Philippines and Thailand)

-

need to be seen as part of a global revival of

regionally based trading arrangements, increasingly referred to as the ‘new

COLIN KIRKPATRICK is from the Development and Project Planning Centre, University of

Bradford. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the UK Association

of

Southeast Asian

Studies Association Conference, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, March

1993.

The final version

was written whilst the author was a Visiting Fellow at the Department

of

Economics and

Management, University College, University

of

New South Wales, Canberra, whose hosptiality

and support is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, he wishes to thank the anonymous referees

for

helpful comments in revising the paper.

0

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