East Asia

About: East Asia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 17591 publications have been published within this topic receiving 274073 citations. The topic is also known as: Eastern Asia.

The impact of China's WTO accession on East Asia

Abstract: China's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession will have major implications for China and present both opportunities and challenges for East Asia. Ianchovichina and Walmsley assess the possible channels through which China's accession to the WTO could affect East Asia and quantify these effects using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. China will be the biggest beneficiary of accession, followed by the industrial and newly industrializing economies (NIEs) in East Asia. But their benefits are small relative to the size of their economies and to the vigorous growth projected to occur in the region over the next 10 years. By contrast, developing countries in East Asia are expected to incur small declines in real GDP and welfare as a result of China's accession, mainly because with the elimination of quotas on Chinese textile and apparel exports to industrial countries China will become a formidable competitor in areas in which these countries have comparative advantage. With WTO accession China will increase its demand for petrochemicals, electronics, machinery, and equipment from Japan and the NIEs, and farm, timber, energy products, and other manufactures from the developing countries in East Asia. New foreign investment is likely to flow into these expanding sectors. The overall impact on foreign investment is likely to be positive in the NIEs, but negative for the less developed East Asian countries as a result of the contraction of these economies' textile and apparel sector. As China becomes a more efficient supplier of services or a more efficient producer of high-end manufactures, its comparative advantage will shift into higher-end products. This is good news for the poor developing economies in East Asia, but it implies that the impact of China's WTO accession on the NIEs may change to include heightened competition in global markets.

APEC adrift: implications for economic regionalism in Asia and the Pacific

Abstract: APEC’s lack of success in securing tangible benefits in its first decade has particularly disappointed its ‘Western’ members. Its failures stem primarily from three weaknesses: a lack of consensus over its objectives and how these might best be realized; the absence of an institutionalized driving force for the grouping; and a failure to engage with civil society. APEC’s shortcomings have put at risk what is arguably its most significant achievement: the annual meetings that bring together leaders from around the Pacific Rim. Modest changes to organizational procedures might enhance APEC’s prospects – especially if its efforts are concentrated in trade facilitation and economic and technical cooperation rather than on trade liberalization. Such a change in direction would not only return APEC to its roots but also be in accord with the priorities of East Asian governments.

Redefining second modernity for East Asia: a critical assessment

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to critically assess the extent to which the concept of second modernity and reflexive modernization proposed by Beck and Grande is relevant to East Asia. Concepts such as driving forces, human agency, objective-structural versus cultural-discursive dimensions, radicalizing versus deficiencies aspects of modernity, push versus pull factors are used to clarify the basic conditions of this historical transformation. Utilizing these conceptual schemes, this paper has advanced the following central claims: 1) Second modernity and reflexive modernization, as a global trend, affects East Asia as deeply as it does in the West, especially when we see this as a structurally conditioned historical transformation; 2) Global risks, as a driving force of second modernity, are more relevant in East Asia because, as a result of the side-effects of the rush-to development, East Asian countries face complex risks of far greater intensity than in the West; 3) The action-mediated pull factor of second-modern transformation in East Asia, expressed through the cultural-discursive articulation of collective desire and aspiration, differs significantly from the West. Consequently, the East Asian pathways to individualization display distinctive characteristics despite the common structural background where push factors operate; 4) East Asia also differs from the West in terms of the normative vision anchored in second modernity; 5) Nevertheless, concrete pathways to second modernity within East Asia differ from one country to another.

Central Asia in World History

Abstract: A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, and focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.