East Asian trade: pattern and prospects

Abstract

A lot has been said about the success of the East Asian economies in terms of their growth performance. Based on a historical perspective, Japan started the region's growth after the World War II, followed by the four "tigers": Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Then, the three newly industrialized countries in the ASEAN economies (Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand) followed suit. In a recent wave, China joined the bandwagon, and Vietnam is preparing herself to join the rank. The whole growth momentum which brought the East Asian region closer together has infected South Asia also which in the near future is expected to bring the two regions together. This whole episode could well be termed as the work of "economic domino's theory". The interesting characteristic of the East Asian growth is that it has been growing at an impressive rate for some time despite the fact that other regions were experiencing some setbacks (some were in recession, some were slow in recovery). From Table 1, we can see that the growth of the East Asian countries in the 1970s and 1980s had been relatively high (despite some slow-down in 1980s due to world-wide recession and slow recovery of major economies in the world) and with a few exception, these rates surpassed the average world growth and those of the United States, Australia and New Zealand.