A Chinese Renaissance in an Unremittingly Integrating Regional Economy

Abstract

The vertiginous GDP growth rate of China has been having major ramifications for leading industrial economies, which have been assessing what it will mean for them. However, this process of calculation will be most serious, if not frenzied, in China’s immediate neighborhood because both the national and regional economies in Asia will have to bear the principal brunt of China’s rapid growth. Owing to its economy’s size, its openness and rapidity of its GDP growth, China is certain to sway the growth trajectories of the neighboring Asian economies as well as that of the regional economy. When a significant-size economy is growing almost three times as rapidly as the global economy, the neighboring economies cannot possibly be expected to remain impervious. The question whether China’s rapid growth should be seen as a menace to the regional economies or as an opportunity has been frequently posed in the national and regional fora. Whether individual regional economies will be squeezed out or all the boats will rise due to the tidal wave created by China’s rapid economic expansion is a wholly legitimate concern of the public-policy-making community. The ongoing liberalization of the financial and external sectors in China has been manifestly influencing the Asian economies, many of which are rapidly growing high-performing economies in their own right.