Economic Integration

Abstract

Writing in 1992, Larry Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, drew the world’s attention to the take-off of the Chinese economy in the 1980s, which, he believed, may prove to be the most important economic development of the decade.1 The rise of China as an economic power in East Asia has increasingly become a topical subject for many economists concerned with development economics and for political scientists interested in East Asia and the Pacific rim. Both the IMF and the World Bank have revised their wisdom and claimed that the Chinese economy has already become either the second or the third largest in the world, just after the United States, or the United States and Japan. Recent studies identify China as the leading Pacific economy, and a report by PECC (Pacific Economic Cooperation Council) experts in 1994 characterised the Chinese economy as the engine of growth for the Asia-Pacific region in the years leading up to the twenty-first century. China, it is claimed, has become the fourth growth pole of the world economy after the United States, the European Community and Japan.2KeywordsForeign Direct InvestmentForeign TradeChinese EconomyAsian Development BankInternational Capital MarketThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.