Asia-Pacific Integration Research Articles

Industrial policy in Asia-Pacific integration: localization measures and subsidies in ASEAN countries

ABSTRACT As part of Asia-Pacific regionalism, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is in the process of establishing a single market. ASEAN member states conduct their industrial policies on their own but are also guided by the ASEAN legal framework. Having once been in the mainstream of government economic interventions, localization measures still continue to be in use in this region and today affect not only manufacturing but also data-reliant industries, erecting barriers to the advancement of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Southeast Asian countries, like many others, have widely utilized various forms of subsidies as a means of promoting domestic industries. Because of their trade-distortive effects, localization measures and subsidies are disciplined by the World Trade Organization. With the focus on ASEAN member states, this article discusses localization and subsidy issues as addressed under trade rules and outlines some tasks for the ASEANization of industrial policies to deepen regional integration and strengthen ASEAN’s unity.

Study on the Prospects for the Development of China, Japan and Korea Economic and Trade Cooperation under RCEP

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, global trade and economic activities have been severely harmed, and changes in the global economic and trade landscape have accelerated. The dramatic reduction in global trade volumes and the development of global industrial chains have been hampered and even partially disrupted, leading to a new wave of “deglobalisation”. Against this backdrop, the signing of RCEP, the largest FTA in the Asia-Pacific region, demonstrates the region’s confidence and determination to uphold the multilateral trading system, build an open economy, promote the Asia-Pacific integration process, and stabilize the global economy. For a long time, China’s economic trade and interests have been tightly intertwined with those of Japan and Korea. By 2020, the combined GDP of the East Asian economic circle represented by China, Japan, and Korea will have surpassed that of the United States, and the global economic center will be shifting to Asia. The RCEP, the first FTA signed by China, Japan, and Korea, creates new opportunities for trade cooperation, industrial chain optimization, and FTA construction in the three countries, but it also increases competition among the three. However, it also introduces potential issues for the three countries, such as the impact on related industries following the opening up and international currency competition. As the world undergoes an unprecedented change in a century, the three countries should strengthen multilateral trade cooperation under the RCEP framework, follow the trend of global economic integration, and contribute to the global economy’s sustainable and healthy development.

Mental health and integration in Asia Pacific.

This brief report examines the extent to which community-based treatment and integration support are provided for people living with mental illness across 15 selected Asia-Pacific economies. Some of the key findings are discussed in light of the diversity of economies and cultural contexts.

Развитие Дальнего Востока России в условиях интенсификации интеграционных процессов в АТР

Развитие Дальнего Востока России в условиях интенсификации интеграционных процессов в АТР

The economic impact of the Trans‐Pacific Partnership: What have we learned from CGE simulation?

AbstractThe Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, if were it to be successfully implemented, would be one of the largest regional agreements ever seen. It is the only exemplar to date of a “mega‐regional” FTA for which negotiations have been successfully concluded, and a landmark in evolving approaches to Asia–Pacific integration. As such, quantitative assessments of its potential effects are of considerable interest. One of the most widely used techniques for evaluating the economic impact of regional trading agreements is numerical simulation with computable general equilibrium, or CGE, models. There have now been a large number of papers written that use CGE methods to analyse the potential economic impact of the TPP agreement under varying theoretical and policy assumptions. In this paper we provide a synthesis of the key results that have emerged from the literature, and introduce some new simulation results of our own to anchor the discussion.

Перспективы интеграции российского дальнего востока в атр в условиях современного кризиса системы международных отношений

Перспективы интеграции российского дальнего востока в атр в условиях современного кризиса системы международных отношений

Siberia and the Far East in the Asia-Pacific Integration Processes with Regard to Economic Sanctions Against Russia

The article discusses the role of Siberia and Far East regions in the integration process in the Asia-Pacific region, whose importance for Russia has increased after introduction of anti-Russian economic sanctions. The article describes the shortcomings of Russia’s eastern regions impeding integration with Asia-Pacific, provides recommendations how to remove them. The factors that will determine the direction of the APR in the next 20 years are listed. The analysis of areas where cooperation could bring the development of eastern regions of Russia and the Asia-Pacific region is given.

Features of Russian cooperation with Southeast Asian countries

The article discusses a new model of foreign economic cooperation between Russia and Asia- Pacific countries, in particular the Asia-Pacific integration organization. The analysis is relatively new forms of cooperation, such as the creation of new joint projects to build power plants, industrial plants, development of transport infrastructure. To enhance cooperation with ASEAN partners are encouraged to use the experience of the Eurasian Economic Union.

The Impact of Asia Pacific Integration on China's Agricultural Export Trade

With the increasing economic activity in the Asia Pacific region, the regional economic integration has become a great impetus to promote the rapid development of each countries’ economy and to promote the global economic integration. Based on the cross section data, the paper uses the developed gravity model to analysis the influence of the Asia Pacific integration on the agricultural export trade of China, and the conclusion is that the influence of the Asia Pacific integration on the export trade of agricultural products is significant.

Asia–Pacific integration within a broader Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

The current progress and status of regional trade arrangements worldwide reveals competition between countries for dominance of new global trade rules. To a great extent, safeguarding the interests of China in the post-crisis era will be a significant political project that will enable China to participate in the new round of global economic governance. This paper uses the updated GTAP CGE framework to describe potential outcomes for the different choices of the Chinese government. First, if the TPP Agreement, which includes China, clearly promotes the economies of the U.S. and Japan. Second, Southeast Asian countries that mainly undertake the transfer of general labor-intensive manufacturing from China can benefit more if the TPP Agreement excludes China, whereas the countries that mainly undertake the transfer of processing manufacturing from China can obtain more benefits if the TPP Agreement includes China. Finally, the TPP Agreement with China is conducive to further strengthening China’s influence on the process of economic integration in the Asia–Pacific region.

The New Landscape of Trade Policy and Korea’s Choices

The terrain of global trade rules is shifting. Top-down global negotiations - the source of the remarkable trade liberalization of the past half century - have succeeded, after two decades of effort, in generating a hopeful outcome at the Bali ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Nevertheless, these achievements came at considerable cost and are deeply scaled back from the Doha Round's early ambitions. Meanwhile, hundreds of small bilateral agreements have created a noodle-bowl of overlapping rules.Against this background, two huge negotiations have emerged in the Asia-Pacific: an track centered on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and a track centered on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which also includes the United States. Partly due to these initiatives, negotiations have now also started between the European Union and the United States, and the European Union and Japan. Countries producing nearly 80 percent of world GDP are engaged in one or more of these negotiations.1If these and other mega-regional negotiations succeed, they will become the new engine for drafting global trade rules. The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic negotiations, were they to adopt similar rules, would be especially influential. But if the mega-regionals fail, they would spell an end, at least for now, to progress on updating rules. This could mean rising economic tensions and further deceleration in trade growth.As one of the world's most open and agile economies, Korea has a large stake in the outcome. Korea has hedged its bets by launching in 2003, and by now mostly executing, a roadmap for free trade with all of its major trade partners (Bark, 2012). Korea has concluded high quality trade agreements with the European Union, the United States and many Asian neighbors, and its current negotiations with China are expected to be successful. Nevertheless, Korea would benefit greatly from an open, liberal region-wide trade regime.How much effort should Korea now invest in the RCEP and TPP? Its direct gains, although significant, would not be as large as for some other countries, since the new agreements would partly overlap Korea's existing FTAs. (One important new element in both agreements, however, would be free trade with Japan.) At the same time, Korea would find RCEP and TPP easy to sign, since it has already accepted high-quality rules in its US and European agreements.This unusual position gives Korea a catalytic role in shaping outcomes. As a first-mover and valued partner in regional agreements, it could help steer Asia-Pacific negotiations toward coherent regional and perhaps global results. Korean leverage will be greatest at the outset of each negotiation - as in the current stage of RCEP - when key features of the agreement are still fluid. Of course, given the complexity and effort involved in each negotiation, another alternative is to sit back, hoping that Korea's hedging strategy will safeguard its most important interests regardless of how the mega-regional agreements turn out.This paper is based on a rigorous analysis of trade policy options, but it is ultimately designed to inform urgent policy choices. To accomplish that objective, the paper considers questions that cannot be answered solely with quantitative results and depend on judgments. It argues that an active Korean policy role could help to realize direct gains from the new mega-regional agreements, as well as help to ensure a cooperative regional outcome. This would require forceful Korean participation in the RCEP and TPP negotiations (the latter is likely but not certain at this writing2) in part to advocate their convergence. The paper examines these options using the results of a detailed, quantitative analysis of regional integration by Michael Plummer, Fan Zhai and this author (Petri, Plummer, & Zhai, 2012).I. Why Asia Pacific Integration MattersKorea's trade neighborhood is huge, innovative and dynamic. …

The Putin Administration's Far East Development Plans and the Future of Korea-Russia Cooperation

The Russian government in Putin's third term, in addition to establishing Ministry for Development of Russian Far East in May 2012 directly after presidential inauguration, is preparing a national program for Socio-Economic Development of Far East and Baikal region until 2025. The economic factors play a critical role in this unprecedented interest of developing Far East and Baikal region. These regions, due to their geographical location, will be directly affected by economic growth and integration of rising Asia-Pacific region. Despite economic crisis, Asia-Pacific region has been growing consistently, accounting for about 53 percent of world GDP and 44 percent of global trade. At meeting with heads of diplomatic missions on July 9, 2012, Putin stated that Russia's active participation in process of Asia-Pacific integration will boost socioeconomic growth in Siberia and Far East, and emphasized linkage between Asian-Pacific economic cooperation and development in Far East. In dimension of the peaceful cooperation structure in Northeast Asia and expansion cooperation with Eurasia, one of Korean government's policy goals, Russia's Far Eastern region is geographical links for promoting Northern Triangle cooperation among South Korea, North Korea and Russia. The Russian government's Far East development plan should be considered as a crucial factor for Korea's securement of new sources of economic growth, through its expansion into emerging markets. Accordingly it is highly necessary to analyze, based on socioeconomic situation in Russian Far East and Baikal region, Putin administration's concepts and plans for Far East development. And it is also required to seek ways to facilitate cooperation between Korea and Russia.

Apec's Regional Economic Integration Agenda and the Evolution of Economic Integration in the Asia-Pacific Region

In the early years of the twenty-first century proposals reflecting two distinct “visions” of Asia-Pacific integration were being advanced for consolidating the regional trade architecture through the establishment of region-wide trade agreements. The rise of East Asian regionalism was reflected in proposals for an East Asian Free Trade Area (EAFTA) and Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA), envisaged as major elements in an agenda for building an economically integrated East Asian region. APEC’s “trans-Pacific vision”, of integrating economies on both sides of the Pacific through achievement of APEC’s Bogor goals of free trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region, was refreshed in modified form with the proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), conceived in principle as a free trade agreement embracing all APEC members.In 2006 APEC leaders sought to emphasise complementarity between the two “visions” by formally adopting a Regional Economic Integration agenda in which the FTAAP was recognized as a “long-term prospect”. At Yokohama in 2010 the leaders set out the way forward in more concrete terms, when they unambiguously endorsed the FTAAP as the end-point to be reached in the evolution of the Asia-Pacific regional trade architecture, while at the same time endorsing a “two-track” approach to its eventual achievement. The leaders stated that achievement of the FTAAP is to be based on progress made within both a “trans-Pacific track”, represented by the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), involving economies from both sides of the Pacific, and an “East Asian track”, now represented by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a successor initiative to the EAFTA and CEPEA, with participation at this stage limited to the sixteen “ASEAN Plus Six” economies on the western side of the Pacific. Six of the 21 APEC economies are currently participating in both “tracks”, while four are participating in neither track. Four of the RCEP participants are not members of APEC.The leaders left open the question of how the two “tracks” might evolve and eventually converge into the FTAAP. In the meantime, attention is focused on the substance of the TPP and RCEP agreements being negotiated within each “track”, and their implications both for the size and distribution of the prospective economic benefits of each agreement, and for the prospects of each agreement for gaining acceptance from other economies in the Asia-Pacific region as the “model” for the eventual FTAAP.Of the two agreements, the TPP at this stage appears to have the more ambitious and comprehensive agenda. After three years negotiations have advanced to the point where failure, while still possible, would be a major surprise, but there are many sensitive issues remaining to be resolved. In addition to the expected market access issues of particular sensitivity to individual participating economies, other highly sensitive issues involve rules of origin, intellectual property, pharmaceutical evaluation pricing and subsidy programmes, management of electronic data flows, labour and environment. These and other issues are discussed in detail in the paper. How these issues are eventually resolved will be important in determining both the extent to which the TPP lives up to its stated ambition of being a “high quality” agreement and also its prospects of being accepted as a “model” for an eventual FTAAP.The RCEP negotiations are only just beginning. It is correspondingly more difficult to evaluate its likely content and its potential as a basis for the eventual FTAAP. It appears likely that the most substantive provisions will be those on trade in goods, trade in services, and investment, prospects for which are analysed in detail in the paper. In these areas the RCEP faces formidable challenges in consolidating existing arrangements among the participating economies to a level that would mark an impressive step towards the eventual FTAAP. On the other hand the RCEP may be better placed than the TPP to develop rules of origin that foster deep integration among the production systems of participating economies. Provisions on intellectual property and competition policy are included in the proposed content of the RCEP, but it would be a surprise if these provisions approach the depth of commitment being sought in the TPP. Like the TPP before it, RCEP faces all the issues involved in establishing agenda priorities and modalities for negotiating an agreement among countries that in many cases are already linked by existing agreements, or in some cases by ongoing negotiations. The complexities and difficulties will be compounded by the likelihood that the participating economies will come to the negotiations with widely divergent levels of ambition. Especially under these conditions ASEAN’s determination that the RCEP should be an ASEAN-led process also means that RCEP negotiations could turn out to a defining test of ASEAN’s ability to maintain its leadership role in regional economic integration.

Factors of geography and security in the integration construction: the case of East- Asian integration

The paper analyzes the impact of geography and security threats on the dynamics and forms of integration cooperation in the area of East Asia. In particular, it is concluded that both the institutional features of the integration in Asia Pacific, and approaches in the field of cooperation between local states have been largely predetermined by the system of military cooperation and military-political agreements, which were formed during the "cold war".

Air Passenger Transport In The APEC: Regulatory Impacts and Prospects for Asia Pacific Integration

This study aims at assessing the prospects for a more liberal air passenger transport regime in the Asia Pacific region under the auspices of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The decades-old bilateral air services regime has been under pressure to reform for several years. Notwithstanding the critical role that international air transport plays in the ongoing integration of Asia Pacific economies, the airline industry remains one of the region`s most heavily regulated. Estimates from the gravity equation employing the Air Liberalization Index (ALI) developed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat find a positive and statistically significant relationship between relaxing bilateral air services restrictions and air passenger traffic. The results hold for a wide range of specifications controlling for fixed effects, different sample sizes, and for all variants of the ALI. The preferred specification, the Anderson and Van Wincoop (2003) equation, provides the most conservative estimates. Prior to taking account of general equilibrium effects, the results imply that if APEC economies eased air transport restrictions to double the ALI scores with their aviation partners, both within and outside the APEC region, traffic would increase by 4.5%.

Building the Northeast Asian Community

Asia is one of the most socio-politically divided regions in the world. Without regional cooperation, it faces difficulty in the world market, sometimes receiving unfair treatment. Asia contains more than half of the world’s population, but Asian countries have a relatively small share of international organizations. Given these facts, it is meaningful to explore the need and legal basis for a Northeast Asian Community (NEAC), which would be an economically integrated regional trade association composed of Korea, China, and Japan. Within the last decade, the possibility of an East Asian regional trade agreement (RTA) or a much broader Asia-Pacific integration has been debated exten-

The possibility of nesting South Asia in Asia-Pacific economic integration

A case for expanded Asia-Pacific economic integration inclusive of South Asia is examined. The methodology and empirical design developed within the framework of a world trade matrix consists of eight regions. These are divided into seven basic regions of single or multi-country groupings from expanded Asia-Pacific integration and one from the rest of the world. The growth of economic cohesiveness within Asia during the past three or more decades is assessed by patterns of trade linkages in various quantitative dimensions through measures of bilateral reciprocity, multilateralism, and market diversification. Entropy indexes of the trade and information matrix are computed and used in the analysis. We find pervasive evidence that China has begun to develop in tandem with Asian partners, but that India and Pakistan have a distance to go to achieve a similar degree of regional involvement.