Regional Change In Industrializing Asia

First published in 1998 this boo responds to the dynamics of Industrializing Asia and the behavioural changes of actors which, in response to changing internal and external forces, have given rise to and are constantly giving rise to alterations in patterns of growth. From a geographical perspective, these are expressed in regional change, understood as a reconstruction of spatial organization. The imperatives of dynamic comparative advantage, changing global or regional competitiveness, and regional competition, faced by different actors, entities or territorial units can be identified as important forces underlying and shaping regional change. This volume provides further illumination, contextualization and interpretation of the spatiality of the economic reality in Industrializing Asia, as well as the role played by, and the implications for, different actors. The objectives of this book are 1) to outline the processes of regional change, linked to responses in the form of restructuring and integrative and regionalization tendencies, as well as the realignment of the global-regional-local divide in production systems/complexes and the operation of firms associated with reorganization of production in the process of maintaining and reconfiguring comparative advantage; 2) to highlight the wide scope of the process by considering differential units of analysis, linked to the agents and manifestations of regional change, and the role of scale in terms of the spatial units involved; 3) to highlight the implications as to the current and future position or role of differential actors/agents (particularly nation state) in shaping the new economic reality in the region and as a corollary, its positioning in the global economic order.

A Great Burst Of Globalization brought the 20th century to a close, creating upheaval in the world economy from roughly 1995 to 2008. And now, with the new century barely commenced, a second upheaval is in the offing following the severe financial crisis that plunged the global economy into recession in 2008-09. The first upheaval witnessed a massive migration of manufacturing and certain business services that transformed Asia into the industrial heartland of the world. The second upheaval will likely consolidate Asia's industrial preeminence and could result in a concentraion of industrial activities in the two most populous and fastest-growing Asian economies---China and India. As the two Asian giants become the industrial equals of the United States, Germany, and Japan, the ramifications will affect trade and growth worldwide, the future of development in China and India, and industrialization throughout Asia. Changing the Industrial Geography in Asia: The Impact of China and India examines these developments, focusing specifically on China and India. Its analysis and conclusions will be of particular interest to policy makers and academics, as well as anyone with an interest in how China and India are likely to reshape industry throughout Asia. "Changing the Industrial Geography inAsia is rich in detailed analysis of the continuing transformation of the manufacturing sector in Asia, both in terms of its moving geography and its composition. For those intrested in understanding the prospects of post-financial crisis Asia, this book is a must read. It is a refreshing return to economic fundamentals, including the new problems of climate change and dwindling energy resources, and will remain the leading reference on Asian transformaton for a long time to come." "The authors consolidate a remarkable amount of data and analysis on the on the industrial structure of Asia and its emergence as theindustrial center of the global economy."

Using Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand as examples, this book focuses on industrialization in South East Asia. These nations have all undergone a major transformation from being poor, agrarian countries to middle-income countries with a developed industrial and manufacturing base. Development and Distribution seeks to explain why and how.

Where development is concerned, our language and perhaps our way of thinking often ap pear somewhat distorted. If anything, the Asian economies with their most impressive and dynamic growth should logically be called developing countries. Instead, we call them threshold countries, newly industrializing countries (NICs) or newly industrializing eco nomies (NIEs), the latter term taking into account the Chinese argument that Hong Kong and Taiwan should not be considered countries. During the eighties, when Latin American NICs became the main victims of the debt crisis, the NIEs of East Asia (EANIEs), the little tigers or dragons, presented most impres sive examples of growth through orientation to world trade, fitting well into the Japanese 'flying-geese' concept. Naturally, questions were raised as to the reasons for this success, the lessons other countries could draw from it, and the outlook for the future. At the same time, the establis hed industrial countries wanted to know what NIE competition might mean for them. In 1988, the OECD published a study entitled "The NIEs -Challenge and Opportunity for OECD Industries". The NIBs had become a fashionable object of research and debate. In Western Europe, where countries are preparing for a period offurtherintegration and East-West cooperation, it seems worth-while to also consider the role ofthe EANIEs and the options for cooperation they represent. Moreover, the NIEs themselves are following development in Europe with some concern and are trying to adjust to the new situation as it emerges.

Existing accounts of East Asia’s meteoric growth and structural change has either been explained as one dictated essentially by markets with strong macroeconomic fundamentals, or a consequence of proactive governments. This book departs from such a dichotomy by examining inductively the drivers of the experiences. Given the evolutionary treatment of each economic good and service as different, this book examines technological catch up with a strong focus on the industries contributing significantly to the economic growth of the countries selected in Asia. The evidence produced supports the evolutionary logic of macro, meso and micro interactions between several institutions, depending on the actors involved, structural location and typology of taxonomies and trajectories. The book carefully picks out experiences from the populous economies of China, India and Indonesia, the high income economies of Korea and Taiwan, the middle income economies of Malaysia and Thailand, and the transitional least developed country of Myanmar. Chapters 1-7 of this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy.

Southeast Asia's Misunderstood Miracle emphasizes the contribution of government intervention, especially selective industrial policy, to growth, structural change, and late industrialization in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Although government intervention has certainly been abused for private gain, it has also been crucial for the sustained rapid growth and structural change experienced in the region. Similarly, Southeast Asian resource wealth may have weakened the imperative to industrialize in the region, but inferior government intervention probably accounts for the relatively less impressive industrial achievements of the three countries. The study also stresses the significant contribution of regional economic dynamics, especially the increased role of direct foreign investment from Japan and the first tier, newly industrializing economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.Thus, the book qualifies, contradicts, and challenges some of the conclusions and policy recommendations of other works such as the World Bank's influential East Asian Miracle (1993), which suggested that other developing countries should seek to emulate the second tier Southeast Asian NICs rather than the first tier East Asian NIEs.

One feature of this book is the clarification of the development mechanism of Asia as a regional economy for over half a century, based on an "Asian Economy Within the Global Economy" approach that goes beyond the single-country analytical framework. The development of emerging economies has caught the world's attention: from the Newly Industrializing Countries or Newly Industrializing Economies of the 1980s to the BRICs entering this century. General economics cannot clarify the internal mechanism of the changing of newly industrialized economies led by Asia. This book clarifies such regional development structure by focusing on the direct investments of multinational firms and the importance of gradual changes of specific policies adopted by newly industrialized economies. Moreover, the book concretely deals with the US–China trade war and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a problem of Asian economies. In so doing, the book not only perceives the structural change of the global economy as a structural change from a US-centric global economy of the twentieth century to a China-centric one, but also focuses on the birthing of a new growth frontier in the world economy, under a crisis brought about by a war for hegemony between the US and China. The investment initiative through China's BRI has prompted the investment competition between Japan and the US, which has made even stronger the possibility of giving birth to a new economic frontier in Afro-Eurasia. Another feature is the consideration of various issues that confront Asian countries in their search for economic development, using the Philippines as a case study. The analysis of the study points to the importance of a “shared growth” perspective, which is based on an Asian development model, and discusses the challenge of overcoming the issues of the economic development model within the region. At the same time, this book studies the significance and new issues, as a region, of the economy and overseas policies of attention-drawer China.