Strengthening Regional Financial Cooperation In East Asia

"This paper argues that a regional financial architecture needs to be firmly established in East Asia, outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in the region, and provides possible directions for the future". -- p. 1.

The global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis have led to a profound rethink in East Asia about the international monetary system and regional monetary and financial integration. After the East Asian crisis of 1997, deeper regional cooperation was seen as the way to avoid reliance on the IMF and the rest of the world. Steps were taken, but they were limited because of disagreements reflecting regional rivalries. Still, integration into the global financial system and Europe's regional process were seen as objectives to be adapted to East Asia, as detailed in an overview chapter. The crises have shaken this strategy but also revealed the pre-existing deep disagreements. This book presents contributions by scholars from different countries. Each one was invited to describe the vision of their policymakers. The traidtional rivalry between China and Japan, the region's largest economies, reveals Chinese confidence into its rising power and Japanese growing doubts about its ability to weigh on the debate. For opposite reasons, both display a declining interest into regional cooperation. Korea and the ASEAN countries do not wish to choose between the regional powers but remain attached to regional cooperation and integration. They look for pragmatic solutions that recognize the value-chain characteristic of trade. Additional contributions by US and European scholars provide evaluations of the global and Eurozone crises and of their relevance for East Asian integration.

This study examines the case for and against regional financial arrangements in East Asia, describes the Chiang Mai Initiative, compares it to financial arrangements in other regions. It speaks specifically to the concerns of American, European and multilateral organizations, assessing the pros and cons for the global system of such regional financial arrangements.

East Asia enjoyed a role as a growth center of the world economy from the 1960s until the currency and economic crisis of 1997. In 1993, the World Bank issued a report entitled "The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy," in which the bank expressed its admiration for the region 's rapid economic develop ment. However, within only four years the region had fallen prey to the currency and economic crisis that spread outward from Thailand. In the midst of the crisis, many East Asian countries began at long last to cooperate with one another in order to cope with these unprecedented difficulties and to prevent another crisis. In fact, the East Asian region was an exception throughout the 1990s with re spect to regionalism. A surge of regionalism, which began in Europe in the second half ofthe 1980s, spread to North America and Latin America. However, the North east Asian region in particular, consisting of Japan, China (People's Republic of China), and Korea (Republic of Korea), did not participate in any kind of regional economic arrangements. Regional cooperation frameworks were limited to coun tries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and did not spread to the Northeast Asian region.