A comparative study on ASEAN economic relation with China and Japan

초록

In the past decade or so there have been some important changes with respect to both the internal structure within ASEAN economies and their external economic relation with Japan and China. The phenomenal growth and the structural transformation of ASESN countries came to be hailed as a ？miracle,？ at least until the outbreak of Asian economic crisis in 1997. After an economic setback immediately after the crisis, most ASEAN economies except maybe for Indonesia seem to have regained their economic vitality now. For most of this period since 1991, Japanese economy has been on a long recession ？the lost decade- until very recently. In the meantime, China has continued to grow strong and eventually joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. This contradicting performance of Japan and China has raised the discussion on the possibility of changing economic leadership in East Asia. The purpose of this paper is therefore to look into the changing nature of ASEAN？s economic relation with respect to China and Japan in terms of trade (section II), investment (section III), and other forms of economic cooperation, Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement in particular (section IV), in the past decade or so. This will then be followed by an attempt to present future prospects on the economic relation of ASEAN with China and Japan (section V).