East Asia Update, April 2004 : Strong Fundamentals to the Fore
This report looks at three sets of issues underlying the present cyclical moment and the outlook for East Asia. First, the evolution of the world economy is always relevant in as open and globally integrated a region as East Asia. Japan's econ...
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| Format: | Serial |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/123321468010874166/Strong-fundamentals-to-the-fore-regional-overview http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33504 |
| Summary: | This report looks at three sets of
issues underlying the present cyclical moment and the
outlook for East Asia. First, the evolution of the world
economy is always relevant in as open and globally
integrated a region as East Asia. Japan's economy seems
to have finally returned to broad-based and sustainable
growth, while the U.S. economy is growing at 4-5 percent.
Global high technology industries appear to have returned to
a phase of multi-year expansion (no doubt with quarter to
quarter fluctuations). Rising world demand has helped pull
primary commodity prices sharply higher, a boon to some of
the low-income, commodity exporters in the region, if not to
their more industrially developed, commodity importing
neighbors. The second set of issues centers on the emergence
of China as the economic powerhouse of the region, its rapid
integration with other Asian economies and the region wide
opportunities, risks and policy challenges that are coming
up as a result. Over the last decade the structure of
intra-East Asian trade with China has been transformed by
the emergence of intricate and sophisticated production
networks between countries. For two years now the boom in
the Chinese economy has contributed around half the export
growth in many other East Asian economies. A third set of
issues in this report are the policy efforts undertaken by
countries to address domestic challenges as well as
international and regional ones. While domestic and foreign
direct investment is booming in economies like China and
Vietnam, it has only just begun to recover in Thailand, and
remains weak in several of the other economies hit by the
1997-98 financial crisis. |
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