The Model Choice Of Economic Integration For Developing Countries

This article tries to make a deep research on the transformation of regional economic integration models for developing countries .Economic integration refers to two (or more ) economies (countries) using all means and patterns to eliminate all kinds of differences step by step in order to form a bigger economic body. There are three major mechanisms concerning economic integration, namely, international economic mutually complementary mechanisms, international economic interrelated mechanism and international economic benefits sharing mechanism. The essential characteristic of economic integration is the generation of the mechanism of economic fusion.After analyzing the 30-year's practice of economic integration in developing countnes ,we believe that such practice is unsuccessful. The main cause is their guiding ideology : They tried to obtain a delayed advantage through "cutting ties" with the North in order to change their undeveloped condition. Due to their lack of three major mechanisms among themselves, the results of the practice made the North-South development gap even wider. It shows that if the developing countries want to attain the goal of their self-strengthening, the traditional "joint self-strengthening "model must be discarded, they must choose the model of South-North economic integration, that is, they must enter into economic integration with developed countries, as a result, comparative economic advantages must exist between them. If the developing countries make use of the advantages, they must also implement two policies: 1,they must transform their closed door developing into all round opening ; 2,they must optimize their domestic environments in order to fuse developed economies and theirs smoothly. The development strategy can be summarized is "self-strengthening fusion "model.Nowadays NAFTA is the first example of "South-North" integration. As a developing country, Mexico has been using the "self-strengthening fusion "model to accelerate the integration with the two developed countries—the U.S. and Canada. After a few years, the mechanism of economic fusion is enhanced in the three countnes of NAFTA. And Mexico has realized its self-strengthening aim.According to the above analyses, we can make a conclusion: If the developing countries want to realize the aim of self-strengthening, they must transform their developing model. Otherwise, they will be left further behind in the next round of international competition.