The Establishment And Development Of East Asian Free Trade Area

The increasing trends of trade protectionism in advanced countries since 1990s and the stagnation of newly round of multilateral negotiation in WTO slowdown the process of global trade liberalization. Some international regional economic integration organizations represented by European Union and North America Free Trade Area (NAFTA) successfully improved the rapid economic, trade and investment development of their member countries. Then some other countries in the world imitated them to build their own economic integration organizations so as to achieve the more rapid economic development by taking the advantage of the economic benefit of partial economic integration.On the November of 2001, the leaders of member countries participating the Sino-ASEAN Forum agreed to build Sino-ASEAN Free Trade Area in 10 years. It marks a historic stride by which East Asian countries start the progress of economic integration.The article analyses the theories of international regional economic integration and the practices of such international regional economic integration organizations as ED and NAFTA, and by comparing with the present economic and trade conditions of East Asian countries draws a conclusion that East Asian countries including China, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN members should take measures to build East Asian Free Trade Area (EAFTA) so as to improve the effective resources configuration and economic development of its members.The article analyses the feasibility of the building EAFTA and predicts the cooperative pattern of the members ofEAFTA in the future. The article considers that EAFTA can gradually realize complete free trade within EAFTA by the economic cooperation and coordination among its members and it should push itself to a higher level economic integration organizing model on the basis of improving its economic development and realizing the economic convergence, and EAFTA should push multilateral negotiation with other countries in the world in order to realize free trade in the range of the globe.