New Idea Of ​​Regional Economic Integration In East Asia

Since1990s, the economic globalization becomes a huge tide in the world. Theeconomic globalization can expand the extent of the world market, improve theinternational collaboration, inducing that various combinations of production factorsoriginated from different countries tend to exist in the best configuration way with thehighest allocation efficiency. However, it is undeniable that there is a potential hugerisk associated with the globalization process. Under these circumstances, the regionaleconomic integration becomes an essential choice for individual countries, whichreduces the risk of the economic globalization and therefore favors the economicdevelopment in the integrated countries. Especially in the21st century, the regionaleconomic integration becomes a new tendency in the world economy. With theoutbreak of the Southeast Asian economic crisis in1997, as well as the acceleration ofeconomic integration in the European and American regions, the regional economiccollaboration and integration becomes more and more important for the East Asiancountries, which may prevent financial risks, compensate for the economic losscaused by the integration processes occurring outside the East Asia and thereforeadvance the national economic development in the East Asian countries. In the recentyears, the East Asian countries have contributed significant efforts to the economicintegration and established three "10+1" cooperation mechanisms (includingASEAN+China, ASEAN+Japan and ASEAN+South Korea) and "10+3"cooperation mechanism (ASEAN+China, Japan, South Korea). However, due to thespecial historical, political and economic environment in the East Asia, theestablishment of economic cooperation mechanism covering the whole East Asianregion is progressing very slowly, resulting in a standstill of regional economicintegration. Since the prospect of the regional economic integration in the East Asia isnot a smooth road, it is essential for the East Asian countries to find a practicalsolution to break the existing bottleneck in the integration progress. Based on the rise of the economic globalization and regional economic integration, this paperinvestigated the current status of the East Asian regional economy. By analyzing thefactors influencing the regional economic integration in the East Asia, as well as thecurrent reality in this region, new insights from the perspective of goods trade wereprovided for the integration process in the East Asia and the establishment ofChina-South Korea-ASEAN free trade zone was discussed in this paper. Thepossibility of establishing the free trade zone includes: first, the economies in China,South Korea and ASEAN grow fast and the bilateral trades between these countriesare relatively frequent; second, there is economic complementraity between China,South Korea and ASEAN; third, the China-ASEAN free trade zone has beenestablished, and South Korea and ASEAN have also reached a number of tradeagreements between each other. Moreover, there is a good international relationshipbetween China, South Korea and ASEAN. Because of these positive factors, thispaper proposed the development strategy of establishing the China-SouthKorea-ASEAN free trade zone to improve the regional economic integration in theEast Asia.