英文摘要 |
Emphasis on the market-driven character of East Asian economic integration can lead observers to overlook the important role that governments have played in facilitating processes of economic integration that contributed to the region's achieving the world's highest rates of economic growth over the past four decades. Unilateral governmental action to remove tariffs and non-tariff barriers, sometimes coordinated through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping, supported the construction and extension of transnational production networks. In the last decade, however, government efforts at liberalization have primarily taken the form of free trade agreements. This paper disputes the common argument that increased intra-regional interdependence in East Asia has driven this new regionalism. It similarly disputes the idea that business is the primary driving force behind the new FTAs, seeing these instead as primarily driven by a political domino effect. |