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Following a historical commitment to multilateralism, in the last decade the trade policy initiatives of many states in the Asia-Pacific have turned to bilateralism through the negotiation of free trade agreements (FTAs). The corresponding proliferation of regional FTAs has thus far been understood to result from three broad motivations: a desire to advance trade liberalization beyond World Trade Organization (WTO) disciplines; mercantilistic efforts to secure preferential access to key export markets; and/or attempts to use FTAs to secure non-economic political gains. This paper argues that since the middle of the decade a new motive has emerged – the use of FTAs to improve resource security – particularly by import-dependent resource consumers in Northeast Asia. As yet unexamined in the literature, this paper seeks to document and explain this trend. It analyses the recent emergence of resource security concerns as a new FTA motive; the corresponding shifts in the FTA strategies and initiatives of Japan, Korea and China; and the dynamics of an emerging race for resource-related FTAs between the three governments. Based on this analysis, it demonstrates that resource-related FTAs could potentially improve consumers’ resource security through either the liberalization of trade, the extension of investment protections or broader diplomatic gains with the targeted supplier. However, owing to supplier reluctance to enter into binding policy commitments for resource industries, their track record shows success in only the diplomatic dimension, and the prospects for a strengthening of their effects are poor. As a result, it is argued that while resource concerns have become a key motive for FTA initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region, they have not substantively improved resource security for its import-dependent states and are unlikely to do so in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces the special collection on East Asia and the global crisis. After justifying why a focus on East Asia is appropriate, it draws out the main themes that run through the individual contributions. These are the extent to which the region is decoupling from the global economy (or the West), the increasing legitimacy of statist alternatives to neoliberal development strategies, and the impact of crises on the definition of 'region' and the functioning of regional institutions and governance mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Chinese foreign policy has long shown that domestic politics and domestic constraints are sources of foreign policy, albeit generally considered less potent than ideology and interests. Domestic political constraints should also be explored as factors in Chinese regional policies toward East Asia, including regional economic institutions. This paper examines three domestic institutional constraints on regional foreign policy in the area of trade and economics: a fragmented decision-making structure that has difficulty with coordination, a relatively heavy reliance on top level decision-makers at a time when issues of Asian economic policy have relatively low priority for these same decision-makers, and the relatively extreme lack of autonomy for negotiators vis-a-vis top decision-makers in Beijing. These constraints are by any means unique to China. However, at a time when many observers and participants are expecting—indeed, often hoping for—Chinese leadership in the region, the paper posits that these constraints hinder the PRC's ability to fill this role. The key empirical focus is regional trade agreements and regional economic organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well known, less recognised is its involvement and those of other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in agriculture through large-scale land acquisitions. The development consequences and policy implications of these foreign land-based investments are analysed from a political economy perspective, which identifies motives, interests and benefits of the different actors and addresses the question of governance in terms of transparency and appropriate institutional arrangements to safeguard land rights and food security. In the bigger picture, the paper argues that the negative consequences of land grab has to be seen alongside the benefits flowing to Africa from growing economic relations with China and other dynamic East Asian economies and learning from the development experiences of those countries. African countries however need to re-assess the current approach and relationship with foreign land-based investors and decide how best this trend can be used to forward their economic and social agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's behaviour in East Asian financial cooperation has overall changed from passively responding to external pressures to taking proactive initiatives, which are highlighted by Chinese elites as evidence of a sense of responsibility. China has taken varied positions towards proposals for Asian financial regionalism, from 'silent' objection, to lukewarm or superficial support, to enthusiastic participation and substantial contribution, and this variance has not always taken place in a chronological order. Despite much speculation over the trajectory of China's role in East Asian regionalism, there has not been a study focused on China's policymaking towards East Asian financial cooperation. Therefore, this paper fills the gap by analysing the factors and policymaking processes that have led to those varied positions. It argues that China, recognising the momentum in the region to enhance cooperation, has replaced the blunt dismissals of proposals, particularly those from Japan, with a more subtle approach that is aimed at ensuring China's influence and promoting the image of a responsible great power; that the extent to which it can contribute to this process is mainly constrained by its economic conditions, particularly the financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic regionalism in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements. The ASEAN+1 free trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan represent the first attempts to structure cooperation in trade across Southeast and Northeast Asia. It is therefore important to examine the coverage of these agreements and the extent to which they actually liberalize trade. This study focuses on major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the ways in which these choices help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. The results achieved in the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement are limited at best. The agreement does establish some new areas of cooperation among the signatories but fails to address important issues for regionalism such as labor mobility. It also makes limited progress in harmonizing and liberalizing rules of origin. The ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement applies product-specific rules to fewer categories of goods than most of Japan's bilateral agreements with ASEAN members but those rules in place are still very restrictive. Moreover, the parties to the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement have the option of applying the rules of their bilateral agreement if it provides more favorable treatment. Thus, there is no guarantee the more liberal terms of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement will be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continued integration of international economies is an unfolding process that has accelerated in recent years and that is believed to have the potential to impact on the structure of the spatial economy. The process is of interest from the viewpoint of the transport scholar, because a relevant question is whether, and if so to what extent, the economic changes implied by integration can be guided and influenced by transport infrastructure and services. A number of studies have been conducted, in particular in a European setting, that examine the potential links between accessibility and economic activity. The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between intermodal network accessibility and the spatial distribution of economic activities in an east Asian setting. To this end, a multivariate framework based on the use of spatial statistical models is proposed that furthers the methodological possibilities of accessibility analysis. The empirical findings suggest that, once contextual factors are considered, the influence of accessibility as an explanatory factor of the spatial distribution of economic activity in the region becomes very much diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores permanent, unanticipated shocks in the yen-dollar exchange rate in a perfect-foresight, infinite-horizon, representative-agent model for an open, semismall economy that produces a single good, imports intermediate inputs and investment goods from Japan and competes with Japan in external markets. Therefore, the model captures some of the features of the developing countries of East Asia. External debt is constrained by a country-risk premium that depends on the level of external debt. The capital stock is maintained and incremented by an endogenous mixture of Japanese and home goods. An appreciation of the dollar against the yen is neutral for external indebtedness and the trade account in the long run, but raises the capital stock, consumption and hence welfare in the long run; the home currency depreciates against the dollar but appreciates against the yen. Whether a cycle of current account surpluses followed by current account deficits or vice versa is generated depends on the initial response of the shadow value of external debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the roles of co-chairs in international negotiations. This study attempts to fill the research gap by scrutinizing co-chairs' effectiveness, defined as an ability to shape agreement details in one's direction, to better understand chairs' and co-chairs' influence in negotiations. I argue that a co-chair's effectiveness is not a function of resource possession, but is rooted in its resource management, or ability to convert the existing resources into bargaining influence. To validate my argument, I analyze the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) negotiation rounds from 2005 to 2010, focusing on the members' financial contributions and vote shares. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper posits four ranked, generic goals of state foreign policy, maps them against the American ‘pivot,’ and concludes with possible handicaps of that shift. Drawn broadly from realism and liberalism, those abstract goals are as follows: national security, economic growth, prestige among the community of states, and the promotion of cherished national values. Applying this framework specifically to Northeast Asia, the USA, regarding security, is likely to increasingly ‘hedge’ China, and its North Korean client, with regional allies, off-shore balancing, and a shift toward AirSea Battle. On trade, the USA will continue its decades-long effort to reduce Asian mercantilism by tying Asian traders into multilateral, neoliberal rule sets. Regarding prestige, the ‘Beijing Consensus’ is a growing challenge to US soft power which the pivot seeks to refute. In addition, on values, the USA will continue to nag especially China to conform to US standards of law and human rights. The USA will continue to push the broad liberalization of Asian polities and economies. The democratic peace and liberal trade are the ideological frame and motivation of the pivot. Nevertheless, significant US handicaps may slow the pivot: American cultural distance from Asia means little public support and understanding of its necessity; strong regional allies will tempt the USA toward offshore balancing on the cheap; and the dire US budget shortfall will reduce the resources necessary to fund it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 presented a critical challenge to East Asian regional financial cooperation. Over a decade of efforts to reduce regional vulnerability to financial crisis and contagion were confronted with the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. The results for East Asia were mixed. On the one hand, no economies were forced to submit to IMF-led bailouts, as had happened so painfully in 1997-98. On the other hand, the most highly-developed component of the project of ASEAN+3 financial regionalism - the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), which set up a system of emergency liquidity provision - appeared irrelevant, as the central banks of South Korea and Singapore prioritized the establishment of new swap agreements with the United States as a means of ensuring dollar liquidity instead of relying on their Chiang Mai partners. Nonetheless, in May 2009, the ASEAN+3 finance ministers agreed to a substantial expansion and 'multilateralization' of the initiative. This paper critically addresses whether CMI has been transformed into an 'Asian Monetary Fund' and argues that the events of 2008-10 make substantial additional movement in that direction unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composition of Greater China among the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan entails an emerging form of micro governance where an ecological evolution of sub-group interaction and crossover of economic and social activities has been generating a dynamic of change within the East Asian region. The constitution of Greater China by social, economic, political, business and even daily commuting creates some soul searching questions about the possible outcomes of their intense interaction. To what extent has integration been made within Greater China through these interactions? Is China the economic linchpin or does China need to cooperate in one way or another to facilitate the modes of economic development? What are the attitudes and strategies used by Hong Kong or Taiwan when confronted with such an economic cum social entity? More importantly, where, and, under what conditions, will the interactions among the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong lead to? In this paper, I am going to use a conceptual model which includes four interactions: integration, interdependence, identity and independence (Four Is) to capture the catalyst of change that collectively entails these intermingled economic, social and cultural elements. People who live in the vast context of this geographical region experience the change. Through daily interaction, they help write the context of change through business activities, investment, migration, trade, culture, academic exchange, political and social development along the Four Is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the sources of economic fluctuations in the four Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs), namely Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. As small open economies, their macro-economic development is highly dependent on technology as well as markets of large countries. Using the common trends model, we examine the impacts of external supply shock, internal supply shock and trade shock on the key national macro-economic variables of these four economies, i.e. output, consumption, investment, export and import. Our empirical evidence suggests that supply-side disturbances, both the country-specific supply shocks and international supply shocks explain the bulk of fluctuations in output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been two related trends shaping global trade during the past couple of decades: the increasing role of international supply chains and the rise of China. Increased complexity in global trade has generated a need to construct more processed trade data — trade in value added — in order to deepen our understanding of trade relations between countries. In this article, we present a broad picture of trade in value added between the EU28 and East Asian countries. We find that East Asia is important as a final demand and supply chain export destination, especially for Northern European countries, while for CEE countries it is more important as an import source for both final demand and supply chain trade. Trade with East Asia is least important for Southern European countries. The production structure of an EU country seems to be one of the main factors explaining the importance of supply chain trade with East Asian countries. The data also suggest that supply chain trade could support the growth of domestic value-added exports to the supply chain trade partner country as well as to other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of stalled multilateral trade negotiations, major trading economies are seeking free trade agreements (FTAs) to secure their market access objectives. Nowhere is this dynamic stronger than in East Asia, where a web of bilateral and plurilateral agreements is stitching together piecewise an Asian free trade area that could plausibly rival the EU and NAFTA trade blocs and where the possibility of a formal pan-Asian agreement has been raised. Taiwan has been largely excluded from this dynamic. However, with the June 29, 2010 signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China, the possibility of Taiwan joining the FTA dance in East Asia would appear to have been greatly strengthened as the advocates had anticipated. This article considers the economic and trade implications of Taiwan's participation versus non-participation in an emerging East Asian trade bloc. We support our analysis with simulations using the GTAP computable general equilibrium model. The article finds that the benefits to Taiwan of participating in such a bloc have increased, as have the opportunity costs of exclusion, since the share of East Asian partners in its trade has risen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving from labour to some capital and knowledge intensive sectors, East Asian countries have actively pursued strategic industrial policies and successfully promoted targeted sectors. However, their growth in high tech sectors challenged the US leadership and the World Trade Organization (WTO)-supported neo-liberal development "wisdom". Tensions over trade and technology issues eventually exploded into fierce policy conflicts. This study explores the role of the state in a single information and communication technology (ICT) sector, the semiconductor industry, over the course of its evolution in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. It is hoped to tackle the issues surrounding the conflicts between the Western economic orthodoxy and East Asian development policies through explaining the ICT development pathway of these countries. The finding shows that the international frictions in both ICT trade and technology were inevitable and reflect the divergence of development visions held by latecomers and developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, China has experienced one of the most dramatic and sustained periods of economic growth in world history. China's use of economic statecraft provides an important venue in which to examine the role of unacknowledged ‘coercive diplomacy’ within the context of China's ‘peaceful rise discourse.’ In contrast to Western countries, which have overtly used sanctions and other forms of economic coercion, China has publicly denied any such policies while at the same time quietly pursuing them. China's denial of using coercive economic statecraft has muted the reactions of neighboring publics and government, but it cannot entirely forestall them. Without seriously undermining China's ‘peaceful-rising’ image, a more explicit statement from Beijing regarding its coercive economic measure could provide deterrence and assurance to China's neighbors in resolving the disputes. This article first surveys existing literature on economic statecraft focusing on the coercive aspects of such strategies. Second, it presents an in-depth case study on how China uses economic leverages over its neighbors in East Asia: North Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Finally, it highlights the limits of China's economic statecraft within the constraints of China's ‘peaceful rise’ discourse. It concludes with implications for Asian politics and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asia currently faces mounting issues (including a wide range of political, military, and security conflicts), and the ever-intensifying crisis in the region unfolds in sharp contrast with ever-growing economic cooperation and cultural exchange. The term ‘Asia Paradox’ is loaded with such overtones, and it is directly related to East Asian regionalism. Since the 1990s East Asian regionalism has been widely developed in various spheres, but the reality in East Asia today shows that rich experiences of economic and cultural cooperation are powerless to ease current conflicts in the region. Where then can we discover possible ways of overcoming the Asian paradox? This article attempts to find a clue in the perspective of East Asian critical regionalism, focusing on its dynamism of trans-boundarisation as a coexistence of re-boundarisation and de-boundarisation. To that end, this work will first examine the characteristics of boundaries, globalisation, regionalism and critical regionalism theoretically, using trans-boundarisation as a key word. Second, it will examine the possibility that East Asian critical regionalism can show a way forward toward the resolution of conflicts in East Asia, or for the solution of the Asian paradox, using East Asian border disputes as the empirical case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The special issue this article opens engages with an apparent conundrum that has often puzzled observers of East Asian politics—why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, multilateral economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. The authors argue that this ‘regionalism problématique’ has led to the neglect of prior and more important questions pertaining to how patterns of economic governance, beyond the national scale, are emerging in East Asia and why. In this special issue, the contributors shift analytic focus onto social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance in East Asia. The contributions identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance often neglected by the scholarship or erroneously viewed as stepping stones towards ‘deeper’ multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The sea sets East Asia apart from other regional systems that influence international economic, political and military affairs. Alessio Patalano argues that in East Asia, the centrality of the maritime realm to economic and political matters is transforming it into a primary battleground for national ambitions. Meanwhile, the wide range of functions exercised by maritime forces puts them at the forefront of both competition and the management of security issues and regional stability. Maritime security issues are therefore likely to remain high on the regional agenda in East Asia, although the risk of escalation to war may not be as high as is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the regional order-building challenges that Australia presently confronts in the Indian Ocean region (IOR). The author argues that while regional stability within the IOR constitutes an increasingly important Australian security interest, policy makers will struggle to translate the order-building strategies they have previously pursued in East Asia into an Indian Ocean context. In East Asia, Australia has historically pursued a ‘dual track’ order-building strategy centred on its participation in a US-dominated ‘hub and spokes’ alliance system alongside multilateral regional engagement. The absence of an equivalent alliance system or an established tradition of multilateral security diplomacy conversely precludes an extension of this strategy into the IOR. Growing tensions between the USA and China and between China and India, meanwhile, further complicate IOR security dynamics, while underscoring the urgent need for a more coherent approach to regional order-building. With these challenges in mind, the author concludes by proposing a range of bilateral, minilateral and multilateral initiatives that Australia should pursue to stimulate the emergence of a more cooperative IOR security environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The proliferation of regional economic agreements involving East Asian economies in the years since the financial crises is usually explained in the political economy literature by reference to economic factors. These agreements have been viewed either as a response to the costs of increasing interdependence and/or to the demand by domestic exporters to level the playing field when their rivals benefit from preferential trade agreements. A detailed examination of economic data finds no support, however, for the argument that intra-regional economic interdependence in East Asia has increased significantly since the financial crises. Case studies suggest that business has not played a major role in either promoting or opposing the agreements - not surprisingly in that the agreements are unlikely to have a major economic impact, and are not being widely used. Rather than there being an 'economic domino' effect at work, the new East Asian regionalism is best understood as being driven by a 'political domino' effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains East Asian regionalism as the product of two sets of negotiations. The first negotiation is between East Asia on the one hand and global forces and structures on the other. The second negotiation is intra-regional and includes a critical negotiation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Southeast Asia and East/Northeast Asia, which also provides the primary focus of this article. This article details ASEAN's extensions into East Asian regionalism as part of interdependent efforts to adapt transitioning global and regional systems. Conceiving these regional negotiations to be not just economic and utilitarian but first and foremost normative, this article details the opportunities and dilemmas represented by 'East Asia' for ASEAN, ASEAN-Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia as a meaningful organizing principle. Dilemmas associated with the ASEAN Plus Three process, an East Asia free-trade area and the ASEAN Charter provide illustrations of East Asia's understood challenges for Southeast Asia in addition to the ways that Southeast Asian agencies have been shaping the form and content of recent East Asian efforts and also how regional-global and intra-ASEAN negotiations continue to provide key constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the sources of economic growth for three East Asian economies – Japan, Korea and Taiwan – with special emphasis on international spillovers as an explanation of the differential patterns of growth. Three different proxy measures of international spillovers are constructed in the empirical analysis. Explicitly accounting for country-specific differences, both fixed effect and random effect regressions are applied to obtain coefficient estimates. It is found that technology spillovers going beyond geographic boundaries is a significant determinant of GDP growth for the three East Asian economies. Nevertheless, the direction of the spillover effect differs. For Japan and Korea, the empirical findings support the view that international spillovers contribute to GDP growth. International spillovers, however, are found to have dampened Taiwan's GDP growth during the period 1978 to 1992. These results suggest, for economies whose research effort is relatively low, a negative relationship between productivity and international spillovers might be revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article promotes a "cultural international political economy" approach to globalization in East Asia in the so-called information age. It emphasizes the inherently discursive as well as material character of economic relations and their embedding in a complex web of different scales of action from local to global. Thus it introduces the policy discourses related to two major components in recent efforts to renew U.S. hegemony: promotion of the Global Information Infrastructure and the global expansion of intellectual property rights through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This initiative has enabled the emergence of a hegemonic GII-IPR-TRIPs complex supported by transnational informational capital, trade-related committees, and state agencies. This complex has triggered several forms of resistance and adaptation in East Asia. Targets of this resistance have been the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex itself. Modes of counterhegemonic resistance have included state strategic support for the Linux movement as well as everyday tactics of software piracy. In addition, subhegemonic forces (e.g., APEC and national governments) have been acting as translating centers that help shape responses to efforts to consolidate the hegemony of the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex at regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the influence of globalization on a state's trade policy and politics through the study of Japan-China trade friction over safeguards. Two hypotheses are presented: the state shows transformative capacity to formulate trade policy for maintaining overall interest of national industries in rapidly evolving international marketplaces, and division in trade policy preferences among societal actors due to globalized corporate activities has a critical influence on a state's trade policy. In the two case studies, the Japanese government showed different responses to demand for invoking safeguard measures. In the textile case, the government maintained a stance against the measures, stressing the need for structural reform. In the agricultural case, the government invoked emergency import curbs on farm products rather swiftly after an import surge became a serious problem. In addition to the different degree of support from political circles, policy preferences of government agencies concerned produced this difference. While the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) took into account the evolving influence of China on Japanese industries, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) handled the issue from a purely domestic standpoint. Division in policy preferences among societal actors also differed in the two cases. In the textile case, opposition from producers engaging in operations in China impeded a petition itself or helped to create public opinions against import restrictions. In the agricultural case, trading houses, main actors engaging in the development and imports of Chinese products, did not implement overt opposition activities because of their interests in desirable relations with the agricultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tremendous changes have taken place in East Asia in the post-Cold War era, which have a great impact on Chinese foreign policy and its relations with major powers in East Asia. This new power configuration is related to as 'two ups' and 'two downs', which have become apparent since the early 1990s. The 'two ups' concern the rise of the United States and China. The United States' rise to sole superpower status has given Washington a dominant role in all four dimensions of world affairs: political, strategic, economic, and technological/cultural. Meanwhile, China has achieved a spectacular economic performance for the past two decades, sustaining high growth rates, and escaping, so far, the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98. This expansion has greatly increased China's influence in regional and global affairs. The 'two downs' refer to the downturns of Russia and Japan. This article provides a detailed analysis of China's international environment in the context of the changing dynamics of major-power relations in East Asia. Special attention is paid to the crucial Beijing–Tokyo–Washington triangle. The examination focuses upon political, economic, and strategic dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the foreign economic relations of the U.S. with East Asian region. It notes the issue concerning the country's narrow efforts to mitigate the merchandise trade deficit in the region, and mentions the favorability of economic trends in East Asia for American suppliers and investors. Charts are also presented depicting gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates in East Asia, as well as East Asian exports to the U.S. from 1975-1992. Moreover, it explores the trends in investment flows and trade balance in the region as influenced by the trade relations of the U.S. and Japan.

The article discusses the regional security agenda in East Asia. It notes the involvement of the U.S. in the process of change and dialogue on security issues in the region. It mentions the increasing concern over the long-term growth of China's economic power, indicating its defence modernization. It also cites the significant contribution of U.S. military presence and political engagement to regional stability and sustainment of Japan's acceptability. Moreover, it highlights the U.S.-Japan alliance which is aimed at promoting economic cooperation and maintenance of international peace and security.

The article focuses on the criticisms of the Garnaut Report. The author notes that the article is more on the mythical arguments that are attributed to the Report. It offers criticisms on the topics of the Report which includes the economic change in the East Asia, and the cultural ties between Australia and Europe which the Report sees as an asset to the relationship of Australia with the Northeast Asia and the Pacific. Critics who reviewed the Garnaut Report include Bruce Grant, Fitzpatrick, and Mckay.