ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with three of the most successful economic powers and trading nations in the world — China, Japan, and South Korea. The twenty-fi rst century has been called “The Century of the Pacifi c,” led by China. 3 The People’s Republic of China (China) has risen from Third World status in 1979 to become the second-largest world economy behind only the United States. At current growth rates, the Chinese economy will surpass the American in size between 2016 4 and 2020. 5 The Japanese economy was the world’s second largest for decades until it was surpassed by China in 2010, 6 and it remains comfortably the world’s third-largest. After decades of stagfl ation following the collapse of the Japanese economic boom in the early 1990s, and recent years of defl ation, the Japanese government embarked in 2013 on policies intended to devalue the yen and improve global trade competitiveness. South Korea’s economy would be considered of impressive size if Korea was part of the European Union rather than positioned between China and Japan. South Korea’s economy, 15th largest in the world, is three-quarters as large as Spain, and 44 percent bigger than Turkey’s. All three nations are important world trading nations. Exhibit 13.1 (including the United States for comparison purposes) shows that Korea’s importance as an exporter and importer is even larger than would be assumed by the size of its economy.
