Trade integration in Asia

After decades of preoccupation with traditional security issues, the key areas of concern to policy makers in Asia – broadly defined to include South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia – are trade, finance and investment. Whereas in the past, governments in Asia applied a traditional understanding of security, today ‘economic security’ is part of a broadened concept of security applied bymost countries in the region (Pempel 2010a: 213). Of course, international trade and the efforts to deepen intraregional trade integration are part of this process.