ABSTRACT
Over the past decades, topics of regional integration have become part of the focus and interest of development studies. Among them, the regional integration of East Asia 1 has appeared prominently in this research. Within the various domains of development studies, East Asia has been applied as valuable comparative parameters due to a number of its significant characteristics:
East Asia has the world’s largest regional market with a population of almost 2 billion, and it is many times larger than the 27-EU 495 million and NAFTA 405 million.
East Asia has been the fastest growing region in the world since the 1960s. Over the last two decades the average growth rate in the region has been around 7 per cent, which is much higher than the average 5 per cent growth in the rest of the world.
East Asia has historically had a high domestic savings rate of about 20–45 per cent (it is different from country to country). It is much higher than the EU’s average of about 20 per cent.
East Asia holds over half the world’s foreign exchange reserves. China alone has the world largest foreign exchange reserve which passed $1.4 trillion in 2007.
Along with the NAFTA and the EU, East Asia is one of the world’s three largest economically integrated regions.
