Chapter 6 The Asian Economic Integration: Intra-Regional Trade

With more than half the population of the world and a reasonably large resource base, the progressive industrialization of the Asian economies beyond Japan following their open economic policy initiative in the recent decades has resulted in a dramatic increase in the gross domestic output of the regional economies, increased inflows of varied forms of foreign investments, and huge leaps in productivity. The exploration and expansion of markets for goods produced followed. The portion of exports of the new manufactures sent to international markets to earn export revenues in convertible currencies became a necessity for the success of profit repatriation by foreign investors from savings-rich countries (Chapters 1 and 3). Independent of that, theses economies had surpluses of goods produced and they engaged in mutual intra-regional trade for a number of reasons.