Conclusions

In the new millennium, East Asia has been faced with economic dynamics at the global and regional level. The economies of East Asian states have been increasingly enmeshed into the global marketplace and China’s astounding economic ascendancy. In such dynamic transformations, the East Asian states have consolidated regional economic relations through the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) and cooperative programmes in a wide range of functional areas such as finance, energy, information technology, agriculture and the environment. Furthermore, the institutionalisation of business linkages and concrete talks within them became important vehicles to accelerate regional economic linkages.