Regional Integration Of South Asian Country

A complex set of social, economic, cultural, political criteria is usually used to classify the geographical regions. The regions are distinct in terms of size, population, development, potential of growth. Some are representative for the recent industrialization (south East Asia), others for economic and human backwardness (sub-Saharan Africa), others for economic supremacy and political hegemony (North America) or others for profound and radical transformations in the recent years (Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union). Due to the macro-scale of analysis, the most important criterion is general functionally; the uniqueness and homogeneity come second. The typology of main regions of the

South Asia has attracted global attention because it has experienced rapid growth in GDP. However if we see the exact face of south Asia there are two faces. One is some countries from South Asia dynamic, growing rapidly, highly urbanized, and is benefiting from global integration. Some

Over the past decades, the East Asian countries have experiences massive economic growth for the policy change from protection centred to export promotion. Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong would be the good examples of this. According to Krueger (1997), during 1950s and 60s, it was the general consensus that “import substitution” was the basis for the development, however, Asian countries that applied free trade and promoted export has risen rapidly starting from Taiwan, which transformed from a “high-inflation, inner-oriented, aid-dependent economy” to “major exporting economy”(Krueger 1997). Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore followed similar transformation at the same time period as called “East Asian miracle”(WorldBank 1993). Moreover she points out that those who transformed from inner-oriented to export-driven countries has become more resilient to dept crisis than other countries who did not. After 1979’s oil price surge, the huge economic recession attacked global market. In this crisis, countries with higher dept-export ratios could recovered its growth rate faster than those with inner-oriented manufacturing. (Krueger 1997)

Beeson, M. (2014). Regionalism and globalisation in East Asia: politics, security and economic development, 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

To conclude this subsection, the authors provide reasons to why the paper focuses on industrialization and the North-South divide. Firstly, the reasons for focusing on industrialization are because the authors wish to verify empirically the validity of the theory (or assumption) that industrialization is the most effective means of achieving the development efforts objective. Further reasons include that industrialization has costs and benefits, but these quantifiable costs are visible and invisible. On the other hand, the focus on the North-South divide is aimed at assessing the success or failure of the Third World development efforts.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) was created in 1989 as a regional discussion forum for fostering “closer economic relations within the region through inter-governmental consultations and other non-binding mechanisms.” (Dent, 2007:449). To a large extent the forum echoed “many decades of proceeding ideas and initiatives on Pacific regional community-building.”(Dent, 2008:120). One factor in APEC’s formation arose from the situation at the end of the Cold War whereby there was a growing market-driven economic interdependence which “created fresh opportunities for regionalism.”

The third major drawback to regional integration (RI) in Africa is that it tends to either benefit the stronger members only or in some cases, it costs the stronger nations disproportionately. This results in unequal transaction benefits and payoffs in regional integration agreements(The Challenges of Post-1990 Regional Integration in Africa, 7). According to the standard theory of regional integration as presented by Anthony Venables, when there are counties that perform substantially better than the other states economically in a RI arrangement (such as South Africa in SADC), resources tend to flow from the weakest in the group to the strongest, “where it is relatively cheaper and easier to do business, and where there are better-developed connections to global export markets”(Alves et al, 14). As a result, relatively stronger economies will grow at the expense of the weaker members in the RI arrangement. This theory has proven to be true in Africa. On this flip side, as it relates to the distribution of costs and benefits to providing regional public goods, some members also free ride on the efforts of others. Even if

Regionalism has become one of the buzz words in international trade diplomacy nowadays. There is almost no country in the world which does not have membership in one or two regional economic integrations, and the coverage and scope of these arrangements have grown more than ever before. Different authors have used different approaches to define the concept of regional integration. Therefore, it is important to discuss the definitions of economic integration according to the most prominent authors in the field of regional integration before taking on the theoretical and empirical literatures of the concept.

Altogether, this article has eight sections. The Second Section summarises the world economic environment. After that, in Section Three, it attempts to illustrate the theory of regional economic integration. Then come to a brief introduction of the South-South cooperation, which including the history, the form and the purpose. The Section Five concerns about the regional economic integration and Section Six and Seven

The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as two of the most important regional organizations, have been interacting with each other on the economic, political and cultural levels for more than four decades. In the 21st century, Asia has become the most dynamic region in the global economy today. What is more, its regional security and stability has grabbed increasing global attention as well.

The most representative regional economic organization in East Asia is ASEAN, which was established in Bangkok and formed by five founding members, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia also joined successively to form the ten countries of ASEAN. ASEAN is abbreviated by Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was built to contain the Communist forces with the purpose to steady military affairs and political neutrality initially. According to Tong (2005), the content of East Asian economic integration can be classified as Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and Comprehensive Economic Partnership (CEP). Previously, East Asian economic integration focuses on the operation of FTA which applies the zero tariffs on member countries; nowadays, economic cooperation agreement is inclined to CEP which contains wider issues of economic cooperation such as tariff reduction, deregulation of investment policy, enlargement of factors of production and etc. to draw the relation between member nations and achieve a higher level of integration (Jin, 2003). Moreover, the continuing goal of ASEAN is to promote the inter-regional economic development, enhance the partnership and maintain the peace in the region (Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center, 2014). Before Asian financial crisis, ASEAN is a representative of the regional economic organization that especially focuses on

Asia, and especially East Asia, is a region that has experienced significant economic growth in a relatively short period of time; yet it is a region without a strong regional institution. There are several regional organizations in Asia starting with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) established in 1967 (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), ASEAN plus three (China, Japan, South Korea) in 1997, ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), etc. Despite the numerous regional institutions within Asia, there has not been a cohesive structure that is prominent like that of the European Union in Europe.

The Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN is one of the regional Organizations which cater economy as its leading specialties. The idea of regional organization is a foundation and catalyst to strengthen the relationship between regional countries and reinforce solidarity in facing the challenges in the political, security and international economy arena (Keling, Md.Som, Saludin, Shuib, & Ajis, 2011). As Asia becoming an economic fastest growing markets (Vinayak HV, 2014), the so called economy’s Goliath China is extremely high beyond its neighboring countries. Thus, ASEAN was established with the signing of ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) in Bangkok on 8 August 1967 (ASEAN Secretariat, 2010) by five founding

All SAARC members apart from sharing same history have some other shared interests and problems. Locating in South Asia which is world’s most densely populated and one fertile region, these countries have common tradition, dress, food, culture and political aspects. And most importantly these eight countries share common problems and issues like poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, natural disasters, internal conflicts, industrial and technological backwardness, low GDP and poor socio-economic condition and efforts for uplifting living standards. Apart from working together to track and solve these problems together, these nations also desire of promoting peace, stability, amity and progress in the region through strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter and Non-Alignment, particularly respect for principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrally, national independence, non-use of force and non-interference of internal affairs of other states and peaceful settlement of all disputes.

SAARC is the acronym for South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation. As a clear form the name SAARC is an inter-governmental platform for co-operation. SAARC’s member nations are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Srilanka with UN, OIC, EU and China being the observers.