This volume connects the evolving modern financial systems of China, Japan, and Korea to the development and growth of their economies through the first decade of the twenty-first century. It also identifies the commonalities among all three systems while taking into account their social, political, and institutional differences. Essays consider the reform of the Chinese economy since 1978, the underwhelming performance of the Japanese economy since about 1990, and the growth of the Korean economy over the past three decades. These economies engaged in rapid catch-up growth processes and share similar economic structures. While domestic forces have driven each country’s financial trajectory, international short-term financial flows have presented opportunities and challenges for all. For these countries, the nature and role of the financial system in generating real economic growth is integral, though nuanced and complex. The result is a fascinating spectrum of experiences with powerful takeaways.
Prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization 36 years ago, China maintained policies that kept the economy very poor, stagnant, centrally-controlled, vastly inefficient, and relatively isolated from the global economy. Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world's fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging nearly 10% through 2016. In recent years, China has emerged as a major global economic power. It is now the world's largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis), manufacturer, merchandise trader, and holder of foreign exchange reserves.The global economic crisis that began in 2008 greatly affected China's economy. China's exports, imports, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows declined, GDP growth slowed, and millions of Chinese workers reportedly lost their jobs. The Chinese government responded by implementing a $586 billion economic stimulus package and loosening monetary policies to increase bank lending. Such policies enabled China to effectively weather the effects of the sharp global fall in demand for Chinese products, but may have contributed to overcapacity in several industries and increased debt by Chinese firms and local government. China's economy has slowed in recent years. Real GDP growth has slowed in each of the past six years, dropping from 10.6% in 2010 to 6.7% in 2016, and is projected to slow to 5.7% by 2022.The Chinese government has attempted to steer the economy to a "new normal" of slower, but more stable and sustainable, economic growth. Yet, concerns have deepened in recent years over the health of the Chinese economy. On August 11, 2015, the Chinese government announced that the daily reference rate of the renminbi (RMB) would become more "market-oriented." Over the next three days, the RMB depreciated against the dollar and led to charges that China's goal was to boost exports to help stimulate the economy (which some suspect is in worse shape than indicated by official Chinese economic statistics). Concerns over the state of the Chinese economy appear to have often contributed to volatility in global stock indexes in recent years.The ability of China to maintain a rapidly growing economy in the long run will likely depend largely on the ability of the Chinese government to implement comprehensive economic reforms that more quickly hasten China's transition to a free market economy; rebalance the Chinese economy by making consumer demand, rather than exporting and fixed investment, the main engine of economic growth; boost productivity and innovation; address growing income disparities; and enhance environmental protection. The Chinese government has acknowledged that its current economic growth model needs to be altered and has announced several initiatives to address various economic challenges. In November 2013, the Communist Party of China held the Third Plenum of its 18th Party Congress, which outlined a number of broad policy reforms to boost competition and economic efficiency. For example, the communique stated that the market would now play a "decisive" role in allocating resources in the economy. At the same time, however, the communique emphasized the continued important role of the state sector in China's economy. In addition, many foreign firms have complained that the business climate in China has worsened in recent years. Thus, it remains unclear how committed the Chinese government is to implementing new comprehensive economic reforms.China's economic rise has significant implications for the United States and hence is of major interest to Congress. This report provides background on China's economic rise; describes its current economic structure; identifies the challenges China faces to maintain economic growth; and discusses the challenges, opportunities, and implications of China's economic rise.
South Korea's economic miracle is a well-known story. However, today Korea is confronting a new set of internal and external risks, which may foreshadow the next crisis. The Korean economy has been struggling with the faltering growth momentum and the rise of unprecedented socio-economic problems over recent years well before the pandemic crisis. After abrupt downshifts to markedly slower growth in the early 2000s, economic growth has continued to decelerate. Koreans are grappling with slow income growth, all time-high household debt, high youth unemployment, inequality, and social polarization. Politics is in disarray and is incapable of directing social discourse for the common good. Rapid population aging along with the world's lowest fertility rates stokes fears of Japanification. Simultaneously, disruptive technologies and fast-changing business environment such as the rise of China clash with a range of long-standing structural problems. The contemporary challenges are radically different from those seen in the early stages of industrialization. There are multiple risks that threaten to self-perpetuate low or stagnant growth over the next decade or so, if not an outright financial crisis. Motivated by these latest developments, this book seeks to provide a timely and in-depth analysis of key current issues and foreseeable challenges of the economy, with a provocative reassessment of its future. Based on extensive new empirical works, it examines the underlying causes of the socio-economic problems. In a constructive spirit, it puts in perspective what would constitute critical elements of ideal policy solutions and the direction of the future government's role.
China’s change to a new model of growth, now called the ‘new normal’, was always going to be hard. Events over the past year show how hard it is. The attempts to moderate the extremes of high investment and low consumption, the correction of overcapacity in the heavy industries that were the mainstays of the old model of growth, the hauling in of the immense debt hangover from the fiscal and monetary expansion that pulled China out of the Great Crash of 2008 would all have been hard at any time. They are harder when changes in economic policy and structure coincide with stagnation in global trade and rising protectionist sentiment in developed countries, extraordinarily rapid demographic change and recognition of the urgency of easing the environmental damage from the old model. China’s economy has slowed and there are worries that the authorities will not be able to contain the slowdown within preferred limits. This year’s Update explores the challenge of the slowdown in growth and the change in economic structure. Leading experts on China’s economy and environment review change within China’s new model of growth, and its interaction with ageing, environmental pressure, new patterns of urbanisation, and debt problems at different levels of government. It illuminates some new developments in China’s economy, including the transformational potential of internet banking, and the dynamics of financial market instability. China’s economic development since 1978 is full of exciting change, and this year’s China Update is again the way to know it as it is happening.
The 1997–8 Asian financial crisis exposed weaknesses in the region’s national financial systems, but since then East Asia has become the world’s most dynamic economic region. Domestic financial systems have developed, cross-border financial flows within the region are growing apace as demand from governments and large firms increases and as the capabilities of financial institutions develop, and governments have initiated regional cooperation aimed at preventing future crises and managing them if they occur. This book examines the economies of Asia and the Pacific with reference to financial reform and liberalization, monetary policy frameworks, banking and capital markets, regulation and supervision and macroeconomic policies. Further, it asks what lessons have been learned from both the Asian financial crisis and the recent financial crisis, how to engender financial stability in the region, and how to ensure that the benefits of economic growth and financial development reach all members of society. Across four key sections, the chapters examine the future implications of historical studies of the relationships between financial development and growth; financial development including banks, non-bank financial institutions and capital markets; how financial stability is being sought in the region; and China’s plans for capital account opening and renminbi internationalization and subsequent the policy implications for China’s neighbours. This book draws on papers originally presented to the 36th Pacific Trade and Development Conference held in Hong Kong in 2013, and features contributions from leading academics and economists from around the world. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian economics, Asia Pacific studies, international economics and international finance.
This book brings together scholars from different disciplines to examine the evolving patterns of economic organisation across Northeast and Southeast Asia against the backdrop of market liberalisation, political changes and periodic economic crises since the 1990s. More specifically, it provides an interdisciplinary account of variations, continuities and changes in the institutional structures that shape business systems and practices and govern innovation patterns, together with analyses of their impact on established systems of economic coordination and control. In line with this analytical focus, the project has three different yet interrelated objectives. In the first place, building on the comparative business systems framework, it elucidates the nature and properties of business system changes and continuities in Asia since the 1990s. Second, it develops novel theoretical propositions concerning the primary causes of these changes and continuities, representing a collective effort to theorise the changing varieties of Asian economic organisation. Finally, it explores the causal pathways through which the changing institutional structures governing business systems have shaped and reshaped innovation strategies and trajectories across the national, sectoral and firm levels of analysis.
From the Foundations in Global Studies series, this text offers students a fresh, comprehensive, multidisciplinary entry point to East Asia. After a brief introduction to the study of East Asia, the early chapters of the book survey the essentials of East Asian history; important historical narratives; and the region's languages, religions, and global connections. Students are guided through the material with relevant maps, resource boxes, and text boxes that support and guide further independent exploration of the topics at hand. The second half of the book features interdisciplinary case studies, each of which focuses on a specific country or region and a particular issue. Each chapter gives a flavor for the cultural distinctiveness of the particular country yet also draws attention to global linkages. Readers will come away from this book with an understanding of the larger historical, political, and cultural frameworks that shaped East Asia as we know it today, and of current issues that have relevance in Asia and beyond.
The Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) conference series has been at the forefront of analysing challenges facing the economies of East Asia and the Pacific since its first meeting in Tokyo in January 1968. The 38th PAFTAD conference met at a key time to consider international economic integration. Earlier in the year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump as their next president on the back of an inward-looking ‘America First’ promise. Brexit and President Trump represent a growing, and worrying, trend towards protectionism in the North Atlantic countries that have led the process of globalisation since the end of the Second World War. The chapters in the volume describe the state of play in Asian economic integration but, more importantly, look forward to the region’s future, and the role it might play in defending the global system that has underwritten its historic rise. Asia has the potential to stand as a bulwark against the dual threats of North Atlantic protectionism and slowing trade growth, but collective leadership will be needed regionally and difficult domestic reforms will be required in each country.
How will China reform its economy as it aspires to become the next economic superpower? It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with ageing problem and coping with a less accommodative global environment. In this book, economists from China's leading university and America's best-known think tank offer in depth analyses of these challenges. Does China have enough talent and right policy and institutional mix to transit from input-driven to innovation-driven economy? What does ageing mean, in terms of labor supply, consumption demand and social welfare expenditure? Can China contain the environmental and climate change risks? How should the financial system be transformed in order to continuously support economic growth and keep financial risks under control? What fiscal reforms are required in order to balance between economic efficiency and social harmony? What roles should the state-owned enterprises play in the future Chinese economy? In addition, how will technological competition between the United States and China affect each country's development? Will the Chinese yuan emerge as a major reserve currency, and would this destabilize the international financial system? What will be China's role in the international economic institutions? And will the United States and other established powers accept a growing role for China and the rest of the developing world in the governance of global institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, or will the world devolve into competing blocs? This book provides unique insights into independent analyses and policy recommendations by a group of top Chinese and American scholars. Whether China succeeds or fails in economic reform will have a large impact, not just on China's development, but also on stability and prosperity for the whole world.
During the last 30 years, the Japanese political economy system has experienced significant changes that are usually not well understood or analysed because of their complexity and contradictions. This book provides new analyses and insights on the process of evolving Japanese political economy including Japan’s current economic policy known as Abenomics. The first three chapters looks at evolutions at the corporate level, characterised in recent years by increasing firm heterogeneity. The authors apply theoretically driven analyses to the complex subject of corporate governance, human resource management and corporate reporting by discussing new developments in context of their economic opportunities as well as of their institutional contradictions with continuities in Japanese business practices. The second group of chapters deals with institutional changes and evolving economic reforms on the macro level of political economy. The two chapters focus on the financial system regulation and economic growth policies as two central elements of Japan’s political economy and key drivers in the evolution of its economy. Their analysis allows us to better understand the interplay between reforms and change in consumption credit and to reinterpret Abenomics as a manifestation of ongoing contradictions within the Japanese political economy. The chapters were originally published in a special issue in Japan Forum.
