Situation and Configuration of the East Asian EconomyâAnd China's Economic Strategy in the Region

Since the 1980s, particularly the mid-1980s, the economies of East Asia have entered a period of rapid growth. In the past decade, industrial structural adjustment and economic and political reform have injected new vigor into the economies of the countries in the region, throwing them onto the superhighway of economic development. Not only have the "four Asian dragons" joined the ranks of the industrialized economies of the world and formed into a "new industrialized economic community" that has received international recognition, but the economies of most of the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] members have also taken off. The economic progress in the 1980s made by China, in particular, has attracted the world's attention. In its 1990 report, the World Bank noted that the annual growth of East Asian economies rose from 6.6 percent in the 1970s to 8.5 percent in the latter part of the 1980s, remarking that the 1980s was an "age of Asian economic miracles." Furthermore, East Asia has maintained its vigorous growth in the 1990s while the West has been plunged into recession. This development marks the profound changes taking place in the situation and configuration of the East Asian economy as well as in that of the entire Asia-Pacific region. It is fraught with significance for the future. It will no doubt be an important premise on which all countries, especially those of the Asia-Pacific region, will base their external economic development strategy in the 1990s and even into the twenty-first century.