Since emerging as a leading industrial economy, Japan has played an important role in promoting Asia Pacific economic cooperation. Japan has been instrumental in every major initiative in economic cooperation in the region over the past three decades, including the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum launched in 1989. Japan’s commitment to free trade, reinforced by its own experience of discriminatory trade policies in the immediate postwar period, has made it a strong advocate of the principle of ‘open regionalism’ on which APEC is founded. Commitment to this principle has provided the basis for a process of unilateral liberalisation of trade, including agreed time frames, which allows the developing economies of the Asia Pacific region to progress towards free trade in a flexible manner and provides some protection against ‘free riders’. The strength of this commitment will assist member economies to counter pressure for preferential trading arrangements and facilitate the extension of free trade to sectors which involve cooperation with economies outside the Asia Pacific region.
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Length: 12 pages Date of creation: Jul 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:eab:develo:386
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Find related papers by JEL classification: R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography) P45 - Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - International Linkages O19 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Country and Industry Studies of Trade F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
C. Fred Bergsten, 1997.
"Open Regionalism,"
The World Economy,
Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(5), pages 545-565, 08.
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