Chinese and Japanese economic attitudes towards Association of Southeast Asian Nations

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2004

Öğrenci: AYSUN UYAR

Danışman: HÜSEYİN BAĞCI

Özet:

In recent years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has become the main driving force of the economic dynamism of Southeast Asia. Japan, being the economic leader of the Southeast Asian countries during the 1980s and the early 1990s, is in a declining position in terms of leadership. Japan has also been experiencing economic recession since the mid-1990s and displaying only subtle signs of recovery recently. China, however, has taken the advantage of being the most demanding market of the region and already established the functional mechanisms of economic integration with ASEAN. This economic configuration of the region is the main inquiry of this study. Although the growing economic integration of China with ASEAN is fairly recent, it is generally discussed in the academic circles, that China has been taking the lead as an economic player in Southeast Asia. However, it is argued in this study that China is not yet ready to replace Japan as an economic leader of Southeast Asian in the long-term. Given the recent economic interaction between ASEAN and China, it is early to predict that China would replace Japan's leading economic position. In addition to that, China's blooming economy with its domestic crisis potential and China's long-erm geo-strategic interests in the South China Sea should also be taken into account while analysing economic potentials of Japan and China in the ASEAN market. The study examines the related literature with a comparative methodology including the analysis of the recent statistical data and survey of the news.