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Is Asia emerging as a more self-powered, interdependent region as it battles back from the global economic crisis, recovering faster than the West? And is China becoming the new center for Asian trade, investment and consumption?
“What’s happening is that Asia is discovering itself as a market in policymaking and is its own growth engine, so to speak,” said economist Peter Petri, an East-West Center senior fellow and professor at Brandeis University.
The year’s changing economic outlook in Asia was chronicled by journalists in five 2009 EWC programs. They blogged, tweeted and reported on the global economic crisis as it shook the region.
“It’s different from the way we and Asia looked at it before the crisis,” Petri said in an interview discussing recent economic developments in the region. “We looked at Asia as a very successful place, but largely pulled along by its relations and trade ties with the U.S. … playing second fiddle to us in policymaking.”
In just the last few months, he said, “the speed of change has dramatically intensified.”
Stock markets have rebounded throughout the region. China is on track to top 8 percent growth for the year – something unexpected just a few months ago. And some other economies also turned the corner in 2009, while region-wide recovery is expected to take at least another year, and U.S. recovery is projected by most economists to take even longer.
“It’s a much more balanced world, one in which Asia is more significant. It still engages with the U.S., but in a more balanced way,” said Petri, who is on a task force of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council drawing up a strategy for Asia Pacific recovery and growth. In the November issue of East-West Dialogue, he focuses on the continued “rebalancing” needed to sustain regional economies.
One reason Asia has done better, said Christopher McNally, an East-West Center political economist, is that most governments took care of their internal economies quite well after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.
“Asian economies came into this crisis much better prepared than the U.S. and various countries that have fared badly,” McNally said in an interview.
In addition, he noted, China’s massive stimulus program has had a big impact, resulting in more new Chinese bank lending in the first half of 2009 than in all of 2008 and 2007.
Unlike the slow recovery in America, China’s real estate sector has jumped back very quickly, McNally said, and China’s 14.5 percent increase in consumption is driving other Asian economies, including Japan’s.
McNally said this does not represent an overall retreat from globalization because China is still a big trading power. But, he added, “China has been more successful partly because it has globalized parts of its system less,” particularly the banking system, which remains largely state-owned.
Whether progress can continue and does continue is likely to be a major focus of economic reporting from the region. This sets the stage for the upcoming second biennial conference for journalists in Hong Kong April 25-28, and for fellowships and programs of the EWC’s Asia Pacific Center for Journalists now being planned for 2010.
Journalists in East-West Center programs fanned out across the U.S., China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia during a pivotal period to cover the economic crisis.
Southeast Asia: Reinventing ASEAN
Washington Post reporter Anthony Faiola, a fellow in the first ASEAN program Feb. 8-20, reported in a Singapore-datelined March 5 article evidence of a “period of deglobalization.”
Faiola chronicled a retreat from global connections in the region, with trade shrinking, ports standing idle and foreign workers returning home.
Journalists in the ASEAN program visited Burmese factory workers in Mae Sot, Thailand, and met with business and trade leaders in Bangkok, Singapore, and Jakarta.
Cambodian journalist Sam Rith said ASEAN is helping bring economic stability to the region, but Cambodians want other members of the association to cooperate more with one another.
Korea-U.S.: Forging new relations
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With a new administration in Washington and a new government in South Korea, both sides in the April 19-May 3 Korea-U.S. Journalists Exchange were interested in how the two allies will tackle economic and political challenges.
As the global crisis deepened, the message to Korean journalists visiting Detroit automakers was grim: GM Daewoo in South Korea wasn’t going to get any help from beleaguered General Motors headquarters in America.
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The message came from GM’s chief financial officer, Ray Young, as his company was about to go into bankruptcy. U.S. taxpayers would not allow bailout money for GM to be used overseas, Young told the seven Korean journalists. Daewoo would have to rely on the Korean government.
In Korea, seven American journalists also visited an auto plant, the Hyundai facility in Ulsan, as well as the POSCO steel plant in Pohang and the Pusan port.
Jefferson Fellows: China rising
At the start of the May 9-31 Jefferson Fellowships in Honolulu, Newsweek’s senior international economics editor blogged that China was turning its growing economic power into political power.
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“They are wearing the mantle of regional clout much more comfortably than the Japanese, who still have the world’s second largest economy, ever did,” wrote Rana Foroohar in a blog post titled “China Rising, and Rising, and Rising.”
Foroohar and others have since noted that China has either passed or is about to pass Japan in the size of its economy.
The Jefferson Fellows toured Tokyo, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
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They examined the economic crisis in Japan at a time when it was suffering from unprecedented job losses and a transition away from the lifelong employment model.
They also found grim job statistics in China over the past year, but heard officials in Guangdong talk about the remarkable 30 years of growth that had raised the economic base and the prospect of better jobs for the future.
Read more of Rana Foroohar’s Jefferson Fellowships travel blog.
Japan-U.S.: Comparing economic woes
Troubles in the auto industry were reverberating across the U.S. and Asia when journalists in the newly funded Japan-U.S. Journalists Exchange met and traveled in July.
As six American journalists interviewed officials, business leaders and ordinary people in Japan, six Japanese reporters traveled to Washington, D.C., New York, Cleveland and Detroit.
In Rochester, Michigan, they met with a local Pontiac, Buick, GMC dealer who had just received a letter from GM eliminating Pontiacs from his dealership.
Some of the Japanese journalists expressed dismay at conditions in Detroit with the decline of the U.S. auto industry, and concern was expressed that the same fate might hit Japan.
The Americans who toured Japan said they couldn’t see that happening with Japan’s strong infrastructure, technology, and long-term view of profits.
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Andrew Conte, senior investigative reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in Pennsylvania, reported on a cardboard robot developer in Osaka seeking to capture a share of the market for department store mannequins.
Daniel Gross, senior editor for Newsweek and columnist at Slate.com, compared the current global problem with Japan’s collapse of the 1990s, citing remarks by Kiyohiko G. Nishimura, deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, in a report entitled “Responding to the Financial Crises: Lessons Learned.”
Hong Kong Fellowships grow to China-U.S. exchange
Six U.S. journalists in the Hong Kong Journalism Fellowships toured Hong Kong, Beijing and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region July 28-Aug. 13, focusing on Chinese development policies, response to the economic crisis, and plans for working toward environmental sustainability.
This program will expand into the China-U.S. Journalists Exchange in 2010, with Chinese journalists visiting the U.S. and then joining the Americans for a dialogue at the East-West Center.
In the 2009 Hong Kong fellowships, the Americans looked at a wide range of economic and social issues.
David Klepper, state government reporter for The Kansas City Star, provided a list of 70 random observations about China and its ties to the U.S. in his blog Prime Buzz.
Charles Bennett, New York Post reporter, noted that U.S. imports from China have grown from $82 billion a decade ago to $338 billion last year.
“Now, one of the biggest challenges for China is convincing its citizens to start consuming to make its economy less vulnerable to fluctuations in the U.S. and the rest of the world,” Bennett wrote.
Stacy Perman provided a reporter’s notebook for Business Week describing the Beijing she saw on the EWC fellowship.
_ by David Briscoe, East-West MediaLine