The widely held view of the Asian Financial Crisis is that it had no substantial impact on China. In fact, the country was far more vulnerable than most people realized, due to the high possibility of financial contagion entering the system from Hong Kong through Guangdong province. This book analyzes the severe policy challenge that it presented for China’s leaders. The crisis in Guangdong’s financial institutions provided a forewarning of the difficulties that lay ahead as China’s integration with the global financial system deepened. The experience of Guangdong in the Asian Financial Crisis provided a profound lesson for China’s policy-makers as they planned the country’s strategy for financial reform in the following years. China was able to avoid disaster by astute and difficult policy choices, in the face of fierce pressure from outside the country, as well as from different domestic interests at many different levels. The successful resolution of the crisis provided a breathing space for the leadership. It gave it time to undertake necessary reforms in the country's financial system in the decade that followed the crisis.

The Asian financial crisis has grown and spread. But China is the one economy in the Asia-Pacific region that has remained apparently unaffected by the present financial turmoil. Will China's financial sector be the next domino to fall? These papers will address this question by examining various pros and cons together with their backgrounds.

This book examines China’s response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, both in its immediate aftermath and in the years since. The crisis caused turmoil throughout Asia’s economies, and precipitated wholesale reform of economic and financial policies and institutions across the region. As one of Asia’s largest economies, China responded to the crisis more successfully than many others, avoiding devaluation of its currency, whilst undertaking financial reform, restructuring state-owned enterprises, rural development, and social security systems. This book considers all of these issues, showing how the lessons drawn from the crisis have helped shape China’s policies of liberalisation and market-orientated reform, including its attitude towards globalisation and the outside world in general. Based on research conducted by the China Development Research Foundation, one of China’s leading think-tanks, this book includes contributions from senior policy makers in the Chinese government and some experts participating directly in the government’s policy-making process to assess the effects generated by the country’s related policies, making it an indispensable account of China’s own thinking on its response to the financial crisis.

An examination of the political and economic causes and consequences of the Asian financial crises.

This book analyzes the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999. In addition to the issues of financial system restructuring, export-led recovery, crony capitalism, and competitiveness in Asian manufacturing, it examines six key Asian economies--China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The book makes clear that there is little particularly Asian about the Asian financial crisis. The generic character of the crisis became clear during 1998, when it reached Russia, South Africa, and Brazil. The spread of the crisis reflects the rapid arrival of global capitalism in a world economy not used to the integration of the advanced and developing countries. The book makes recommendations for reform, including the formation of regional monetary bodies, the establishment of an international bankruptcy system, the democratization of international organizations, the infusion of public money to revive the financial and corporate sectors in Pacific Asia, and stronger supervision over financial institutions. The book emphasizes a mismatch in Pacific Asia between investment in physical hardware (e.g., factories and machinery) and in social software (e.g., scientific research centers and administrative and judiciary systems). In a world of growing international competitiveness, concerns over governance will weigh increasingly heavily on unreformed Asian countries. The long-term competitiveness of Asia rests on its getting its institutions right.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy. What began as a localized currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies, long considered "miracles," respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries react to the crisis? What role did the IMF play? Why did China remain conspicuously insulated from the turmoil raging in its midst? What lessons can be learnt from the crisis by other emerging economies? This book provides answers to all the above questions and more. It gives a comprehensive account of how the international economic order operates, examines its strengths and weaknesses, and what needs to be done to fix it. The book will be vital to students of economics, international political economy, Asian and development studies.

China and East Asia’s Post-Crises Community: A Region in Flux, by Wei Liang and Faizullah Khilji, explores how an East Asian community is taking shape as a result of China’s emergence as a global economic power and the shocks of the financial crises emanating from the globalized financial system. Today’s East Asia shows a sharp break from the East Asia of the Cold War era, in both basis and orientation. Important elements in this shift include the regional economic integration propelled by China’s emergence as a processed manufacturing center in the world economy, the common problems posed by the working of the dollar-based international financial system, and the desire to develop institutions that help to formalize the economic integration and financial cooperation that is taking place, and may thus help protect and safeguard economic prosperity in the region. Liang and Khilji show how the approach to regional economic cooperation and developing institutions comes from the bottom up, lacking any leader nation, grand vision, or ideology. The manner in which the region comes to work together also has implications for the governance of the world economy, in particular the economic model that underlies policy formulation, the working of the international financial system, and the approach to the multilateral trading system.From a security oriented US-centric regional structure characterized as the hub and spokes system set up after the Second World War, this region is now more nearly an informal economic community, which increasingly appears to be China-centric. China and East Asia’s Post Crises Community presents one of the first attempts to weave together different strands of the current discussion to develop a framework for understanding a rapidly evolving East Asia region.

This book examines China's response to the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, and the resulting new status acquired by China within the international economy. It considers the things China did to weather the crisis, discussing the stimulus package put in place by China and how China's banks coped, but above all examines the measures which countries outside China look to China to put in place in order to better encourage and secure world-wide economic recovery, measures such as currency revaluation, tax reform and greater stimulation of domestic demand. The book contrasts China's response to the crisis, and China's increasingly central role in the world economy, with the responses of the European Union. The book also assesses China's increasingly important regional role, in particular its dialogue with the new Japanese government, and China's positioning towards Southeast Asia, and also discusses the growth of Chinese foreign direct investment.

China's strategy towards East Asian regional cooperation since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98Since the Asian Financial Crisis of '97-98 China has taken a leading role in East Asian economic cooperation initiatives, centred around the powerful ASEAN Plus Three mechanism (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus South Korea, Japan and China). This brand new book from the International Poverty Reduction Centre of China's Qianqian Liu outlines exactly how and why China has pursued economic and diplomatic cooperation throughout the post-crisis years. Methodical and richly detailed, it offers a unique empirical analysis of China's actions and involvements with ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asian Summit.Author Qianqian Liu's integrated theoretical approach captures and pieces together the intricacies of Chinese interactions with its East Asian partners - enabling the reader to better understand the dynamics of China's regional behaviour and foreign policy. Together with research-based insight and data covering all aspects of this critical subject, the author proposes two key assertions. Firstly that China-US relations have played a significant part in China's increasingly cooperative approach to China-East Asia relations. And secondly, that China has maximised mechanisms of regional economic cooperation as a means of enhancing its influence in East Asia.Key features and benefits:- Unveils China's perspectives on regional cooperation by extensively exploring Chinese source material and materials - information only now available thanks to increased openness and liberalisation- Offers a key contribution to wider theoretical debates on China's rise and regional intensions- Examines the vital interconnections between the key contemporary International Relations theories - realism, liberalism and constructivism - rather than examining them as separate elements to help fully explain China's strategies and goals- Analytical coverage of China's involvement with both ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia Summit- Offers comparisons between European regionalism and East Asian regionalism- Reveals Chinese perspectives on how China-US relations have helped shape China's approach to East Asia economic cooperationRegional Cooperation and China's Strategy Towards East Asia is published as part of a brand new series from Paths International, China and International Organisations Series. Published in association with China's Social Sciences Academic Press. Contents: 1, Introduction2, The Historical Development of East Asia and the Rise of China before 19973, The Asian Financial Crisis, China's Accession to the WTO and China's Participation in Regional Cooperation from 1997 to 19994, China's Regional Strategy from the end of 1999 to the end of 20055, China's Participation in Regional Cooperation in East Asia from the end of 2005 to mid-2009 6, Conclusions