Emergence and East Asian

The PRC will be East Asia’s largest trading nation by 2020 and its expansion will open unprecedented market opportunities for the region’s exporters. Japan, for example, will become the PRC’s largest individual source of imports. Using a sophisticated global forecasting model, this paper examines a variety of important trade liberalization scenarios for East Asia, with special reference to the PRC’s WTO accession. For the PRC, the author finds complex incentives governing its regional trade relations and negotiations. For its East Asian trade partners, the challenges will be to keep pace with its WTO initiative, while reorienting their industrial policies and marketing capacities towards the world’s fastest growing consumer society. adbi.or