Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/101280 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
ADBI Working Paper No. 336
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), Tokyo
Abstract: 
This paper examines the prospect of realizing regional economic integration via the mechanism of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The FTAAP initiative represents a politically ambitious, high potential benefit option for achieving Asian regional integration. Among its desirable attributes, the FTAAP initiative could help revive and promote a successful conclusion of the Doha Round negotiations; constitute a "Plan B" hedge if Doha fails; short-circuit the further proliferation of bilateral and sub-regional preferential agreements that create substantial new discrimination and discord within the Asia-Pacific region; defuse the renewed risk of "drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific" as East Asian, and perhaps the Western Hemisphere, initiatives produce disintegration of the Asia-Pacific region rather than the integration of that broader region that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum was created to foster; channel the People's Republic of China-United States economic conflict into a more constructive and less confrontational context; and revitalize APEC, which is of enhanced importance because of the prospects for Asia-Pacific and especially the PRC-US fissures. An incremental approach to the FTAAP, explicitly embodying enforceable reciprocal commitments, offers the best hope delivering on the concept's abundant benefits.
Subjects: 
regional economic integration
asia-pacific
doha round negotiations
JEL: 
O16
O53
R11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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