Session 3

　

Globalization and Asia - Present and Future of Asian Economies

　

Chairperson: Yonosuke HARA (Japan)

Speaker: Phisit PAKKASEM (Kingdom of Thailand)

Speaker: Masaru YAMANO (Japan)

Commentator: Hajime SHINOHARA (Japan)

　

｡?Chairperson: Yonosuke HARA

Professor, Oriental Culture Laboratory, University of Tokyo

　

　

The topic this Session 3 is "Globalization and Asia-Present and Future of Asian Economies". Actually, in Japanese it is written as "Present and Future of East Asian Economies" though it is written as only "Asia" in English. This is because the main topic would be what the World Bank would call East Asia, which is Korea, China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. But as we expect to be talking about other countries which normally would not be counted as the East Asia such as India, there is a slight difference between the Japanese and English title. We hope you understand the meaning of this slight difference,

I also think that the concept of the present East Asian economy crisis and currency crisis will also become one of the most important topics for today's session. Nobody knows where the discussion will take us, but just to mention a little of what I think, is that some economists say that the Asian crisis has occurred because the Asian economic system was already behind the times. Japan should consider deregulation and stop the application of administrative guidance and the intervention of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The same can be said in Asia. Such system where the government interferes is now being questioned. This is what is being said on one side. Others say that such is not the point. They remark it is because of the globalism, especially financial globalization. The short term fund transfer has caused over-valuation of the currencies and as a result, speculation ran through the world which finally led to the crisis. The two opinions seem to be opposing and the scenario or policy option differs depending on which stance you take when considering the future of the Asian economy. I hope that this point will be clarified to some extent in this session.

　

｡?Phisit PAKKASEM

Chairman，Thai Investment and Securities Co.(TISCO)Group

　

　

Yesterday we were more or less equate two words together. Globalization and Americanization. That's sometimes unfair. So today we start the topic of globalization in Asia. What's happening in the present and what we will do in future of globalization. So my remarks this morning concern three main issues of globalization. The first point is that present globalization had a tremendous impact on Asia. Why has the so-called "Asian miracle" turned into an Asian economic meltdown under so-called "globalization"? Should we then take time out from globalization for a while? My second point will be concerning the future. If globalizaion goes on, we in Asia need some sort of regional facilities that can cope or can work with this globalization process. The work of the IMF alone is definitely not enough. It needs to be supplemented by a sort of regional facility which now Japan and ASEAN are discussing how to cope with this new globalization process.

My last point concerns the recent research done by Japanese and American scholars printed in the "Japan Trade and Industry magazine". They blamed and pinpointed the misalignment of major currency in the world. This is the yen - dollar misalignment. There is some fallacy concerning the manipulation of exchange rates of these two currencies in order to solve trade imbalance between the major giants. That has tremendous impact on the rest of Asia. We are hanging on the wrong side. Most Asian economies peg their currencies with the dollar. That's why we all suffer.

Let me go over the first point again. Even the latest report done by the World Bank, called "Asian Miracle" which was published in 1993, and the ADB published "Emerging Asia" just last year. I even looked at all the recent IMF reports. None of them give us enough warning of what has happened today. They were too optimistic. There are even recent

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