Asia’s economies have been hard hit by the current global financial crisis, despite in most cases enjoying strong macroeconomic fundamentals and stable financial systems.  Early hopes were that the region might be “decoupled” from the Western world’s financial woes and even able to lend the West a hand through high growth and the investment of large foreign exchange reserves.  But that optimism has been dashed by slumping exports, plunging commodity prices, and capital outflows.  The region’s most open, advanced and globally-integrated economies—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—are already in severe recession, with Japan, Korea and Malaysia not far behind, and dramatic slowdowns are underway in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.  What role did Asian countries play in the genesis of the global crisis, and why have they been so severely impacted?  How is their recovery likely to be shaped by market developments and institutional changes in the West, and in Asia itself in response to the crisis?  Will the region’s embrace of accelerated globalization and marketization following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis now be retarded or reversed?

Linda Lim is a leading authority on Asian economies, Asian business, and the impacts of the current global financial crisis on Asia, and she has published widely on these topics. Her current research is on the ASEAN countries’ growing economic linkages with China.

Forthcoming in 2009 are Globalizing State, Disappearing Nation: The Impact of Foreign Participation in the Singapore Economy (with Lee Soo Ann) and Rethinking Singapore’s Economic Growth Model. She serves on the executive committees of the Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for International Business Education at the University of Michigan, where formerly she headed the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Before coming to Michigan, she taught economic development and political economy at Swarthmore. A native of Singapore, she obtained her degrees in economics from Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA), and Michigan (PhD).

The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Financial globalization means that most countries and regions are not immune to the contagious effects of a financial crisis that originates in one country.

East Asian countries had already experienced the contagious effects of a financial crisis in 1997. That year, a financial crisis that broke out in Thailand and Indonesia reached Malaysia and then South Korea. Each of these countries reacted differently to the crisis. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand accepted International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities that required neoliberal economic restructuring in return for emergency loans, while Malaysia rejected the IMF offer and instead encouraged the inflow of speculative financial capital, while reforming the banking and financial system. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis, regional economic, financial and security cooperation were discussed among East Asian countries. These efforts resulted in the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Bond Initiative, the East Asian Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Six Party Talks.

Thus, regionalism in East Asia was revived in response to external shocks, such as global financial volatility, endogenous opportunities such as East Asian market compatibility (Pempel, 2008), endogenous security threats such as the North Korean nuclear development, and exogenous opportunities such as "bringing in the U.S." (Pempel, 2008).

Nonetheless, East Asian regionalism is still at a low level of institutionalization compared to Europe. East Asian regionalism is still basically "bottom-up, corporate (market)-driven regionalism" (Pempel, 2005). 

I will discuss the obstacles and the opportunities that Northeast Asian countries are facing since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization.

Hyug Baeg Im is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Dean at the Graduate School of Policy Studies and Director at Institute for Peace Studies. He received B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He was visiting professor at Georgetown University (1995-1996), Duke University (1997), Stanford University (2002-2003) and visiting fellow at International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC (1995-1996). He served as a presidential adviser of both Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidency. His current research focuses on the impact of IT revolution and globalization on Korean democracy. His publications include “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1987), “South Korean Democratic Consolidation in Comparative Perspective” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “’Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan: Myth and Reality,” (co-authored with Kim, Byung Kook) Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), “Faltering Democratic Consolidation in South Korea: Democracy at the End of Three Kims Era” Democratization, Vol. 11, No. 5(2004), “Christian Churches and Democratization in South Korea” in Tun-jen Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (eds.), Religious Organizations and Democratization: Comparative Case Studies in Contemporary Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) and “The US Role in Korean Democracy and Security since Cold War Era,” International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol. 6, No.2 (2006).

Three decades of economic reform in China have created expectations of political change to follow. However, neither the Chinese Communist Party nor China's capitalists are following this script. The CCP has strengthened its support for the private sector and integrated capitalists into the existing political system. China's capitalists have shown little interest in promoting democratization. Many are dependent on the state for their success, and have shared interests, personal ties, and common views on a range of policy issues. Rather than being potential agents of change, China's entrepreneurs are proving to be a key source of support for the party's agenda.

Bruce Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993. He teaches on China, comparative politics, and democratization. Professor Dickson is currently examining the political consequences of economic reform in China, and in particular the relationship between private entrepreneurs and the Chinese Communist Party.

Dr. Dickson is the author of Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector (2008), Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreuneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (2003), Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties (1997), and is co-editor of four other books. His articles have appeared in Asian Survey, China Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Democracy, National Interest, and Political Science Quarterly. He is a frequent commentator on political developments in China and Taiwan and on U.S.-China relations, and has appeared on CNN, NPR, BBC, and VOA.

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform and Opening in China: How Far from the Cage?"

Peter Henry's research on emerging markets provides fundamental insights about the impact of economic reform on the lives of people in developing countries. It uses theory and data to grapple objectively with some of the most important and contentious economic questions of our time: Does debt relief help or hurt poor countries? Should emerging nations permit capital to flow freely in and out of their economies? Is it possible to reduce inflation without undermining economic growth? Peter's answers to these questions appear in the leading academic journals and have led him to testify before the U.S. Congress and various United Nations Ambassadors.

Peter is Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics, the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar, and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2000-2001 he was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The National Science Foundation's Early CAREER Development Program supported his research and teaching from 2001-2006. In 2004 Peter participated in the Copenhagen Consensus, an international conference on how to make the most efficient use of the world's scarcest resources. The Economist magazine named the published proceedings of the conference one of the best business books of 2004.

Peter received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. While in graduate school, he served as a consultant to the Governors of the Bank of Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). His research at the ECCB contributed to the intellectual foundation for establishing the first stock market in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Area.

Prior to attending MIT, Peter was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he received a BA in mathematics and a Full Blue in basketball. He also holds a BA in economics from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar, a National Merit Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Marshall Scholar-Elect, a reserve wide receiver on the varsity football team, and a finalist in the 1991 campus-wide slam-dunk competition.

Born in Jamaica, Peter became a U.S. citizen in 1986. His wife of 12 years, Lisa J. Nelson, received her BA and MD from Yale University. She is a child psychiatrist and was a Glaxo Welcome Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association from 1995 to 1997. They have four sons: Christian Blair, Langston Alexander, Hayden Montgomery, and Harrison Elbert.

Barbara Geddes, who earned her Ph.D. from UC, Berkeley, has written about politics and breakdown in authoritarian regimes, bureaucratic reform and corruption, political bargaining over institutional choice and change, and research design. Her publications include Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politic (2003), Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America (1994), "What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?" Annual Review of Political Science (1999) and "A Game Theoretic Model of Reform in Latin American Democracies," American Political Science Review (1991). Her current research focuses on politics inside dictatorships. She teaches Latin American politics, authoritarian politics, and research design at UCLA.

Mark Fathi Massoud's research focuses on the development of law in volatile states rife with violent conflict. An attorney of the California Bar, he received his JD and PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Massoud's current research examines tensions between international rule-of-law aid and local perceptions of rights in a divided society.

Massoud's dissertation, which he is revising into a book manuscript at Stanford, builds on the interdisciplinary tradition of law and society to examine the role of law in development. Taking Sudan as a case, it explores how government officials, civil society activists, and the international aid community all use law to construct and maintain their influence over society.

Dr. Gilley earned his B.A. in International Relations at the University of Toronto. He went on to finish his M.Phil. in Economics at the University of Oxford and his Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University.

Research Focus
Dr. Gilley’s research centers on democracy, legitimacy, and global politics. He is a specialist on the comparative politics of China and Asia.

Community Engagements/Service
Dr. Gilley is a frequent advisor to governments and NGOs on matters of democracy and human rights in Asia. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and as a programme evaluator for Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service.