New Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific (PDF)

CHRISTOPHER M. DENT is Senior Lecturer in the East Asian Economy in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Asia-Pacific Economic and Security Co-operation; The Foreign Economic Policies of Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan; Northeast Asian Regionalism: Learning from the European Experience; The European Union and East Asia: An Economic Relationship and The European Economy: The Global Context.

'In the last decade an explosive growth has occurred in the number of preferential trade agreements negotiated by countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Christopher Dent provides the first comprehensive study of these agreements in this meticulously-researched study. The book reviews why governments in the region have turned, later than many of their counterparts elsewhere in the world, to preferential trade, the principal obstacles to trade liberalization, how the strategies on preferential trade of the major countries in the region differ, and speculates whether the agreements provide a foundation for deeper and broader economic integration in the Asia-Pacific. A must read for anyone interested in the political economy of the Asia-Pacific.' - John Ravenhill, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University

'Christopher Dent's important book arrives as APEC confronts a choice between becoming yet another regional FTA as advocated chiefly by American writers, and sticking instead to MFN-based open regionalism advocated by distingusihed Australian economists and many others. It strengthens the hands of the latter with splendid analysis of the recent growth of preferential FTAs throughout Asia. Every scholar and policymaker on Asia, APEC, and indeed on world trade policy needs to read this invaluable book.' - Jagdish Bhagwati, University Profesor, Economics and Law, Columbia University & Author of In Defense of Globalization