Pacific Rim
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pacific Rim is a political and economic term used to designate the countries on the edges of the Pacific Ocean as well as the various island nations within the region. There are many economic centres around the Pacific Rim, such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Manila, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Santiago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver. Honolulu is the headquarters of various intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations of the Pacific Rim including the East-West Center, Institute of Asian Research and RIMPAC.
The region has great diversity — with the economic dynamism of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore; the technological expertise of Japan, Korea and the western United States; the natural resources of Alaska, Australia, Colombia, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, and the Russian Far East; the human resources of China and Indonesia; the agricultural productivity of Chile, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States among others.
Contents |
[edit] Economic Significance
Some theorists opine[citation needed] that with the the established centres of industrialism in Europe and eastern North America apparently stagnating relative to the developing world, especially in Asia, the centre of world economic activity may refocus on the Pacific Rim, with a consequent decline in the Western countries surrounding the Atlantic. This notion arose in the late 1980's and 1990's, when various hitherto underdeveloped Asian economies such as Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea began to rapidly modernise and grow at phenomenal rates. Before this time the only major industrialised economy in the region had been Japan, somewhat isolated from the major developed areas of the world, and at least partly dependent on export trade with Europe and North America to maintain it's westernised living standards.
The sudden appearance of the Asian Tigers, as the newly developing countries became known, drew the attention of the West to the region, and opened the possibility that the old economic world order might be under threat from these dynamic young economies. The Pacific Rim concept represented a hope that these growing Asian economies might be drawn into a relationship with other forward-looking economic centres bordering the Pacific, like Australia, California, and the Pacific Northwest, and thereby rescue at least some First World countries from economic oblivion. In the early optimisim of the Internet boom, the obvious technology synergies between Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia, and the well-established technology heartlands of Seattle and San Francisco strongly supported this idea.
Nevertheless, the Pacific Ocean remains a significant logistical barrier, not least by separating the western and eastern parts of the Rim by 8 timezones and the International Date Line. It contains neglible markets itself; a typical air crossing between population centres is 15 hours non-stop, a sea crossing by the fastest container ships is of the order of 11-12 days. It takes less time to fly from Europe even to California, than it takes from China; and even less to the rest of North America. Moreover, the cultural discontinuity between East Asia and other countries notionally included in this grouping (such as the Americas, Australia and New Zealand) has proved less easy to bridge than some might have expected[citation needed]. The expansion of the European Union and the modernisation of it's new members in Eastern Europe is to some extent reinvigorating the North Atlantic region. South American economies bordering the Atlantic are also now enjoying steady growth after years of instability, particularly in Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. So perhaps it is now less easy to forecast a definitive shift towards the Pacific Rim than previously thought.
Between the mid-90's and the early years of the 21st century, the "Asian Tiger" boom suffered a number of setbacks, beginning with the Asian financial crisis of 1997, through the "dot-com" crash, to the SARS epidemic of 2003. In the aftermath of these problems, the only clearly discernable economic trend has been the meteoric rise of the PRC as a manufacturing giant. Together with the parallel rise and sophistication of the Indian economy, the China boom has largely eclipsed the Pacific Rim idea. Several factors would seem to argue for an alternative prognosis:
- communications between the Asian manufacturing centres and the markets of Europe, Africa and the Middle East are perhaps more straightforward than those across the Pacific (for instance, one country - Russia - spans the Eurasian continent, having borders with both China and the EU)
- long-standing relationships between European countries and various Asian and African countries are stronger (if not always more amicable), than those within the synthetic partnership of the Pacific Rim
- the cultural contrast between traditional East Asian societies and Europe is less stark than that with North America, having been filtered through millennia of contact and interchange, and is graduated across the expanse of Eurasia
- the former Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, while still not entirely politically stable, are now modernising and will soon become a significant economic force
- there is a strong cultural link between Europe and the Americas, making trade and co-operation across the Atlantic considerably easier than across the Pacific
- 72% of the world's population lives in Eurasia, 85% in Eurasia-Africa, including the world's largest single "First World" market (the EU, with a population around 450 million)
In this light it seems equally possible that if the world's economic centre-of-gravity is going to move anywhere, it is to South and East Asia, rather than to a nebulous grouping of widely separated countries around the Pacific. On the other hand, the increasing globalisation of world trade might lead one to conclude that in the long run there will be no single economic focus at all.
[edit] Locations
The Pacific Rim National Park is located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
[edit] Bibliography
- Clausen, A. W. The Pacific Asian Countries: A Force For Growth in the Global Economy. Los Angeles: World Affairs Council, 1984. ED 244 852.
- Cleveland, Harlan. The Future of the Pacific Basin: A Keynote Address. New Zealand: Conference on New Zealand's Prospects in the Pacific Region, 1983.
- Gibney, Frank B., Ed. Whole Pacific Catalog. Los Angeles, CA: 1981.
- "The Pacific Basin Alliances, Trade and Bases." GREAT DECISIONS 1987. New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1987. ED 283 743.
- Rogers, Theodore S., and Robert L. Snakenber. "Language Studies in the Schools: A Pacific Prospect." EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 21 (1982): 12-15.
- Wedemeyer, Dan J., and Anthony J. Pennings, Eds. Telecommunications--Asia, Americas, Pacific: PTC 86. "Evolution of the Digital Pacific." Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Telecommunications Council: Honolulu, Hawaii, 1986. ED 272 147.
- West, Philip, and Thomas Jackson. The Pacific Rim and the Bottom Line. Bloomington, Indiana, 1987.
