Pacific Asia and the Asia Pacific: The Choices for APEC

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which set out to achieve "free and open trade and investment in the region" and led highly significant liberalization initiatives in the 1990s, has been stagnating for the past decade. The main cause of APEC's marginalization was clearly the decision of key Asian countries to prioritize economic cooperation within East Asia itself rather than across the broader APEC construct: a focus on Pacific Asia rather than the Asia Pacific. Bergsten argues that for APEC to regain the dynamism and leadership position it enjoyed during its initial decade, it will have to reconcile the strong unresolved tensions between its original main purpose--to "avoid drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific"--and the Asia-centric cooperation priorities of most of its key members. The global environment in which APEC will be operating in the next 20 years is vastly different from that of the past two decades, with the G-20 replacing the G-7/8 as the chief steering committee for the world economy and the informal and de facto G-2 between China and the United States playing an increasingly central role. These dramatic changes in the world economy and global governance patterns will influence the policy choices of countries in Asia but they do not alter the basic issue: Do the Asian members of APEC want a primarily Pacific Asia future or do they want an Asia Pacific dimension as well? Bergsten recommends that APEC renew aggressive leadership of the Asia Pacific. This option would reconcile the "Pacific Asia versus Asia Pacific" debate by embracing both as parallel initiatives. The United States would agree to support Asian regional integration as long as its components were compatible with the global rules, and the Asians would agree to simultaneously liberalize across the Pacific. The Obama administration is formulating a new trade policy for the United States and has already signaled a focus on Asia. The timing offers a golden opportunity for Pacific Asia to simultaneously achieve its regional objectives and solidify its relationship with the United States. APEC could thereby restore the dynamic leadership role of its initial decade and immeasurably strengthen both the region and the world economy as it addresses the likely global evolution of the next 20 years.

China and Economic Integration in East Asia: Implications for the United States

An essential pillar of a US strategy toward East Asian integration is acceptance of the legitimacy and desirability of that process. US acceptance of the economic integration of Europe is the model. Further, the United States--as well as Canada and Mexico--should seek to nest any new Pacific-Asia trade arrangements in a broader Asia-Pacific framework: Creation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) would embed Pacific Asia in the Asia Pacific. Another part of the US strategy should be to strengthen the substantive capabilities and political legitimacy of the global economic institutions, especially the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, to minimize the need for (and appeal of) new Asia-only regional compacts.

Toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific

At their latest annual summit in Vietnam in November 2006, the leaders of the 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum agreed to "seriously consider" negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). The FTAAP initiative may well turn out to be the best, or perhaps only, way to catalyze a substantively successful Doha Round. If it cannot do that, an FTAAP can still offer a Plan B to restore the momentum of trade liberalization, prevent further proliferation of bilateral and subregional preferential trade arrangements, avoid renewed risk of "drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific," channel the US-China economic conflict into a more constructive, less confrontational context, and revitalize APEC itself. Perhaps most important, an FTAAP could maintain US engagement in Asian, and even global, trade relations by providing a basis for congressional extension of trade promotion authority in mid-2007 and a negotiating momentum that the next US president in early 2009 will feel compelled to maintain.

The New Asian Challenge

The initial postwar challenge from East Asia was economic. Japan crashed back into global markets in the 1960s, became the largest surplus and creditor country in the 1980s, and was viewed by many as the world’s dominant economy by 1990. The newly industrialized countries (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) followed suit on a smaller but still substantial scale shortly thereafter. China only re-entered world commerce in the 1980s but has now become the second largest economy (in purchasing power terms), the second largest recipient of foreign direct investment inflows, and the second largest holder of monetary reserves. Indonesia and most of Southeast Asia grew at 7 percent for two or more decades. The oil crises of the 1970s and the financial crises of the late 1990s injected temporary setbacks but East Asia has clearly become a third major pole of the world economy, along with North America and Western Europe.

World Trade at Risk

C. Fred Bergsten The decision by the House of Representatives on April 10 to change the rules for Congressional action on trade agreements drives a gaping hole in US trade policy and poses the gravest threat to the global trading system in decades. By rejecting long-settled procedures that prevented Congressional sidetracking of trade deals agreed by fully authorized Presidents, it instantaneously destroyed the credibility of the United States as a negotiating partner in the eyes of the rest of the world. Unless reversed soon, the House action will severely damage both the US economy and US foreign policy. It will particularly undermine the presumed goal of any new Administration in 2009 to restore our country's standing as a reliable partner in a cooperative multilateral world. It would help if Congress and the present Administration could pick up the pieces and pass the Colombia agreement, and the pending South Korea and Panama agreements as well. But the fundamental problem of US international credibility on trade will remain until a foolproof Trade Promotion Authority, or some equivalent successor, is renewed and indeed ensconced permanently. This can only be done, probably by the next Administration, as part of a "grand bargain" that recognizes the costs of liberalization and thus includes a major expansion of governmental assistance to workers dislocated by trade and perhaps other sources of dynamic change in our economy. In the absence of such a renewed foundation for an open and active US trade policy, both our economy and our foreign policy will suffer severely.

The effect of incidence angle on the overall three-dimensional aerodynamic performance of a classical annular airfoil cascade

To be of quantitative value to the designer and analyst, it is necessary to experimentally verify the flow modeling and the numerics inherent in calculation codes being developed to predict the three dimensional flow through turbomachine blade rows. This experimental verification requires that predicted flow fields be correlated with three dimensional data obtained in experiments which model the fundamental phenomena existing in the flow passages of modern turbomachines. The Purdue Annular Cascade Facility was designed specifically to provide these required three dimensional data. The overall three dimensional aerodynamic performance of an instrumented classical airfoil cascade was determined over a range of incidence angle values. This was accomplished utilizing a fully automated exit flow data acquisition and analysis system. The mean wake data, acquired at two downstream axial locations, were analyzed to determine the effect of incidence angle, the three dimensionality of the cascade exit flow field, and the similarity of the wake profiles. The hub, mean, and tip chordwise airfoil surface static pressure distributions determined at each incidence angle are correlated with predictions from the MERIDL and TSONIC computer codes

Larval description and chaetotaxic analysis of dineutus sinuosipennis laporte, 1840, with a key for the identification of larvae of the tribe Dineutini (Coleoptera, Gyrinidae)

The larvae of the Malagasy whirligig beetle Dineutus sinuosipennis Laporte, 1840, identified using DNA sequence data, are described and illustrated for the first time, including detailed morphometric and chaetotaxic analyses of selected structures and a description of larval habitat. Larvae of the genus Dineutus Macleay, 1825 are diagnosed, and a key to identify the genera of the tribe Dineutini is presented. Larvae of Dineutus exhibit the characters traditionally recognized as autapomorphies of the Gyrinidae: body less sclerotized, egg bursters located on the parietal, one additional sensorial plate on the third antennomere, cardo and lacinia well developed, prementum completely divided, abdominal tracheal gills, and four terminal hooks on the pygopod. They also share with larvae of the other Dineutini genera these putative synapomorphies: numerous minute pore-like additional structures on the ultimate maxillary and labial palpomeres, coxal primary seta CO12 inserted submedially, and trochanteral primary seta TR2 absent. Larvae of Dineutus can be distinguished from those of other known genera of Dineutini by the posterior margin of the lacinia not dentate, tracheal gills plumose, parietal seta PA5 inserted relatively far from setae PA7–9, mandibular pores MNb and MNc inserted relatively far from each other, and tarsal seta TA1 inserted submedially.Fil: Michat, Mariano Cruz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada; ArgentinaFil: Gustafson, Grey T.. University of Kansas; Estados UnidosFil: Bergsten, Johannes. Swedish Museum Of Natural History; Sueci

Coulomb blockade thermometry using a two-dimensional array of tunnel junctions

We have measured current-voltage characteristics of two-dimensional arrays of small tunnel junctions at temperatures from 1.5 K to 4.2 K. This corresponds to thermal energies larger than the charging energy. We show that 2D-arrays can be used as primary thermometers in the same way as 1D-arrays, and even have some advantages over 1D-arrays. We have carried out Monte Carlo simulations, which agree with our experimental results.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures. Also available from Journal of Applied Physics (http://link.aip.org/link/?jap/86/3844