Free Trade Agreements and Embedded Liberalism: South Korea's and China's New Trade Strategies Compared

摘要

This paper investigates South Korea's embrace of FTAs and then compares it with China's FTA strategy. Over the past ten years,South Korea's FTA policy has evolved from a reactive,neoliberal policy to a proactive,embedded liberal strategy in the post-Asian financial crisis period. In pursuit of his diplomatic and economic vision,President Kim Dae-jung was drawn to bilateral and minilateral FTAs,but his approach was basically designed to minimize the potential costs of FTAs rather than to maximize the gains from them. President Kim's grand regionalist vision and neoliberal economic reforms have inspired President Roh Moo-hyun. Despite its seemingly neoliberal overtones,the Roh Administration's FTA initiative has been combined with generous side payments to give domestic industries more time to adjust and to compensate the losers of economic liberalization. It is both useful and timely to compare China's vigorous FTA strategy with that of South Korea. As in the case of South Korea,a top-down approach has characterized China's newfound interest in FTAs. In addition,China's FTA strategy contains both neoliberal and embedded liberal elements,albeit less conspicuously. South Korea's experience shows that the success of China's FTA initiatives may depend on how effectively devise side payment measures for those who are leit behind in the global and regional rush toward FTAs. This paper concludes that although the right balance between government interventionism and laissez-faire policy may continue to evolve across time and space,the embedded liberalism is not a history.