East Asia needs breakthroughs in cooperation
The marketing and information technology revolutions that have mushroomed over the past 20 years have sped up the flow of worldwide manpower and wealth as well as the globalization of economic activities. The accelerated integration, development and reforms that countries have undergone have boosted the world's total gross domestic product (GDP) from $20 trillion in 1989 to last year's $60 trillion.
Following the historic fall of the Berlin Wall was the reunification of East and West Germany in Europe. The series of events that ensued, from the establishment of the European Union in 1993, to the creation of the euro, a unified regional currency in 1999, and the bloc's eastward expansion in 2004, signaled that a new type of political and economic entity has taken shape.
In the US, lax regulation of its capital market and the adoption of a strong dollar policy have resulted in a ceaseless inflow of speculative capital from abroad, which, together with a flood of financial products and high-flying speculative crazes, have turned Wall Street into a sheer haven of gamblers. The omnipresent games with capital have also contributed to the explosive development of the IT industry in the US. Blossoming IT technology, new concepts and new commercial models were used as an important tool to snatch more wealth. However, the world had to pay the bill for speculation in Silicon Valley as the IT bubble burst in the US in 2000. The increasingly fierce speculation in Wall Street finally triggered the outbreak of the worst global financial crisis in decades.