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Abstract
This paper evaluates the impact of alternative free trade area proposals in Asia after China enters the WTO by means of a recursive dynamic, 18-region, 26-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model simulated from 1997 to 2015, based on version 5 GTAP data. With China and Taiwan’s WTO accession set as the baseline scenario, we simulated the economic implications of four different FTA proposals: (1) ASEAN plus China/Hong Kong, (2) ASEAN plus Japan, (3) ASEAN plus China/Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea, and (4) ASEAN plus China/Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and USA. We found that under the ASEAN plus China version, the most significant winner is Singapore, whose GDP growth will be enhanced by 3.9 percentage points over the ten year period (cumulatively) from 2003-2012, followed by Thailand, Indonesia, and China. The ASEAN plus Japan (without China), as expected, benefits Japan at the expense of China. Under the version of ASEAN plus Three (China/Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea), all countries will gain more than in the FTA proposals with limited memberships. This can be explained by the fact that the inclusion of all three North Asian Countries (China/Hong Kong, Japan and Korea) in the FTA offers a substantially larger market for its members, compared with those of ASEAN countries.