The Asian Century: More than just China Lili Yan Ing 1* and Anika Widiana 2 1 Economist, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and Lecturer at Faculty of Economics, Indonesia 2 Lecturer at Prasetiya Mulya Business School Jakarta. Indonesia *Corresponding author: Lili Yan Ing, Economist, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and Lecturer at Faculty of Economics, Indonesia, Tel: +62-21-5797-4460; E-mail: liliyan.ing@eria.org Received date: Jul 18, 2014; Accepted date: Aug 07, 2014; Published date: Aug 17, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Lili Yan Ing, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract This paper highlights the important role of the four Emerging East Asian Economies (EEA-4), namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia. As China’s growth pattern is changing as it moves up the income ladder, and is likely to rely more on consumption and less on investment and exports, and more on services and less on industry, these offer opportunities for EEA economies, particularly the EEA-4 to expand their economies through trade and investment. The EEA-4 could tap these opportunities as they have 3Ds: Durable macroeconomic, Domestic consumption and Demographic dividend. Nonetheless, they still face challenges of 3Cs: Credit, Competition and innovation and Confronting inequality. These economies should focus on how to optimize the growth potential of high value added sectors which will be beneficial for income growth and long-term prosperity. They have to be able to tap into its large pool of labor, while progressively moving up the value chain in the manufacturing and services sectors. Keywords: Asian economies; Growth; Trade; Investment; Demographic dividend; Inequality Introduction East Asia Pacific (EAP) economic growth has outperformed world growth for the last two decades, except in 1997-1999 due to the Asian Financial Crisis. Compared with other regions, EAP had the highest growth in 2010 and the growth in developing East Asia Pacific remained strong in 2011, though slowed down from the rates that followed the global financial and economic crisis (Figures 1a and 1b). Most East Asian economies are well positioned to weather renewed volatility. Figure 1a: GDP growth of EAP and the World, 1990-2010. For 2012 and the following decade, we expect that East Asia will remain strong, even though annual growth will further moderate as a result of an unremitting volatile external environment. The growth lately was largely supported by strong domestic demand and investment as a result of the easing of monetary policy in several countries and was the main driving force of growth in the second half of 2011, partly offsetting decreased external demand from developed economies. Figure 1b: GDP Growth of the World, by region, 1990-2010. The drivers of global economic growth are shifting towards East Asia and Emerging Asian Economies are well-positioned to benefit from the growing power of Asian economies. Developing East Asia is estimated to grow by 7.6 percent in 2012, with slower expansion in China pulling down much of the regional aggregate [1]. Moreover, EEA-4 are also members of ASEAN. The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is intending to design ASEAN as a single production base which comprises free flow of goods, services, investment, and skilled labor. Further explanation on ASEAN as a single production network and single market can be found in [2]. Ing and Widiana, Int J Econ and Manage 2014, 3:3 DOI: 10.4172/2162-6359.1000182 Review article Open Access Int J Econ and Manage ISSN:2162-6359 IJEMS, an open access journal Volume 3 • Issue 3 • 1000182 International Journal of Economics & Management Sciences I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f E c o n o m i c s & M a n a g e m e n t S c i e n c e s ISSN: 2162-6359