Asian Economic Trends & Their Security

As the final product of a project dealing with the security implications of Asia's financial and economic turmoil, this report considers the sharp economic reversals suffered in the Asian region in 1997 and 1998 and the marked but widely varying evidence of significant recovery among the different countries of the region. The report then turns to the medium- and longer-term trends with respect to economic growth, military spending, and military investment in five countries in the greater Asian area: namely, Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Indonesia. The five countries were selected by agreement with the sponsors from a larger set addressed in RAND's previous analyses in 1989 and 1995 of long-term economic and military trends. India, a South Asian country, was included along with the four principal East Asian countries in light of its size and enhanced military prominence.