From The Asian Financial Crisis, U.s. Financial Hegemony

There are competitions for international power and interest in international financial crises. It causes a new process of power and wealth distribution in every crisis. When it arrives to the most destructive international financial crisis of the worst influence from World War II, the Asian financial crisis breaking out in 1997 will be the best case. The U. S. financial hegemony is one of most significant factors which always result in crises.Based on others' work, financial hegemony is defined as a country or a country group that has three characteristics: privilege, gain and responsibility at the same time in this dissertation. From this definition, U. S. financial hegemony is not intact when it appeared in the Asian financial crisis, for it got the characteristics of privilege and gain, which the relatent responsibility was not carried by America wholly. The decline of U. S. relative power brought forth the hegemony paradox between gain and responsibility: U. S. financial hegemony disturbed the international monetary and financial system built and maintained mainly by itself when it managed to take advantage of the defaults existing in other countries' financial systems.The Asian countries involving in financial crisis suffered the great disaster brought by the insufficient international public goods and constant disturbances of international monetary and financial system which could be attributed to the unbalance between privilege, gain and responsibility of U. S. financial hegemony. As a response to U. S. hegemony behavior of shirking responsibility, the Asian countries carried out monetary cooperation after the crisis in order to provide regional monetary and financial international public goods by themselves.From the Asian financial crisis and the practice of the monetary cooperation between Asian countries, the author argues that the union for providing regional international public goods so as to maintain the prosperity and stability in a region will become an important phenomenon in international relations in the future.The whole paper, approximately 200,000 words, consists of an introduction, six chapters and conclusions. It develops as the following order:The introduction concludes the value of this research, reference review, research method and framework and contributions of this dissertation.The first chapter builds the theoretical framework mainly around financial hegemony theory. In this part, the hegemony theory, financial hegemony theory, dollor hegemony theory and other related concepts are introduced and defined. Based on others' work, the financial hegemony is defined as the conbinition of three characteristics: privilege, gain and responsibility in this dissertationThe second chapter illuminates the couse and the reason of the Asian financial crisis. The author argues that the Asian financial crisis' international origion lay in U.S. financial hegemony. The emerging market countries' financial systems under dollar hegemony were fragile. The Washington Consensus promoted by U.S. increased their fragility.The third chapter analyzes the privilege of U.S. financial hegemony in international financial system. U.S. financial hegemony improved the dependence of international financial system through its promotion of the global financial liberlization. America's influence on Asian countries increased and its financial hegemony status was solidified by America's controllness over international financial regime and capital's transnational flow.The forth chapter shows the mechanism about how U.S. gained profits from the Asian financial crisis by its hegemony privilege. There are three gains chased mainly by U.S. which lay in international politics of U.S. government, international economics of U.S. government, and its internal financial institutions.The fifth chapter focuses on the analysis of U.S.' duty shirking behavior. In this chapter, the auther argues that the supply of international public goods by U.S. financial hegemony couldn't meet the demand in this region. It reflected the defect of international monetary and financial system and the influence given by many internal constraints in America.The sixth chapter explores the crisis-afflicted countries' reaction to the duty shirking behavior of U.S. finacial hegemony and predicts the future of Asian monetary cooperation as well. The author argues that the Asian financial crisis is the omen of U.S. financial hegemony decline in fact. The essence of the Asian monetary cooperation should be recognized as the regional international public goods provision under the existing in lack of international finacial public goods.Through the above analysis, the author gives four suggestions to China's financial stability in epilogue.