Regional Economic Integration And Regional Competitiveness

With the rapid development of economic globalization, the wave of regional economic integration surges worldwide. Countries actively adapt to this trend in order to seek national interests, which enhances the overall competitiveness of the region and ensures regional integration organizations of more resources and benefits.The paper studies the relationship between regional economic integration and regional competitiveness. Firstly, we construct the "Turbine wheel" model to evaluate the competitiveness of region and discuss the effects of regional economic integration on regional competitiveness. Regional economic integration mainly promotes the regional competitiveness which is comprised of economic potentiality and the degree of affluence, internationalization competitiveness and business environment by the static and dynamic economic effects it brings about.Secondly, we adopt the trade intensity index and trade introversion index, intra-industry trade index and gravity model to do empirical research on ASEAN, CAFTA and "10+3" through comparison. The result indicates the economic integration of ASEAN brought about quicker economic growth of the region than EU, NAFTA and MERCOSUR and increased the degree of trade integration in ASEAN, the capital and technology intensity of the product and intra-regional trade shares. And its positive effect on the intra-regional trade had been expanding. It also accelerated the inflow of FDI and caused more FDI to manufacturing and financial industry. The rapid economic growth, the enhancement of the internationalization competitiveness and the improvement of business environment together promoted the competitiveness of ASEAN. The cooperation between ASEAN and China or China, Japan and Korea raised economic potentiality and the degree of affluence, improved the business environment and particularly advanced the degree of trade integration and the overall capacity of the region to attract FDI, which further promoted the regional competitiveness.Lastly, based on the analysis of the present situation, characteristics and role of China in the economic integration of East Asia, we put forward some suggestions about the strategy of China.