Pacific Rim
The region of land that surrounds the Pacific Ocean is called the Pacific Rim and includes more than thirty nations in Asia, Oceania, and North and South America. About 2.5 billion people live in this region, which is four-tenths of the population of the world, and the total gross domestic product in this region, which includes the two economic superpowers (the United States and Japan), accounted for 56 percent of the world gross domestic product in 1996. Now, economic growth in developing Asian nations is making the rest of the world pay more attention to this region, and this attention has led to a large-scale economic forum, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which includes most of the nations of the Pacific Rim.
Furthermore, with the strengthening trend of bilateral trade and investment in this region, the term "Pacific Rim" no longer represents solely the geography of a region. In the period 1981–1983, 60 percent of all exports from APEC member nations were to the other APEC member nations. This figure increased to 69 percent in 1991–1993 and 71 percent in 1997. As for imports, they also increased, from 61 percent in 1981–1983 to 71 percent in 1991–1993 to 72 percent in 1997.
However, the continuing change in the balance of power between the United States and China and the increasing independence of Southeast Asian nations from the United States have led to less regional integration among North and South America, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. This situation was accelerated by U.S. policies implemented during the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s.
The emergence of the Pacific Rim as a major economic region represents a major shift in the world's regional power distribution. In the twentieth century, economic and political power resided in the nations on or near the Atlantic Ocean—Great Britain, the United States, France, and Germany. Earlier, economic power had been concentrated in Europe. The unification of Europe as the European Union is, in part, an effort to compete with Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Further Reading
Flynn, Dennis O., Lionel Frost, and A. J. H. Lathan, eds. (1999) Pacific Centuries: Pacific and Pacific Rim History since the Sixteenth Century. New York: Routledge.
Simon, Denis Fred, ed. (1995) Cooperation Strategies in the Pacific Rim: Global versus Regional Trends. New York: Routledge.
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