MENUJU ASIA TIMUR BERSATU

East Asia; which now generates over 50% of the world's capital accumulation, represents the latest and most dynamic pole of capitalist accumulation within the world economy. Within East Asia, Japan is no longer just a regional power, it is now a world power cunently in competition with the U.S. and Western Europe in a period of protracted world-wide recession. It has become globalized tbrough forcign direct investment and production systcms spanning the world economy. It is involved in Europe, Asia and the Americas. In short, it is a powerful force in the globalization of capitalism and fully involved in the global search for labor, resources and markets in the world economy East Asia has gone through three stages of development and integration after WWII. First it benefitted from anti-communist development and processes of integration sponsored by the newly hegemonic United States after World War 11, which led to the re-development of Japan in the late 1940s and 1950s. Second, and closely linked to the first, as Japan developed and industrialized during the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore industrialized, partly on the basis of the then new international division of labor, involving subcontracting. Both of these phases were integral to consolidating U.S. hegemony and correspond to the development of the Fordist model of capitalist accumulation. In the third phase, Japan transcends its regional hegemonic role and becomes a global actor, while the countries of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia) are being integrated into the regional and global system of subcontracting, trade and investmcnt during thc 1980s and early 1990s. In addition, the Market Socialist Societies (China, Vietnam and Lao PDR) are being re- integrated back into the capitalist world economy.