Initially, the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 had a devastating impact in most
ASEAN economies and rapidly spread to other Asian countries and other parts of the
world. Although the dramatic currency depreciations in countries such as Thailand,
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, made their exports much more competitive,
production of these exports did not materialize much due to lacking production capacity
following bankruptcies and a credit crunch. The Asian crisis thus might have
contributed to the additional decline in theEUtotal imports from theA SEAN economies.
More importantly, the China’s WTO accession in 2001 caused intense export
competition with ASEAN countries in the third markets (McKibbin and Woo, 2003) and
the trade diversion highly contributed to a decline of total EU imports from the ASEAN
since 2001, in particular, the exports of ASEAN-4 including Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Thailand to the European market were significantly affected.