THE NATIONAL ECONOMIES OF THE WORLD.
1. To improve our understanding of international business and trade, we must first look at the global picture, that is the national economies, or countries.
2. There are approximately 200 countries, or economies in the world, of varying sizes and positions.
3. Students are encouraged to study the world map to understand these economies better.
4. We look at national economies on two aspects first, population size, and economic size (GDP).
5. The world population is about 7 billion people, and the largest countries in terms of population are China and India (billion club), followed by the hundred millions club, like the USA, Japan et cetera, then the rest of the countries.
6. Students need to look at the list of the countries by population and memorize some of these figures (approximation). For example, the USA has a population of 320 million, Japan 127 million, Indonesia about 200 million, Singapore about 5 to 6 million people. These figures are important for us to understand IBM.
7. Another aspect to look at is economic size. The world economy is worth about USD 72 trillion, and students may look at the top 10 largest economies in the world since they play a big role in IBT (International Business and Trade).

8. The largest economy is the USA with USD17 trillion, followed by China (USD 9 trillion), Japan etc.
9. We may also look at regions, and the three most significant regions, called the Triad, is North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. These three are engines to global economic growth.
10. The focus of the course is on East Asia, which has transformed itself after the Second World War economically and is on track to be the largest engine of the global economy in the near future.
11. East Asia consists of North East Asia (chopstick culture from Japan down to Taiwan), and South East Asia (basically the ASEAN