 East Asia now boasts an expanding cosmopolitan middle class, where its members are linked to the global communications grid that are identifying with its Western counterparts across the world making it a significant force to be reckoned with in the global economy.The region's economic success has led to it being dubbed "An East Asian Renaissance" by the World Bank in 2007.At the turn of the twentieth century, two of the five world's largest economies were in East Asia, with Mainland China and Japan both being the second and third largest respectively.