International Trade In East Asia

The practice of trading across international borders has undergone a series of changes with great consequences for the world trading community, the result of new trade agreements, a number of financial crises, the emergence of the World Trade Organization, and countless other less obvious developments. In International Trade in East Asia, a group of esteemed contributors provides a summary of empirical factors of international trade specifically as they pertain to East Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Comprised of twelve fascinating studies, International Trade in East Asia highlights many of the trading practices between countries within the region as well as outside of it. The contributors bring into focus some of the region's endemic and external barriers to international trade and discuss strategies for improving productivity and fostering trade relationships. Studies on some of the factors that drive exports, the influence of research and development, the effects of foreign investment, and the ramifications of different types of protectionism will particularly resonate with the financial and economic communities who are trying to keep pace with this dramatically altered landscape.

Global Production and Trade in East Asia focuses on the profound change that the traditional paradigm of production and international trade has undergone in the last two decades or so as a result of worldwide trade and investment liberalization. This ongoing transformation has been both aided and stimulated by advances in telecommunications, transportation, and information management. The liberalization of trade and investment on the one hand and advances in communications technology on the other have further promoted global production networks in which vertical stages of final goods are fragmented across countries. International fragmentation of production, which enables international division of labor not only in final products but also in vertically related components, is more evident than ever before. The book documents the process of international production fragmentation and trade in East Asian economies, studies the mechanics of the process, explores the theory behind the phenomenon, and identifies important policy implications. It focuses on production fragmentation and trade in East Asia because this is the part of the world where the phenomenon is most visible. With contribution by well-known international economics scholars from North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific, the book distinguishes itself with high global quality and rich regional content. It achieves a fine balance between theory, policy, and empirical work. This book will interest scholars of international trade, foreign investment and international business, regional specialists in East Asian economies, policymakers and advisors in international economic relations, and anyone else who follows important economic issues of globalization.

The book provides an understanding of how international trade and capital flows have engineered the development process in East Asia, and examines the real and potential challenges that the region is expect to encounter in the twenty-first century. It integrates four topics (i.e. capital flows, East Asia, globalization and economic development) that are at the centre of the social, political and economic debate. The text highlights the region's growing strategic importance in the twenty-first century globalizing world, where transnational corporations are playing an increasingly decisive role in the global distribution of production and trade. It blends generalised regional analyses with country-specific case studies in the world's most dynamic region. It is so well designed that each of the seventeen countries that comprise the region gets some space for discussion. Thus, the text is a valuable contribution to the social science and business literature, with a special focus on the now strategic region of East Asia.

Trade as an engine of growth has played a catalyst role in East Asian development; through vigorous study of performances in past decades, East Asian trade and industrialization experiences may offer some lessons for other developing countries. This book covers trade and industrial structures for ten countries and regions including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The author addresses the comparative advantages and trade similarity indices of Asian economies from regional and global perspectives. He also analyzes the impacts of regional trade agreements from both member and non-member countries' perspectives. After a vigorous examination of the sources of export growth by the methodology of the constant market share analysis, the book examines the trade–investment nexus, the development of fragmentation of manufacturing production, and trade in parts and components as the dominant trade flows after the mid-1980s. It then studies the trade complementarity index among countries to further pursue the analysis of natural trading partners, and looks at the Krugman–Baldwin hub–spoke thesis by empirically identifying the 'degree of hub-ness' in three major markets in China, Japan, and the USA. Various scenarios of economic integration in East Asia are assessed and an open regionalism is proposed for East Asian economic integration and sustainable development in the conclusion of the book. Students and researchers of international trade, economic development, and Asian Studies will find the data and analyses in the volume invaluable in understanding the economic development of the Asia Pacific.

Production networks have been at the heart of the recent growth in trade among East Asian countries. Fragmentation trade, reflected mainly in the trade in parts and components, is expanding more rapidly than the conventional trade in final goods. This is mainly due to the relatively more favorable policy setting for international production, agglomeration benefits arising from the early entry into this new form of specialization, considerable intercountry wage differentials in the region, lower trade and transport costs, and specialization in products exhibiting increasing returns to scale. The economic integration of China has deepened production fragmentation in East Asia, countering fears of crowding out other countries for international specialization. International production fragmentation in East Asia has intensified intraregional trade but has depended heavily on extraregional trade in final goods. While production networks centered on China have contributed significantly to growth in East Asia, they also breed vulnerabilities. They have not automatically led to technology spillovers and have led to an extreme interdependence across East Asian countries.

Emerging East Asian economies have seen their share of world exports more than triple during the past quarter-century, and intraregional trade has driven this growth. Broad measures of development in East Asia have improved at the same headlong pace. Why push further integration now? Two economic events of historic proportions provide the context: strategic thinking of development in the region following the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 and the accession of China to the World Trade Organization. Policymakers interested in a stable, prosperous region are concerned by mildly rising inequality within countries and a widening gap between richer economies and the poorest economies. Increasingly, the development agenda in the region with its focus on growth, jobs, and social stability and the trade policy agenda with its focus on market access and competitiveness have become intertwined. East Asian policymakers seek to develop a coherent set of economic policies that can deliver stability, growth, and regional integration. Without attempting to be comprehensive, 'East Asia Integrates' offers fundamental strategies that promote cross-border flows of trade, along with domestic policies on logistics, trade facilitation, standards and institutions to maximize the impact of these flows on development and distribute the gains from trade widely. As the authors demonstrate, multilateral and regional trade initiatives must provide a compelling vision of how integration can deliver broadly shared growth and prosperity if they are to succeed. In addition, they must use the momentum offered by trade agreements to address the links between trade on the one hand, and social stability, poverty reduction, and growth on the other.

Takeshi Hamashita, arguably Asia's premier historian of the longue durée, has been instrumental in opening a new field of inquiry in Chinese, East Asian and world historical research. Engaging modernization, Marxist and world system approaches, his wide-ranging redefinition of the evolving relationships between the East Asia regional system and the world economy from the sixteenth century to the present has sent ripples throughout Asian and international scholarship. His research has led him to reconceptualize the position of China first in the context of an East Asian regional order and subsequently within the framework of a wider Euro-American-Asian trade and financial order that was long gestating within, and indeed contributing to the shape of, the world market. This book presents a selection of essays from Takeshi Hamashita's oeuvre on Asian trade to introduce this important historian's work to the English speaking reader. It examines the many critical issues surrounding China and East Asia's incorporation to the world economy, including: Maritime perspectives on China, Asia and the world economy Intra-Asian trade Chinese state finance and the tributary trade system Banking and finance Maritime customs.

Comprises 19 articles grouped under four headings: Reflection on the WTO system; Experience of East Asian memebers in the WTO system; East Asian perspectives on the WTO issues; and Regional economic integration.