Studies On Transformation Of East Asian Trade

The new "triangular trade" model, with China as its hub, plays an important role in the growth of East Asian economy in recent years. In the global context of economic imbalances, however, the drawbacks of this trade pattern can not be ignored, that is the rapid economic growth in East Asian mainly depends on the processing trade of intermediate goods for a long time. It can be expressed in the facts that its parts are imported form some East Asian countries, while the final products'consumption depends on the United States and Europe. This situation has affected the potential for further economic growth in East Asia. Therefore, if the situation can not be improved effectively, the development of East Asian economy will face a bottleneck constraint. Under the influence of this international financial crisis, the United States and EU's demand on final product have decreased. As a major export market for East Asian final product, this downward trend has had some negative impact on East Asian economic growth. Research on problems such as the development path of East Asian trade pattern, historical conditions, defects existed in current trade pattern, future development direction, measures to solve these problems and so on, has important practical reference for understanding significant questions including East Asian status in the global economy, the prospect of regional economic cooperation in East Asia, roles that major East Asian countries play in regional trade patterns and Industrial Division method, and the policy orientation of foreign economic development in China.Instead of only concerning about intra-regional trade in East Asia like many scholars do, this article has a broader perspective on trade issues in the entire region, which includes trade within the region and trade between East Asian Economies and outside markets. In addition, the Trade Gravity Model is being used to analyze trade flows and influencing factors of East Asian trade among the nine major economies in East Asia respectively in order to get a deeper and more comprehensive conclusion.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part includes the significance of this subject, reviews of relevant literatures, the structure and main ideas of this paper, innovations and shortcomings. Section One is the introduction part which gives an overall description of the article.In Section Two, the development and evolution process of East Asian trade is divided into three phases. Then this article describes characteristics of the development of East Asian trade model in each stage respectively. Further more, it also analyzes historical conditions in the formation of East Asian trade patterns from five aspects: the development of productive forces, the evolution of industrial structure, the deepened contemporary international division of labor, the accelerated pace of global economic integration, and the policy and system orientations for economy and trade.Section Three discusses the need for transformation of East Asian trade, pointing out that the main issues exist in current East Asian trade pattern including the international background of global economic imbalances, the deterioration of trade friction, the change of technological diffusion mechanism, the lack of stability in contemporary East Asian division of labor and so on. All these issues demonstrate that the transition of East Asian trade pattern is the only way to maintain a sustained growth in East Asian economy and trade.Section Four elaborates the objective and direction of transforming East Asian trade, which is followed by an empirical analysis by the use of Trade Gravity Model to identify main factors affecting East Asian trade. These factors involve: differences in the level of economic development of East Asian countries and resource endowments, economic scale, trade policies and institutions, regional cooperation organizations, external economic shocks, foreign direct investment etc, which provide an empirical basis for trade transformation in East Asia in next chapter.Part V offers a summary for the entire article proposing suggestions and recommendations for transforming the East Asian trade. Further more, inspirations are being abtained.