Vertical Specialization And Trade Integration In East Asia

Nowadays vertical specialization is a typical of the international specialization. Since 1990s, the vertical specialization in world trade developed dramatically all over the world, in the mean time, the theories related to it are highly concerned by economists.This paper used index of vertical and index of technical content of parts and components in order to analyze the level of vertical specialization and the trade of parts and components structure in East Asia countries. The result shows East Asia countries have high level of vertical specialization, which often occurs in the capital-and tech-intensive industries. Through processing trade, china take part in vertical specialization within East Asia countries. China takes the position of processing which has low value-added in the vertical specialization of East Asia. Through participating in East Asia vertical specialization, China has increased its proportion of exports of capital-and tech-intensive products. Mechanical and electrical products dominate in China's export, but there is a big gap of sophistication of export between China and developed countries. Therefore, china should take actions to raise its position in the vertical specicalization. Mostly datas come from UN COMTRADE.