The Impact Of Labor Transformation On The Development Of East Asian Manufacturing Division

With the rapid economic growth in East Asia, Income levels in East Asian countries continue to increase, leading to a decrease in fertility and extended life expectancy. Many East Asian countries are emerging the "accelerated population aging" phenomenon. Even Cambodia, Laos and other poorer countries will face a rapidly aging population dilemma in the next 20 years, while China, Thailand and other developing countries have already begun to face the great challenges of aging, East Asian countries are facing unprecedented demographic transition. Demographic changes will inevitably lead to changes in the proportion of the working-age population, so that the labor costs in these countries has risen sharply and manufacturing development has encountered bottlenecks. At the same time, a good education also enhance the skill level of the workforce, the East Asian countries is expected to exceed human capital "threshold."In the past, our country played a decisive role in East Asia division of labor-intensive manufacturing for its adequate labor supply and lower dependency ratio superiority. Until the 1990 s, China's aging process speeded, China has undoubtedly become an aged population. In recent years, under the background of global demographic transition, China's labor market structure is also undergoing profound changes. Demographic dividend gradually disappears. Population dependency burden aggravates along with the decline in the number of labor supply. Labor costs are rising gradually. Therefore, China should take advantage of the labor restructuring opportunity to get rid of low-end position of manufacturing production division in East Asia, increase investment in human capital, increase wages of workers appropriately, achieve the transformation and upgrading of processing trade, and further promote China to be the high-rise position of manufacturing division in East Asia.Transition refers to labor in the labor market structure undergoing profound changes, mainly seen in the labor supply, population dependency ratio, labor skills and labor costs. under the background of the transition of the labor force and based on the three-digit SITC Rev.3 classification, which means SITC6, SITC8 classified as labor-intensive manufacturing, SITC5, SITC7, SITC9 classified as capital and technology-intensive manufacturing, this paper used factor analysis to gain each country's composite index and analyzed the evolution of the manufacturing division trend in East Asian countries. Meanwhile, using nine East Asian countries' panel data from 2003 to 2013 and based on the theory of general equilibrium model, this paper conducted an empirically test of the impact of labor supply, population dependency ratio, labor skills and labor cost on the East Asian manufacturing division. The results showed that for the labor-intensive manufacturing sector, the reduce of labor supply and the aggravator of the population burdens is not conducive to improve the participation of division in labor-intensive industries, while moderate wage increases can promote its division; for the the capital and technology-intensive industries, enhancing the quality of workers affected the division most, while raising labor costs can also promote the division of high-end manufacturing to some extent.