Status of Asian Trade

Supported by improvements in trade facilitation, Asia's trade has soared over the past two decades, with the PRC in particular recording explosive growth. The PRC's exports grew at an average of over 20% a year between 1987 and 2007, while the other eight emerging economies among Asia's top ten exporters notched up export growth of over 10% a year (Table 1 [ PDF 19.3KB | 1 page ]). The PRC's imports increased by over 18% a year, while seven of the other eight emerging economies in the table also recorded double-digit import growth rates. In just 20 years, India's trade expanded 17 times, while the PRC's increased over 30 times. The PRC has become the largest trader in Asia, far surpassing Japan.

Developing Asia now accounts for a much larger share of world trade, up from roughly 14% in 1990 to 24% in 2007. Asia's share of world trade has risen less significantly, from 22.7% to 29.2%, due to a drop in Japan's share of world trade (see Table 2 [ PDF 46.9KB | 2 page ]). Excluding Japan, East Asia's² share of world trade soared by 9.2 percentage points between 1990 and 2007, from 13.0% to 22.2%, with the PRC's share more than quadrupling from 1.9% to 8.8% so that non-Japan East Asia now accounts for the lion's share of Asia's trade. Intraregional trade within non-Japan East Asia grew faster (15.2% a year) than the region's external trade (10.6%).³

East Asia's exports to the PRC now account for 3.7% of world exports. Whereas in 1990, the PRC accounted for 8.8% of East Asia exports, it accounted for over 32% in 2007. The rapid growth of intraregional trade in particular has benefited from trade facilitation while at the same time,spurring demand for greater trade facilitation efforts.

The economic crisis has reduced output and trade both globally and in developing Asia. While Asia's growth may not have been as severely affected as the world average, the impact on the region's trade has been more drastic (Figure 1 [ PDF 18.9KB | 1 page ]). Note that the declines in exports in this crisis (as in the 2001 recession) are much sharper than the concurrent output declines, reflecting a combination of income-elastic demand for imports, inventory effects, trade finance constraints, and increased production fragmentation leading to the multiple counting of value added in merchandise trade.

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