Commercial Power of Asia

The present paper, based on a detailed analysis of the main statistical foreign trade indicators of the emerging economies of the Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, outlines a series of characteristics of the foreign trade flows of the analysed economies from the ’50 up to the present. The accent is set on the period 1995-2006, which emphasizes two moments of crisis of the Asian trade: 1997-1998 and 2001. At the level of the analysed economies, it can be remarked a tendency of continuous growth of the share of the intra-regional trade flows in the total trade flows, mainly due to their participation in regional trade agreements, to the strenghtening of the regional production networks, to the role of China as engine of economic growth in the whole region and even at global level. On product category, the manufactures have the greatest share in the merchandise exports of the Asian emerging economies (especially office and telecom equipment, integrated circuits, automotive products, textiles and clothing, etc.). While China surpassed the share of the Asian tigers of the first generation in the world trade in 2001 and that of Japan in 2004, the scenario presented in this paper indicates the surpass in 2007 of the share of Germany (second place in the world trade in 2005), the surpass of the share of the Asian tigers of the first generation in 2009, and the surpass of the share of the group of the 8 Asian tigers and that of the USA as well in 2012. In the following decades, China might become the strongest world economy at the global level, but only if the sustainable development and the eradication of the social inequities will become de facto priorities of the Chinese officials. The actual negative externalities (costs) of the Chinese economic growth, transferred on the environment and the society, will be object to another analyse.