Global Production Sharing and Asian Trade Patterns: Implications for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)

This paper documents and analyzes emerging trade patterns in Asia, with special reference to the implications of global production sharing with a view to informing the policy debate on forming the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The analysis reveals that the degree of dependence of RCEP countries on this new form of global division of labour is much larger compared to Europe and North America. Global production sharing has certainly strengthened economic interdependence among the countries in the region, but the dynamism of the regional cross-border production networks depends inexorably on global, rather than regional, trade in final goods. The findings of this paper make a strong case for a global, rather than a regional, approach to trade and investment policy making.