ادغام چین و ژاپن و ایالات متحده آمریکا در بحبوحه اصلاح معادلات جهانی ایفا: تجزیه و تحلیل تعادل عمومی قابل محاسبه

Using a global general equilibrium trade model, this paper assesses the long-term implications of global rebalancing for Asian economies and explores the benefits of China–Japan–United States (US) integration. The analysis suggests that consumption evaporation, a growth slowdown in the US, and the consequent current account correction would force China, Japan, and other East Asian economies to undergo substantial structural adjustments. A combination of domestic reform aimed at boosting service sector productivity and external liberalization aimed at fostering broader economic integration will be critical for East Asian economies to facilitate their economic rebalancing and sustained growth. Our global computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis suggests that China and Japan need to strengthen their economic ties with the US while at the same time bringing other East Asian economies into this integration process.

China's rapid integration into the world economy has been a prominent feature of the global economic landscape over the past two decades. In 2008, the ratio of China's trade (the sum of merchandise exports and imports) to gross domestic product (GDP) reached 58.7%, nearly double the 32.6% level in 1990. Its share of world merchandise trade has also risen from a mere 1.6% to 8.0% over the same period. China is now the world's third-largest merchandise exporter after Germany and the United States (US). On the investment front, China is the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient in the developing world. Its share of the world stock of inward FDI rose from 1.1% in 1990 to 2.2% in 2007.1 Despite efforts to diversify its export markets in recent years, China's trade is still heavily oriented toward affluent developed economy markets, with the US, EU, and Japan—the G3 economies—as its most important export markets. In 2008, the G3 markets accounted for 46.3% of China's total exports. The share of exports to the G2 markets—excluding Japan—was 38.2% in the same year, a significant increase from 18.7% recorded in 1990. Underlying the increased dependence of China's exports on western markets is the changing pattern of regional production and trade in Asia. In recent two decades, rising vertical integration of production chains has been the key feature, driving the changes in trade in China and other Asian economies. Underpinned by low labor costs and massive FDI inflows, China has established a strong comparative advantage in the downstream stages of production processes of various products. As the final stages of production were relocated from neighboring Asian economies to China, the country's demand for intermediate parts and components from other parts of Asia has grown sharply while its exports of final goods to developed economies have also increased significantly. As a hub for regional production chains supported by trade and investment, China has played a unique role as an essential assembly center for many exports from Asia to the US and EU. With economic growth stagnant for more than a decade in Japan, its role as a leading regional market for manufactured products has declined. During the period 1990–2008, the share of Japan in China's total exports declined from 14.7% to a mere 8.1%. However, as the largest and most advanced economy in Asia, Japan is still a very important trade partner for most East Asian economies, including China. Moreover, FDI from Japan has been essential for the economic development of East Asian economies. Actually, Japanese multinational corporation (MNC) FDI in developing/emerging Asian economies, stimulated by the appreciation of the yen following the 1985 Plaza Accord, has played a vital role in shaping Asian regional production networks, especially in electrical machinery, electronics, automotive, and other machinery sectors (Kawai & Urata, 2004). In the 1990s, four Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines (ASEAN4)—were the key host countries for Japanese FDI in Asia. With the Asian financial crisis hitting Southeast Asian economies in 1997–1998 and China's World Trade Organization accession in 2001, China has emerged as the most favored destination of Japanese FDI among Asian countries (Fig. 1). Some Japanese MNCs shifted their operations from ASEAN4 to China to both tap the abundant supply of low-cost labor and to target the potentially huge domestic market. Full-size image (28 K) Fig. 1. Flow of Japanese outward FDI, 1996–2008. Notes: *Asia NIEs include Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taipei China. **ASEAN9 includes Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Viet Nam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Source: Bank of Japan. Figure options The three giants—the US, Japan, and China—play critical roles in Asian regional production networks. The US serves primarily as the final destination of a large proportion of Asia's final output. Once the US demand for Chinese exports goes down—as it did amid the recent global financial crisis—many emerging and developing Asian economies are clearly affected, through shrinking Chinese demand for imports of parts and components from them. Japan plays the leading role of providing finance, technology, and marketing know-how for the operation of regional production networks and supply chains. The global strategy of Japanese MNCs is a key determinant of regional production, supply networks, and trade in Asia. China's strong competitive edge in downstream, labor-intensive stages of manufacturing production makes it a conduit for many exports from Asia to western countries. China's high penetration in the manufacturing markets of advanced countries, together with its fast-growing domestic market, has provided important export opportunities to its Asian neighbors. The market-driven economic integration of China, Japan, and the US over the past two decades has reshaped the economic landscape of Asia and the world, and significantly contributed to the recent vast increase in economic prosperity in developing Asia. However, this has not come without costs. The heavy reliance on the final demand in the US makes China and other Asian economies extremely vulnerable to the turbulence in the US economy. Moreover, this triangular trade pattern between non-China Asia and the US through China has partly contributed to the global current account imbalances, under which the US runs unsustainably large trade deficits, and China, Japan, other East Asian economies as well as oil-producing countries run significant surpluses.2 As the global imbalances are unsustainable and need to be corrected in order to settle down to a new, more sustainable level, an adjustment in the trade pattern among China, Japan, and the US is also inevitable. With the eruption of the global financial crisis, originating from the US, a market-led, disorderly adjustment in global imbalances has already started. A sharp increase in US household savings has contributed to the significant improvement of the US current account deficit. However, this adjustment has been rapid and disorderly—despite the absence of a US dollar collapse, which was feared by many experts and policymakers before the outbreak of the financial crisis—because it has been accompanied by sharp contraction of manufacturing output, exports and imports, and rising unemployment in both the US and Asia. Given that the global imbalances were created by a number of structural features—such as the savings and investment patterns in the US and Asia, outward-oriented growth strategies in Asia, and the preference of Asian policymakers to maintain trade surpluses—the adjustment of global imbalances will be a medium- and long-term process and will likely go beyond the time horizon of the current crisis. Against this backdrop, this paper assesses the long-term implications of global rebalancing for Asian economies and explores the benefits of China–Japan–US economic integration. It attempts to tackle the following three questions: • What are the impacts of a decline in export demand—due to the evaporation of US consumption—on the trade and production patterns in Asia? • What would be the long-term welfare gains of institutional economic integration—through a free trade agreement (FTA)—among China, Japan, and the US? • Should the integration process involve other emerging Asian economies, like the Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs; i.e. Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taipei China) and ASEAN countries? We use a multi-country, global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate different scenarios for global rebalancing and FTAs for China, Japan, the US, and possibly other Asian economies. The model is static and assumes continuous full employment, so its results should be interpreted as describing long-run equilibrium situations.3 Our simulations suggest that the long-term decline in US consumption—accompanied by a US GDP growth slowdown—and its consequent current account correction would force the East Asian economies to undergo substantial structural adjustment. A combination of domestic reform aimed at boosting service sector productivity and external liberalization aimed at fostering broader economic integration will be critical for East Asian economies in order to facilitate their economic rebalancing and achieve sustained growth over a long period. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the model and a set of underlying assumptions used in the analysis. Section 3 discusses the design of three types of simulation scenarios—including consumption evaporation and growth slowdown in the US, East Asia's productivity hike in the service sector, and FTAs—and explains their results. Section 4 offers conclusions.

The future integration of three giant economies of the world—China, Japan, and the US— is likely to have important impacts on the global and regional economies. This paper has examined issues related to economic integration among China, Japan, and the US. Specifically, it has considered the implications both of the global economic crisis, emanating from the US, for domestic structural reforms in East Asian economies, and of the deepening economic relationship between East Asia and the US for East Asian economies. The simulation results from a global CGE model indicate that consumption evaporation in the US and its consequent decline in demand for imports would force important structural adjustments in East Asian production and trade. With the drop of the US share in East Asian exports, East Asian economies need to reorient their exportable outputs to themselves—through greater domestic demand—and to third markets. The manufacturing sectors such as vehicles, electronics and machinery are major losers in the adjustment process in East Asian economies. On the other hand, the agricultural and service sectors are likely to gain from the expanded domestic demand. For East Asian economies, structural reform to boost service sector productivity would not only bring them important welfare gains, but also facilitate their adjustment to the correction of the US current account deficit. Given that US demand for East Asian manufactured products will remain low and US potential growth may be permanently reduced in the aftermath of the ongoing financial crisis, an important issue for China and Japan is whether they should weaken or strengthen economic ties with the US. Our integration scenario suggests that, in terms of FTA strategies, China and Japan should still consider strengthening economic ties with the US, but only by bringing other East Asian economies into the integration process. In principle, the most desirable method for trade integration would be multilateral liberalization involving all countries in the world as it would bring the largest gains to all.11 However, given the uncertainties in the progress of global multilateral trade liberalization, it makes sense to consider the more feasible options of creating regional or cross-regional FTAs, such as an East Asia-wide FTA and a cross-regional FTA. The results of the three FTA sub-scenarios show that while China may prefer trade integration with the US through a China–Japan–US FTA, other emerging East Asian economies prefer integration with China and Japan. Japan may prefer to combine both intra-regional and cross-Pacific trade integration. Although an FTA among China, Japan, and the US would bring important economic benefits for China and Japan, it would lead to adverse welfare consequences for other East Asian economies. In contrast, a regional initiative to create an East Asia-wide FTA could produce large benefits for many East Asian economies. China may wish to exercise its leadership by joining in this initiative. Ultimately all the East Asian economies should make efforts to link the region with the US, in a broad trans-Pacific FTA covering both East Asia and the US (as well as the rest of North and South America), as a promising option to reap the benefits of broader and deeper economic integration.