The rapid growth of East Asia is reflected in their trade performance as well. Table 3 gives a consolidated trade matrix of the Asia Pacific. It is based on a detailed trade matrix of individual countries in the region but it will be easier to analyse the consolidated one to identify big trends. It includes Australia-New Zealand (ANZ), North America (US, Canada, Mexico), EC12 as well as Japan, East Asian NIEs (Singapore excluded), and ASEAN (Singapore included), and China. Figures for the three years 1980, 1986, and 1990, are shown. Since the 1980s observed a wide fluctuation of world economy, it is hard to distinguish between the volatile and stagnant period (1980-86) and the rapid expansion period (1986-1990).

The growth of the world total trade shown at the bottom on the righthand gives a reference rate. The world total trade did not increase for the first half but increased 1.7 times for the latter half. Since prices of petroleum and other primary commodities fluctuated widely during the former period, these figures exaggerate changes in trade volume to some extent. The last column on the righthand gives total exports of individual country groups, while the bottom row gives their total imports. The East Asian NIEs and ASEAN recorded the highest growth rates in both exports and imports. They have been catching up with Japan in the size of their total export and import as shown below.

The trade performance of Japan and China was ill-balanced; imports grew more than export in Japan, but vice versa in China. East Asia as a whole recorded the size of trade comparable with that of North America, almost the same import value but its export was 25 percent greater than North America's.

This rapid expansion of East Asia’s trade stimulated other groups as well, in particular by its import growth from others. North America, ANZ, and EC all recorded the growth of exports to East Asian NIEs, ASEAN and Japan as rapid as trade within East Asia. On the other hand, East Asia’s exports increased greatly to EC with high import growth, while its exports to North America and ANZ were stagnant.

How big is the intra-regional trade of the three regions, which is shown in squares on the diagonal of the trade matrix of Table 3 and summarized in percentage terms below? The intra-regional trade is almost the same in East Asia and North America, whereas it is 50 percent higher in EC than in other two. It is on the increase in all three in the 1980s.

## Structure of the study

So far is the basic approach adopted in this project together with the statistical overview of trade and investment relationships among the East Asian economies. The following chapters help to clarify various aspects of dynamic interdependence among the East Asian economies. Chapter 2 (by I. Yamazawa) provides readers with the basic framework of industrial transfer in East Asia, Flying Wild-Geese development. The development hypothesis was originally proposed to explain the catching-up development of the Japanese industries during the high growth period. However, Japan has already outgrown this catching-up pattern and the hypothesis is now applied to the rapid catching-up process of the NIEs and ASEAN industries.

Chapter 3 (Y. Hirose) and chapter 4 (G. Capannelli) give case studies of two important industries in the region, textile and clothing and electronics. Textile and clothing industry has