GeoJournal4.5 479-484/1980 479 © Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft - Wiesbaden

Changing Trade Patterns o f the West Pacif ic

Fryer, Donald W., Professor of Geography and Asian Studies University of Hawaii at Manoa; Honolulu, Hawaii 96848, USA

Abstract: In the enormous expansion of world trade in the quarter century after 1950, the share generated by countries of the Western Pacific remained remarkably constant. This relationship primarily reflected the rise of Japan as a major force in the international econo- my. Whereas Japan's own trade grew more widely oriented and the Western Pacific margins relatively less important as trading partners than before WW II, to the states of the Western Pacific Japan's status both as a supplier of imports and as an export market greatly enlarged - only rarely is Japan not the leading trading partner. The Japanese strategy of 'export-led' growth has been replicated by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. All of these countriesj as well as Japan itself, depend overwhelmingly on imports for their raw materials and energy supplies. Elsewhere trade patterns have been greatly modified by a rising spirit of nationalism that has emphasized development of manufacturing industries in Australia and New Zealand no less than in the states of SE Asia.

I n t roduc t i on

By the mid-1970s the remarkable post-WW II expansion of the world economy and of international trade came to a halt in the face of rampant inflation, the collapse of the international 'Bretton-Woods' monetary system, and escalat- ing energy costs, particular for petroleum. Prospects for a resumption of growth in the 1980s generate litt le optimism. OPEC urges other 'Third World' countries to emulate its success by establishing similar cartels to confirm the power of producing countries over commodity prices. These may well rise though the United Nations Council on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) scheme, launched in 1977, for a series of international commodity agreements linked to a Common Fund, expressly intended to help create a 'New Economic Order' (NEO), i.e., a greater measure of equality between the industrialized and the developing countries. Although agreed to in principle by USA, the European Economic Community (EEC), and Japan, the details of organization and operation of the scheme, termed by one news-magazine Creeping Cartellization 1), seem certain to generate fierce controversy. Cries for enhanced protection resound on both sides of the Atlantic and, at their Belgrade meeting in 1979, the IMF and IBRD deplored the dangers of a retreat to protectionism. The world's central bankers

and finance ministers, unmoved by arguments for continued economic growth, care only for containing inflation even at the expense of employment and are determined that their own national currencies shall not become a reserve unit to aid the beleaguered US dollar. But their hindsight is greater than their prescience and perhaps the world should take comfort from the knowledge that the great post-1945 resurgence of world trade after the prolonged interwar stagnation was almost totally un- foreseen; it prominently involved certain nations of the Pacific.

Change is the natural order of the world economy. This paper examines the changing trade patterns since 1950 of an area of the world perhaps unequalled in the violence of its sociopolitical and economic upheavals since the out- break of WW II. That area constituted a major theater of operations where, in a real sense, the conflict began. On the basis of that examination, the paper suggests possibilities of future development.

The E and S margins of Asia together with the adjacent SW Pacific, extending nearly over one-third of the globe although only accounting for some 13.5 % of its land area, contain almost 30 % of world population. This enormous land area embraces a mult ipl ici ty of natural environments supporting a great variety of cultures and sociopolitical

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organizations. Nevertheless the E Asia margins, as Fisher pointed out, possess a substantial geographic homogeneity. Those margins broadly coincide with the area where Japan established, or attempted to establish, the Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, thereby for the only time in history, briefly bringing much of the area under one political rule2).

This culmination of a half century of Japanese imperial expansion was powerfully motivated by economic con- siderations somewhat less laudable than those suggested by its title. Its objective above all was to secure control for Japan over those resources of E Asia and the adjoining Pacific margins deemed essential for the continued growth of Japanese military and economic strength. In this develop- ment, 'continental' and 'blue-water' strategies, long con- tended before and finally fused into a grandiose program of conquest, were accompanied by striking changes in the magnitude and direction of Japan's foreign trade 3). With the loss of its overseas empire, Japan's trade pattern again underwent major reorientation. But although unrealized at the time, the brief existence of the Co-prosperity Sphere heralded the demise of colonial regimes everywhere and the appearance of new nation states with new trade patterns in SE Asia4). Even Australia and New Zealand, never threatened after the Japanese defeat in the Coral Sea, have major political and economic accomodation to the new Asia. After 1950 with a communist revolution, China, which was to have been Japan's largest colony, embarked on its most determined attempt ever to create a nation state out of a culture and, with the promise of large economic aid from the USSR, virtually contracted out of the world polity and economy. Defeated Japan has arisen miracu- lously to achieve an economic power far greater than ever envisaged by its War cabinet and strikingly at variance with the country's present low 'political postureL

Viewed against the magnitude of these upheavals, the postwar trade performance of the W Pacific margins appears no less remarkable than the overall growth of world trade. Although during the quarter century after 1950 the value of world exports at market prices has increased some four- teen fold, the share of this total generated by the review area has remained virtually unchanged at about 14 %. In light of the areas huge population this appears perhaps a disappointing performance. A broadly longitudinal inter- change of machinery and manufactured goods among countries at high level of development, however, now dominates the older latitudinal interchange of temperate zone manufactured goods for tropical foodstuffs and raw materials. Therefore, viewed against these directional and structural changes in world trade, to maintain station pari- passu with the great expansion of world trade performance represents a major achievement. The forces promoting this performance have been varied, but one is preeminent and in large measure has integrated and consolidated all the others: the growth, largely unforeseen in 1945, of japan as a major economic power.

Japan: The Risen Sun

In 1975 Japan's GNP was the third largest in the world, and the country appeared ,likely in the not-distant future to displace the USSR from its present ranking behind USA. Japan's rise as a major 'engine' of the world economy was perhaps foreshadowed by its virtual immunity to the Great Depression when, with its depreciated currency and com- mercial policies that admittedly served imperial ambition, that nation greatly enlarged its exports to what was then collectively termed 'Monsoon Asia'. Ironically it was the attempt by the United Nations to thwart another imperial ambition, the Korean war, that provided the decisive stimulus for Japan's impetous economic development. It followed shortly after the 'German miracle' sparked by the currency reform of 1948, and stimulated a period of global economic prosperity that lasted for more than two decades.

In this hectic expansion, Japanese trade underwent a profound reorientation both in direction and in composi- tion that represented a sharp breach with all its past com- mercial tradition. In 1975 Japan was the principal trading partner of all W Pacific margin countries except Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the war-disrupted Indo- chinese states; yet together the successor states to the actual and intended Japanese empire were far less important in Japan's overall trade pattern than was the Co- prosperity Sphere in Japanese foreign trade on the eve of WW II. Thus, although W Pacific margins absorbed almost 30 % of Japan's exports and provided a quarter of its imports in 1974, Japan's most important trading partner, USA, alone took a little over 20 % of its exports in that year and supplied over 18 % of its imports (Tab I). Grow- ing American irritation at the large adverse balance of trade with Japan and the threat of quantitative restrictions on exports to USA had already prompted a switch to W Europe. There, the rapid market penetration of Japanese products soon led Europeans to press for quantitative restrictions on imports of Japanese products, particularly motor vehicles. But, in taking but some 14% of Japan's export in 1975, W Europe was merely a significant, not a major market for Japanese products: what infuriated the Europeans was that in many lines the Japanese market was firmly closed to their manufacturers by ad hoc restrictions in plain violation of the spirit of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

The directional changes have been accompanied by and in large part have rested on basic changes in the com- position of trade in Japan's frenzied pursuit of an 'export- led' economic growth strategy. The interwar image of Japan as primarily an exporter of silk and cotton textiles and of cheap 'bazaar' goods is quite alien to the postwar world. Japan is now primarily an exporter of highly sophisticated, high quality machinery and manufactured goods at very competitive prices. Only in aircraft is Japan still outclassed - a consequence of the 194S embargo on

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aircraft production by the American military administra- tion. Equally striking in comparison with the pattern of interwar trade is the absence of a large volume of rice imports; domestic rice production now creates an acutely embarrassing oversupply. The import trade is dominated by fuels, since more than 90% of Japan's total energy supplies are imported, and by industrial raw materials, particularly metalliferous minerals. While Japan strives to broaden the supply sources of key imports such as petroleum and iron ore, a heavy dependence on one major source with its attendant political and economic risks is nevertheless unavoidable. Dependence is outstanding on the Middle East, espe£ially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, for a very large part of total petroleum supplies. Indonesia, Brunei, China and other minor suppliers could not counter- act any major shortage. Consequently, the Middle East is more important than the entire W Pacific margin as a source of Japan's imports and regularly has a large favorable balance of trade with Japan. Significantly only suppliers of fuel and metalliferous minerals to Japan share such a relationship; among countries of the W Pacific, Australia is outstanding, but Brunei and Indonesia also record sur- pluses on their trading account with Japan. Within the review area, Australia is Japan's leading trading partner. Since expanded Japanese investment in Australian energy and mineral resources is again planned for the eighties (after the cutbacks following the 1973-74 oil crisis), Australia appears certain to become even more important to the Japanese economy. For a time in the 1970s it appeared that Japan might become heavily involved in the development of eastern Siberia's rich storehouse of mineral and timber resources, but the possibilities receded with Soviet obduracy over occupation of the southernmost Kurile islands. In spite of its enormous import bill for fuels and raw materials, Japan achieved huge trading surpluses each year until almost the end of the 1970s. That plus its reluctance to behave in the way the world expected a leading creditor nation with immense exchange reserves to behave had become such a major irritant to other important trading countries that some retaliatory action to thwart ]apan's relentless export promotion appeared probable.

Newly Industrial izing States: Japan's Overspill

Since the mid-1970s, United Nations agencies, the World Bank, and economists in general have found the term 'newly industrializing' a convenient categorization of a select group of Third World states with remarkable records in most indicators of economic growth in recent years, but there is no unanimity about which countries to include. In Mexico and Brazil, which are often cited, manufacturing industries are by no means a new phenomenon. Saudi Arabia and Iran, also often so regarded, are special cases of forced-draught industrialization fostered by oil earnings.

Tab 1 ]apan - Western Pacific Trade, 1975 l~ US millions at market prices

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, The Pacific Basin World Trade, Stanford University, 1977; United Nations, Yearbook of International Trade Statistics.

But the W Pacific margins present four striking examples of economic success not based on mineral resources but on an 'export-led' manufacturing strategy. Two are ex-Japanese imperial possessions, and two are modern variants of 'city states~.

As Japanese possessions, Korea and Taiwan were essentially food exporters organized to contribute rice and other food products to the food-deficit homeland. Although Japanese technical innovations and investment in irrigation systems laid the foundations for subsequent gains, the post- ] 945 American imposed land reforms sparked off the great rise in agricultural productivity that in turn triggered rapid overall economic growth. With a large unfavorable trade balance (in part a consequence of the conflict and in part of a restricted range of exportable products) even by the 1960s, the future of war-torn South Korea appeared parlous. In little more than a decade after the budgetary reforms and currency revaluation of 1964, however, South Korea had thrown aside its traditional role as the poorest part of E Asia and far outdistanced communist North Korea which has a far richer resource endowment in fuels and other minerals traditionally regarded as favorable to industrial development. Using its low-cost intelligent labor force and with the aid of massive investment from Japan and USA, that country quickly built up an impressive array of export-oriented consumer goods industries, even though almost totally dependent on imported raw materials and energy supplies. In addition, and just as Japan itself prospered gently from the Korean conflict, so did Korean manufacturing grow through American offshore purchasing during intensified war efforts in Vietnam. From simple consumer non-durables, South Korea quickly became a very competitive supplier of many kinds of consumer- durables, even capital goods. Its export trade, which is still

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primarily oriented towards Japan and USA, also has become progressively more widespread.

Taiwan, which shares the distinction with Korea of being one of the largest recipients of American military and economic aid, has followed a similar development pattern, but differs from South Korea because it still retains a large volume of agricultural exports. Sugar and other tropical products dominated Taiwan's export trade until the' mid- 1960s. In a year of high sugar prices such as 1963, for example, sugar alone generated one third of total export earnings. But by the later 1970s, all agricultural products provided little more than 10% of export earnings. The balance consisted of manufactured goods. Textiles and other consumer non-durables still hold premier position among manufactured exports, but their share steadily diminishes with time. Taiwan differs from its other Asian class members because USA, its leading trading partner and largest export market by a substantial margin, is only slightly outranked by Japan as a supplier of Taiwan's imports.

The two city states, Hong Kong and Singapore, which are both overwhelmingly Chinese, possess only miniscule and very specialized agriculture, and their economic success, unlike that of South Korea or Taiwan, owes nothing to American aid. Hong Kong, moreover, has received no economic aid of any kind although Singapore obtained British aid in return for the phasing out of the large British military bases and for their conversion into commercially productive establishments.

Hong Kong justly may be regarded as the pioneer of the strategy of 'export-led' economic development - the antithesis of the import-substitution strategy so long advocated for developing countries by the World Bank and other bodies. With refugee capital, entrepreneurial ability and skilled labor fleeing Red China, this strategy now appears to have been logical, indeed inevitable. But this review of events has the advantage of hindsight; few in 1950 predicted any favorable future for Hong Kong, industrial or otherwise. Yet in spite of the inherent risks of such a strategy, sometimes in the odium of constituting the last unrepentant bastion of cut-throat competition left in the world, and in the absence of any national development plan, the strategy has succeeded brilliantly. Hong Kong has perhaps the world's most efficient cotton textile industry and cotton textiles still constitute the longest export item. However, more technically-complex textiles such as woolens, non-cellulose synthetics, and blends with natural fibres are of increasing importance, and now, after three decades of industrial expansion, the colony no longer con- centrates on the cheapest and simplest consumer products. As with the Japanese, by the late 1970s, Hong Kon T manufacturers were no longer regarded as producers of cheap and tawdry goods. For example, Hong Kong's burgeoning watchmaking industry was almost fully com- petitive with that industry in Switzerland or Japan; also in

textiles and clothing the coloffy was fast establishing a reputation for quality and attention to detail. Hong Kong's most pressing problem ist not in accommodating itself to new and complex technologies but in keeping open foreign markets that threaten to impose more severe quantitative restrictions. Here Hong Kong is unique among newly industrializing states because W Europe is its principal trading partner and its main export market although, as a source of imports, W Europe normally ranks after Japan. Japan, however, is a meagre purchaser of the colony's products. China also purchases few products from Hong Kong although it imports large quantities of food from the mainland. Hong Kong, as a major center of banking and finance, of course conducts a very large invisible trade, and the prime reason for its continued existence is simply that in its absence Peking would have to create some alternative way of discharging the colony's many service and financial functions.

Singapore describes itself as the world's largest port but does not identify those that outrank it. From its foundations until WW II the basis of the island's economy was the entrepot trade, which owed much to the contacts of its Chinese merchants with their Nanyang compatriots through family, clan, and secret society. Separated from Malaysia the newly independent states of SE Asia were determined to provide for themselves many services pre- viously rendered by Singapore. By the 1970s, the entrepot trade was only of minor significance in the republic's economy. This situation however owed more to the very rapid growth of other sectors, notably manufacturing and construction, because quantitatively the entrepot trade has continued to grow, albeit slowly. Upon separation Singa- pore deliberately copied the risky and difficult Hong Kong export-led industrial strategy, which necessitates a high degree of competitive efficiency from the beginning. But although Hong Kong relied entirely on its own entrepre- neurial initiative, the Singapore government policy strived to draw in maximum foreign investment. Fiscal and financial rectitude and a trained, productive but docile and tractable labor force (no mean feat in itself given Singa- pore's stormy industrial history) were important ingredients here. The strategy succeeded brilliantly, but it necessarily involved substantial direct government participation in both manufacturing and construction, and government rescue operations for major industrial ventures, some of which were miscalculations (the Rollei camera project, for example). Unraveling Singapore's complex trade flows has never been easy partly because of the problem of double counting and partly because of suppression of politically sensitive statistics. Japan, Western Europe, USA, and Malaysia all have approximately equal status in the island's trading pattern in spite of all Ma]aysia's efforts to steer its trade through its own ports. As long as its port services remain so incomparably superior to those of its neighbors, Singapore cannot be bypassed. Singapore's

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development into the major center of petroleum refining and supply base for the offshore oil industry in SE Asia is striking testimony to the industrial, commercial, and financial paramountcy of the island republic.

Southeast Asia: A Vigorous Nat ional ism

toward traditional deficit areas within the region, especially to Indonesia, which for more than a decade has been the world's largest rice importer. Even though the volume of smuggled rice exports, particularly from Burma, is un- doubtedly large, the contrast with the pre-WW II rice trade is striking.

After the war, the newly independent states of SE Asia gradually reoriented their trade patterns away from close trading associations with their former colonial rulers toward wider export markets and sources of supply - but the pace of this transition has varied greatly. As a con- sequence of the revolut!onary war and of the continued struggle with the Dutch for possession of West New Guinea, now Iran Jaya, the changeover in Indonesia was extremely rapid. Although Indonesia accounted for more than one- quarter of the total trade of the Netherlands in the late 1930s, by the mid 1950s, Indonesia had ceased to be of any real trading significance to its former European ruler. In the Philippines on the other hand, economic ties with the former 'motherland' proved extremely durable. Many Filipino agricultural exports continued to enjoy preferential treatment in USA until 1974, and USA is a very close second to Japan as both an export market and as a source of imports. USA is still the principal market for Filipino sugar and coconut products, traditionally the archipelago's two leading exports. Japan's interest is mainly in Filipino minerals and timber exports. In Thailand and Malaysia, in contrast, a broadened export base has caused a major realignment of trade flows. While in both countries traditional export lines have continued to grow, new exports have pioneered new markets - oil palm, timber, and petroleum in Malaysia and maize, tapioca, and sugar in Thailand. Even before WW II, Malaysia's tin and rubber industries gave its colonial antecedents one of the world's records in foreign trade per capita. The country's experience suggests that growing exports of primary pro- ducts can still constitute excellent development strategy. In Thailand, an 'economic appendage' of the British Empire before WW II, the trade flow with Britain and former British possessions is also much less important. Instead, Japan, continental Western Europe, and USA together became Thailand's principal trading partners in the 1970s.

Profound changes have occurred in the magnitude and direction of the rice trade, wich was, perhaps, the most important contribution of mainland SE Asia to the world economy of the 1930s. Much Of the more than 70% of world rice exports then generated by the Irawaddy, Menam, and Mekong deltas was consigned to rice deficit areas in adjacent South and East Asia. In contrast, although in 1975 mainland SE Asia was still the world's largest rice exporting area, the volume of these exports had greatly diminished and less than 10% was consigned to outside SE Asia itself. Most of the rice exported was directed

Austra l ia and New Zealand: Outposts of Asia or Europe?

The changes in the composition and direction of the trade of Australia and New Zealand have also been profound, and trace their origins to the upheavals of WW II. It is fallacious to regard either country as essentially 'agri- cultural' even in the interwar period, when their export trades were dominated by agricultural products consigned mainyl to the British market. For some categories such as dairy products, the British market constituted virtually the only external market. Both countries viewed them- selves as isolated fragments of Europe, although near in geographic fact, Asia was psychologically very distant. Britain's relative economic decline, its decision to seek entry into the EEC (which would mean the loss of pri- vileged status for British Commonwealth food exports to Britain), the development of new nation-states in E Asia, and, above all, the rise of Japan as a major econo- mic power - all these factors have been powerfully re- inforced by a new and surprising nationalism that meant changes in the trading pattern of both countries. Even in the early postwar period Australia began to think of Asia not as the Far East but the 'near north' and to seek new markets for its traditional products. The fear of a resurgent Japan proved 'illusory'. Japan emerged as the leading buyer of Australian wool as early as 1958, and by the mid- 1960s surpassed Britain as the largest overall market for Australian exports. Although a minor producer of metal- liferous minerals from its earliest days, under the impact of massive Japanese, American, and European investment, mineral exports grew rapidly as the 1960s wore on and, by the 1970s, minerals had displaced agricultural products as the country's leading source of foreign exchange earnings.

Great consortia, typically embracing Japanese, Ameri- can, and British, as well as Australian capital, have launched major projects for exploitation of Australia's coal, iron ore, and other metalliferous mineral resources. The greater part of these resources' output is destined ultimately for the Japanese market. Simultaneously, Australia's own vigorous industrialization program, developing under the impetus of a high rate of immigration and extreme tariff protection, has sharply reduced Britain's traditional role as the leading supplier of Australia's imports.

Because of an economy more specialized about export- ing dairy products to a very restricted world market and a

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deficit of large fossil fuel or metalliferous mineral resources, changes in New Zealand's trade pattern have been less abrupt. Changes have been more deliberate too in part be- cause Britain held out firmly for concessions that would minimize damage to the New Zealand economy in its long negotiations for admission to the EEC. The share of New Zealand's traditional exports absorbed by Asian countries is also growing fast, however, and the share of agricultural products in total export earnings is steadily diminishing. Britain still remains New Zealand's leading export market, while it has a 'Limited Free Trade Agreement' with its principal trading partner, Australia. Yet most of New Zea- land's exports are broadly competitive with those of Aust(alia so the balance of trade is heavily in Australia's favor. Structural change in the New Zealand economy pre- sents greater difficulties than Australia has faced, but ex- tracting greater trade concessions from its more populous neighbor has proved a difficult task.

do. As long as China adheres to its current internal political organization, however, the experience of the USSR suggests that China is highly unlikely to become a major trading entity, and any great reorientation of the direction of China's trade appears scarcely probable.

Footnotes

1) US Business News, Special Report, 9 May 1977, pp. 64-83. 2) C.A. Fisher. 'The Expansion of Japan: A Study in Oriental

Geopolitics,' Geological Journal. 115, 1950, pp. 1--17. 3) Ibid., p. 12. 4) The ' internal' colonies of China and the USSR survive of

course, but there is no reason for believing that these states can indefinitely resist 'the winds of change'.

Enigmat ic China

It is one of the many ironies of history that China, which was to have constituted Japan's largest and most important colony, is now of minimal significance to the Japanese economy. Japan continues periodically to be enthralled by the glittering prospects for trade that would be offered by a more liberal China as indeed does much of the Western world. USA, which virtually ceased to trade with Chinafor more than two decades after the Communist victory, hopes to become a major beneficiary of any trade liberalization policy in the People's Republic, for political as well as eco- nomic reasons. Even so Japan and Western Europe, already China's two leading trading partners, appear likely to gain more. It should be noted here, however, that the trade turn- over of the People's Republic of China is little more than that of the Republic of China, or Taiwan, which has scarce- ly 2 % of China's total population. Such very low per capita foreign trade is the direct result of a development policy which has emphasized not only maximizing national self- sufficiency but also minimizing the dichotomy between city and rural development.

The country's new leader since the death of Mao Ze- dong, have frankly admitted the disappointing results of such a recipe for transforming China from a culture to a nation state, and the world hopes that a large increase in overseas trade will inevitably follow if present pragmatic economic policies are continued. If China's petroleum re- sources were to be much larger than has been generally credited, they could play a greater role in these policies. Then to finance the import needs for its modernization program, China would try to maximize its exports of petro- leum and not to embark on a policy of export restriction the way many oil producing countries of the Third World

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