近代東亞貿易雙軸心現象之演變

The Evolution of Pattern of China-Japan Double Hubs in East Asia

進入2000年後的東亞貿易，呈現出文獻上所謂的日本與中國之雙軸心貿易型態。而近年東協積極的整合情勢，特別是東協經濟共同體市場，則將使得東協形成規模達中國人口一半的大經濟體。根據貿易理論之在地市場效果（home market effect, HME），東協若能有效整合成一大經濟體，可能會對既有的東亞貿易軸心邊陲（hub-spoke）關係產生衝擊。本文應用Baldwin（2006）所發展的貿易軸心測度指數（hubness measure, HM）進行分析，以探討東亞貿易雙軸心與邊陲情勢的變化。除了證實中國─日本雙軸心的貿易型態外，我們進一步發現四小龍顯著地向中國軸心傾斜，四小虎雖較傾向於日本軸心，但向依賴中國軸心的趨勢愈來愈明顯。若將東協當作一個經濟體，則測度結果顯示東協的軸心地位有逐漸超越日本的潛力；又臺灣對中國的軸心依賴程度逐漸轉弱，對東協的軸心依賴程度則提升。

The trade pattern in East Asia has developed into the so-called double-hub system of China and Japan. In addition, the active movement of ASEAN’s economic integration, especially the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will nominally make ASEAN into a big economy of 630 millions of population, almost half of the China size. According to the home-market effect in trade theory, should AEC be effectively integrated, it might affect the existing double hubs pattern of China-Japan. In this paper, we apply the hubness measure (HM) to analyze the dynamic change in the double-hub trade pattern in the last decade. We first approve the existence of the double-hub trade pattern of China and Japan. In addition, as spokes to the double-hub, we observe that the EA’s four dragons rely more on China hub than on Japan. On the contrary, the ASEAN’s four tigers has been relying more on the Japan hub, but with a trend of shifting toward China hub. If we treat ASEAN as one economy, the HM index shows the potential of the AEC to surpass Japan as a new hub. As a spoke country, Taiwan’s dependency on China hub was declining, but increasing on the ASEAN hub.