The New Silk Roads: East Asia and World Textile Markets

The changing patterns of production and trade in fibres, textiles and clothing provide a classic case study of the dynamics of our interdependent world economy. Nowhere have these patterns changed more than in East Asia in recent decades. For centuries Asia supplied the textile factories of Europe with natural fibres, including silk from East Asia exports virtually no natural fibres and instead is the world's most important exporter of manufactured textile products and chief importer of fibres. New Silk Roads demonstrates that despite the import barriers erected by advanced economies, textiles and clothing production continues to serve as an engine of growth for developing economies seeking to export their way out of poverty. This book is based on selected papers given at a conference which discussed East Asia's role in world fibre, textile and clothing markets. It draws on trade and development theory as well as on historical evidence to trace the development of these changing markets, which are now dominated by the newly industrialized economies of Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong and, increasingly, China and Thailand. It also addresses the way in which advanced industrialized countries have responded to East Asia's rapid industrialization, the role of the Multi Fibre Arrangement in limiting Asian penetration into the markets of those countries, and the implications of further European integration on these markets.