-regions within Asia. Beyond a general trend towards manufactures, it reveals remarkable differences in specialisation profiles … manufactures, resource-intensive goods still play a larger role in intra-Asian trade than in trade outside Asia. This reflects both … differences in factor endowments inside Asia but also differences in access conditions (trade policy). Growth in intra-Asian trade …

century, intra-Asian trade flows linked Asia into an integrated economic system, with reciprocal benefits for all participants … sugar trade, competition in the rice trade, the Japanese cotton textile trade to Africa, multilateral settlements in Asia … Asia, especially in Japan and China, liberated the creative forces of the market within the new intra-Asian economy …