ABSTRACT
The Asia Pacific region has returned to strong growth in the early twenty-first century, leaving the financial crisis and the US ‘tech wreck’ and recession behind it. East Asia is again the main locus of growth in output and trade in the world economy, as it was in the decade before the financial crisis. Intra-regional trade within East Asia continues to grow much faster than total East Asian, Asia Pacific or world trade. Trade in components is expanding more rapidly than in final goods, as firms, many of them formed through foreign direct investment in or from East Asia, relentlessly search for and find more costeffective ways of supplying goods and services.
