| Intra-product specialization is to split up the whole production process and to locate different production stages across international border. It is one important character of economic globalization as well as the main international specialization type. East Asia specialization network stemmed from the traditional North-South specialization, through"Wild-Gees-Flying Pattern"and now formed a new fragmentation system. We have found that, during the last 20 years, intra-industry trade in East Asia has developed dramatically, which mainly was the vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT). We believe that the huge increase of VIIT in East Asia is due to the fast intra-production specialization development. The VIIT definition used in this paper is based on the notion from the view of the organization of production process. It is defined to involve exchange between countries of intermediate goods at different stages of production or exchange involving components being exported for processing, with the final good being imported. Basing on the correspondence between intra-product specialization and VIIT, we analyze China's role in East Asia fragmentation network from the view of VIIT.This paper examines the evolution of East Asia specialization system. It is found that intra-product specialization is the key character of East Asia specialization network at present. After analyzing the relationship between specialization type and international trade type, we found that the huge increase of VIIT in East Asia is due to the fast intra-production specialization development. Basing on the theory conclusion above, this paper would use TM dynamic intra-industry trade index to measure VIIT's weight in the trade between China and East Asia. We supposes the TM VIIT index would reflect the intra-product specialization between China and East Asia.We uses the trade data of machinery industry to find that China has been taking the former place of NIEs (Newly Industrializing Economies) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and become the final product assembling and export-oriented base of East Asia. Basing on China's position in the East Asia fragmentation system, China become the central of China-East Asia-World international trade triangle and have more and more influence on East Asia's trade and industry specialization development. In the end of this paper, we discuss the future development of China's position in East Asia fragmentation network. It is supposed to further develop the international specialization cooperation in the information technology industry in order to advance China's position in international fragmentation and improve China's benefit from economic globalization. |
