Asian economies still dependent on European and American markets, ADB report

In a recent study, the Asian Development Bank said that the increasingly frequent trade in goods between Asian developing economies in recent years had not diminished the overall Asian dependence on Europe and the US, and that the economic crisis had been channelled more rapidly through trade channels to Asia.　　The report, led by ADB's chief economist, Lee, says that even as the proportion of Asian economies directly exporting goods to Europe and the United States declines, Asia as a whole is highly reliant on the markets of European and American industrialized countries unchanged.　　The report notes that while the proportion of Asian developing countries ' direct exports to the world's seven industrialized countries fell from 49% in 1990 to 32% in 2007, a deep analysis showed that 60% of Asian developing countries ' exports in 2007 were eventually digested by the markets of the seven largest industrial nations.　　But the report said that while Asia's developing economies were more closely linked to the economies of the industrialized countries, the European and American developed countries were increasingly reliant on Asian markets, most notably China's gradual trend towards becoming an important export destination for the seven largest industrial nations.　　Lee said there is no doubt that China will become a major consumer market for global trade for some time to come, which will change the current pattern of global trade flows, but this shift is still a long way off. According to Xinhua