Production networks of the Asian automobile industry: regional or global

Abstract

Asia is the host of some of the largest automobile markets and top global brands. It has recently taken several initiatives to foster its regional integration, such as Asia-wide trade agreements and infrastructure projects. This article examines the impact of these initiatives on the automobile fragmented production networks of Northeast, Southeast Asia and South Asia to see if they are becoming more regionalised or globalised, and to see if an Asia-wide production network is emerging. We focus on automobile component trade as a proxy of network trade and follow its evolution over the period 2001-2016 at the Asian and subregional level with a special emphasis on two major players, China and Japan. Our results show that a regionalisation process is under way between the three subregions, driven by China and Japan. However, this process is still slow due to the persistence of a high level of protectionism between the three subregions.