oil prices and control oil distribution.
• Southwest Asia participated in the international drug trade.
Asia
• By the 1920s, Japanese exports of silk were reduced after the West began production of synthetic
fabrics.
• Between the world wars, China prospered in the global drug trade.
• Southeast Asian economies based on rubber exports were damaged by the decline of the U.S. and
European automobile industries during the Great Depression.
• By the 1930s, Japanese industrial manufacturers were entering international trade markets.
• By the 1930s, Vietnam had become one of the world’s leading exporters of rice. Like other
plantation economies, the production of an export crop left the Vietnamese people without
sufficient crops for their families.
• Before World War II, Japan’s regional empire supplied it with food and raw materials. Korean
peasants were forced to produce rice for export to Japan and other countries.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, the production of automobiles and electronics in Japan cut into U.S. and
Western European manufacture of those products.
• By the 1970s, South Korea was producing inexpensive consumer goods, textiles, steel, and
automobiles for worldwide markets.
• By the 1970s, Taiwan competed successfully in global textile trade, including supplying a variety of
products to Japan.
• By the 1980s, Hong Kong was noted for its exports of clothing and heavy industry.
• The “McDonaldization ” of world trade extended to the Soviet Union, which opened a McDonald’s
in Moscow during the Gorbachev regime.
• Singapore became the world’s fourth largest port. Its factories produced textiles, electronics, and
refined oil.
• Indonesia exported exotic woods.
• Korea’s Hyundai Corporation exported automobiles, supertankers, and electronics.
• In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) .
• Because of significant industrial growth, India and China have markedly increased their demand for
oil.
• China, India, the Philippines, and other Asian nations benefitted from employment that was
outsourced by U.S. companies. By 2008, India, for years the foremost location for outsourcing, lost
some of its outsourcing contracts to other nations such as China and the Philippines.
• The global economic crisis of 2008 to 2009 negatively affected the volume of world trade.
Africa
• After World War I, most African nations did not have the economic resources to purchase industrial
goods from other regions.
• European and South African miners prospered in the 1930s from exports of gold and copper from
South African mines.
• Since World War II, African nations have had to rely on the sale of minerals and cash crops to
finance their fledgling industries. Constant fluctuation in the prices of these goods hampered