SEABURY director of maritime, Michael Looten has said that Intra-Asia trade growth relies heavily on China, which plays a major role in driving all growth in the Asia-Pacific.

Speaking recently at the TPM Asia conference in Shenzhen, China, Mr Looten noted that the rest of Asia and the Middle East and Indian subcontinent made up 79 per cent of global containerised exports in 2014. However, much of that is being traded within the region, thus the importance of the intra-Asia trade.

This lane is not only the largest trade lane from Asia but has also grown faster than North American and Europe trades, the Seatrade Maritime Trade reported.

"Southeast Asia has grown quite fast over the last few years and is now the biggest import region for China," Mr Looten said. Seabury figures show China's imports from the region grew 12 per cent in 2014.

This has come at the expense of imports from Northeast Asian countries such as Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which have declined, he added.

This picture is replicated on the export side as well, with exports to China's traditional major export markets of North America, Europe and Northeast Asia being outgrown by exports to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Indian subcontinent over the past four years.

Although volumes to the three main regions are still high, averaging over 6 million TEU per year in 2010 and going up to almost 10 million TEU in the case of North America in 2014, the rate of growth has been minute compared to Southeast Asia's 14 per cent growth rate from 2010 to 2014, although this is from a lower base, Mr Looten said. These high growth rates can also be seen in exports to Middle East, Indian subcontinent, and also to Africa, he added.

"Southeast has by far the highest growth rate and relatively decent volumes so that's a good start I would say," Mr Looten remarked. But putting things into perspective he pointed out that Southeast Asia's share of global exports makes up only 14 per cent compared to China's 32 per cent and stay mainly within the region.

"It is very unlikely that Southeast Asia will replace China as a source of global container growth," he concluded.