| Over the past two decades, regional economic cooperation has developed at a fast pace while economic globalization deepened. Regional trade arrangements (RTA) with Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) as the dominating form have kept emerging, making RTA one of major driving forces for promoting trade and investment liberalization at regional and global levels. Particularly in recent years, mega-FTAs like Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) emerged in a successive way. It is highly anticipated that these mega-FTAs would have a profound impact on many major international issues, such as the reidentification and rebalance of great powers’ relations, development and adjustment of multilateral trading system, relocation and attraction of global industries, and evolution and reconstruction of international economic rules. Against this background, this dissertation conducts an in-depth study on the ongoing strategy of China’s FTA construction by exploring a lot of important issues, such as the theoretical basis, international trend, status quo, economic impact and industrial competitiveness as well as some policy recommendations.This dissertation firstly sorts out some concepts related to FTA, and explores the classic and new theories of FTA. In doing so, a theoretical basis and analysis framework are established. Secondly, this dissertation analyzes the international situation by reviewing the "three waves" of FTA’s development and focusing on the development of new economic and trade rules in the current FTAs, with an aim at determining the external environment of China’s FTA construction. Thirdly, this dissertation sums up the current situation and main features of China’s FTA. In particular, the case study approach is adopted to evaluate the feasibility of joining TPP by China. In doing so, the internal and external obstacles of advancing China’s FTA strategy are demonstrated. Fourthly, the dissertation analyzes the aggregate impact of China’s FTA strategy on the development of China’s economy and trade, which includes trade development, investment development, trade balance, regional structure and trade structure, etc. An empirical analysis of impact with gravity model of the implementation of FTAs on the trade of specific products is also conducted from an industrial perspective. Fifthly, the dissertation also makes an empirical analysis with 6 indices of the impact on the industrial competitiveness after the implementation of China-ASEAN and China-New Zealand FTAs. Last but not the least, a number of policy recommendations is made at the end of the dissertation.The major innovative points of this dissertation are as follows:First, this dissertation draws a conclusion that the relationship of regional economic integration represented by FTAs and multilateral trading system will be mutually convergent and supportive. This observation is different from the generally accepted viewpoints that regional economic integration will undermine the multilateral trading system.Secondly, this dissertation makes a systemic theoretical explanation on the causes and effects of including new economic and trade rules into FTAs. Furthermore, this dissertation also classifies FTAs into three generations in terms of contents and summarizes and explains the so-called "21st Century New Topics". This analysis on the relationship between FTAs and new economic and trade rules is quite creative in current research.Thirdly, by applying gravity model and 6 type competitiveness indices, the dissertation conducts an empirical study of the impact on China’s industrial development of implementation of FTAs. In addition, a comparative analysis on the industrial competitiveness of 3 FTAs under negotiation like Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), China-GCC and China-Sri Lanka FTAs is also carried out. The empirical analysis has certain reference value for advancing China’s FTA strategy and establishing corresponding responsive mechanism.
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