Research On Evolution Of China’s Goods Trade Structures

Since reform and opening up, China’s foreign trade gained the success that attracts worldwide attention, foreign trade scale continues to expand and makes increasing contribution to national economy. China becomes the world’s biggest exporter and the second importer of goods trade for six consecutive years. After twenty-first century, the export proportion of capital intensive and technology intensive manufactured goods exceeds labor intensive goods proportion. Up to now, 178 types of merchandise exports ranked first in the world. China is the largest trading partner of 49 countries and former three largest trading partner of 101 countries. Hence it is the world’s largest market. Whether from trade volume, trade scale, types of merchandise trade or trade regions, China is worthy of the name “world trade giant”. However, there’s still a long distance between us and trade powers,behind the rapid expansion of the scale China is facing a serious imbalance of trade benefits distribution. At present, factor endowment, comparative advantage of China’s foreign trade advantage has changed; the high growth era of foreign trade has ended. Low speed growth, competition relying on technology, brand and other high value-added, increasing number of trade frictions will become the norm. In order to actively adapt to the new norm of China’s foreign trade development, we must accelerate the transformation of the mode of foreign trade development, grasp "window period of opportunity" of transformation of current foreign trade development mode. Trade structure optimization is the key to change the mode of foreign trade development in our country and adapt to the new norm, also is the inevitable request of our country to evolve from trade giant to trade power."Evolution" is to develop and progress. "Develop" refers to the process of changing. "Progress" emphasizes to change from junior to senior and from the simple to the complex, it’s contrary to degeneration. The "evolution" process of trade structure is accompanied by rationalization and advancement of the development of trade structure, that is the optimization of trade structure. Based on the perspective of structure,this dissertation comprehensively utilizes theories and methods of international trade, international investment, international finance, industrial economics and other related disciplines, analyzes the evolution of China’s goods trade commodity structure, pattern structure, trade enterprises structure, mode structure and regional structure statically and dynamically, find various problems in these structures and influencing factors, uses various existing and new index to measure evolution of kinds of trade structuresand put forward suggestions of optimization further. The main content of this article includes the following parts:The first chapter is introduction. This chapter mainly includes the research background,research significance, research objectives and framework, research methods, the innovation and deficiency of the dissertation.The second chapter is summary of related theories and literature review. This chapter starts with clarification of concepts including commodity structure, pattern structure, trade enterprises structure, mode structure and regional structure of goods trade. Then it follows with economics theory such as international trade, international investment, international finance, industry economics, economics of new structure and new institutional economics.After that the chapter gives a summary of literature.The third chapter is the process of China’s goods trade structure’s evolution. It’s presented from five aspects including import and export commodity structure, pattern structure, trade enterprises structure, mode structure and regional structure. During the presentation of them the dissertation firstly summarizes changes of them and then points out existing problems. Main conclusions are as followed: with evolution of commodity structure,machinery and transport equipment, human capital intensive goods and goods of high technology content are main types of import and export commodity. Problems such as low import proportion of consumer goods, unequal distribution of imports among industries exist; With evolution of pattern structure, proportion of general trade import and export exceeds proportion of processing trade, proportion of other trades’ import and export rises rapidly. Problems such as human capital intensive goods are mainly produced by processing trade exist; With evolution of trade enterprises structure, proportion of other enterprises increase steadily, but there are still problems such as foreign companies have occupied the most important position in import and export, the relative position of state-owned enterprises declined; With evolution of mode structure, intra-industry trade occupied important place, especially products of high technological content and human capital intensive products. Intra-product trade(mainly about intermediate goods’ s trade)developed quickly. Problems such as intra-industry trade level needs to be improved exist;With evolution of regional structure, among four internal areas, the eastern part has the highest proportion of import and export, the central and western parts develop quickly, but the northeast part develops slowly. Among external areas of import and export trade, trade disperses to each continent. There’s great import and export potential to ASEAN.Japan, Korea, Germany, the United States and Brazil are also important import andexport trading partners. Problems exist such as import and export trade flows are not consistent, easily lead to trade friction.The fourth chapter is an analysis of influence factors of China’s goods trade structure evolution. This chapter firstly explains the mechanism of economic development, industrial structure, factor endowment, foreign direct investment inflows and outflows, technological innovation, trade openness, financial development, exchange rate on trade structure. Then using the panel data method it analyzes these main factors’ influence on China’s import and export commodity structure, trade enterprises structure, mode structure and regional structure. And with the method of grey relational analysis it calculates correlation degree of different factors with import and export pattern structure. The study found that: industrial structure, inflow of foreign direct investment are adverse to evolution of commodity structure significantly; trade openness, industrial structure and the level of the exchange rate have highest correlation with evolution of trade pattern structure; trade openness is not conducive to evolution of China’s trade enterprises structure; industrial structure and the level of the exchange rate is not conducive to the evolution of mode structure; according to the classification of internal and external areas, the evolution of regional structure of goods trade is affected by various factors.The fifth chapter is the index measurement of China’s goods trade structure evolution. This chapter mainly measures level of optimization of goods trade commodity structure, pattern structure, trade enterprises structure, mode structure and regional structure,and also computes commodity’s competitiveness, comparative advantage and export similarity. The results showed: machinery and transport equipment, human capital intensive products and products of high technology content has strong competitiveness and comparative advantage; under different classification of goods, export similarity among China and Japan, China and Germany, China and USA is completely different;the whole commodity structure is relatively stable, but optimization level of commodity structure is not obvious. Pattern structure of import and export is optimizing, and the structure of export of high technology products is also optimizing, but the transformation and upgrading of processing trade is not obvious. Trade enterprises structure is optimizing, but needs time to test. Trade enterprises structure of high-tech products export is optimizing.Different types of commodity’s trade mode is changing and Lafay and MIIT both measure such changes. Weighted G-L index values shows that much of China’s trade belongs to intra-industry trade, at the same time, China’s participation in intra-product trade slightly weakens. Internal export regional structure worsened slightly, internal regionalimport structure is optimizing.After 2009 exports to Europe, America and Oceania’s regional structure, imports from major Asian countries’ regional structure after2007 slightly deteriorate.Finally, the conclusion part of this dissertation concludes and summarizes the main research contents and arguments, then puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.They are: from the aspect of commodity structure, establish economic development model of domestic demand leading,optimizing and greening industrial structure, better grasping import support timing and strength of advanced technology, core parts and key equipment, strategic planning, maintaining stable prices for primary products needed,expanding import proportion of consumer goods, reduce social welfare loss.From the aspect of pattern structure, upgrading general trade and processing trade through technical innovation, enhancing technological level of the labor force, optimizing financial environment, taking positive measures to cope with the adverse impact of appreciation of the RMB exchange rate.From the aspect of trade enterprises structure,allocating rationally various types of trade enterprises, cultivating large private enterprises with strong independent innovation capacity and international competitiveness, strengthening the internal management of enterprises, cooperating with multi-national companies on a higher level. From the aspect of mode structure, promoteing trade mode to a higher level by encouraging enterprise’s technical innovation and stablizing RMB exchange rate. From the aspect of regional structure, improving financial service quality, establishing reasonable industrial layout policy and foreign capital policy, actively developing new markets etc.