Research On Promoting Trade And Investment Facilitation Between China And Five Central Asian Countries

With the globalization of the world economy, speeding up of regional economic integration process and increasing development of the Shanghai Economic Cooperation Organization, China and Central Asian countries are more closely linked,trade and investment cooperation has also shown a good trend. On September 7, 2013,Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the "Silk Road Economic Belt" initiative,which brings new opportunities for Chinese and the five Central Asian countries to facilitate trade and investment, this initiative also received a positive response and broad consensus from the Central Asian countries. China and the five Central Asian countries have strong complementarity in economic and trade areas, the overall economic development strategy, energy strategy, transportation strategy and diplomatic policy and security strategy are all fit, coupled with the geographical and cultural advantages, all the above factors are advantageous to accelerate the process that China participates in the Central Asia regional economic cooperation in the future,However there are also many problems existed in the trade and investment cooperation between China and five Central Asian countries, in order to reduce trade barriers and cost of trade, trade and investment facilitation will be imperative.This paper takes trade and investment facilitation between China and the five Central Asian countries as the research object, based on the regional economic cooperation theory and transaction cost theory, along with the thinking of “the significance of promoting trade and investment facilitation between China and five Central Asian countries— the current conditions? —existing problems? —how to solve the problems", puts forward the module construction of Chinese promoting trade and investment facilitation between China and the five Central Asian countries and the problems which needs to pay attention to. the whole paper can be divided into three parts, which is as follows:The first part puts forward the problems and carries on basic theory research.Which Includes related concepts about trade and investment facilitation, theoretical basis and literature review at home and abroad. The concept part lists the definition and scope of trade and investment facilitation; clarifies the relationship between facilitation and liberalization of trade and investment; clears relationship between trade and investment facilitation. The basic theory includes regional economic cooperation theory and transaction cost theory. The domestic and foreign literature review part summarizes and evaluates the current research results about trade and investment facilitation.The second part is the analysis of the problem. Firstly, it introduces the conditions of promoting trade and investment facilitation between China and the five Central Asian countries. Secondly, it analyzes the development situation of trade and investment cooperation, which includes: first, analyzes of foreign trade and attracting foreign investment situation of the five Central Asian countries; second, analyzes the development of bilateral trade between China and the five Central Asian countries,makes quantitative analysis of the effects of level of trade facilitation on trade flow and draws the conclusion : the higher of trade facilitation level, the higher growth of bilateral trade flow; third, analyzes the bilateral investment development between China and the five Central Asian countries, carries on empirical research of influencing factors of direct investment and draws the conclusion: economic freedom index, corruption index, energy and mineral resources of the five Central Asian countries have a significant positive effect on the Chinese ODI. Finally, summarizes the existing trade and investment facilitation issues from four angles.The third part is about the way to solve the problems, including content module construction and key points that is necessary to pay attention to in order to promote trade and investment facilitation. Content module construction includes first,funds settlement facilitation; second, insurance and finance facilitation; third,transport facilitation; fourth, customs clearance and inspection facilitation; fifth,personnel flow facilitation; sixth, other facilitation content, including strengthening policy support and information services and perfecting the trade and investment dispute settlement mechanism; seventh, improvement of the cooperation mechanism.The key points includes first, enhancing political mutual trust to provides premise for ensuring the smooth progress of trade and investment facilitation; second,strengthening cultural exchanges to create social and solid foundation of public opinion; third, strengthening cooperation in non resources areas is conducive to long-term trade and investment facilitation, and takes agricultural cooperation and environmental cooperation as the breakthrough point aiming at elaborating how to facilitate trade and investment between China and the five Central Asian countries in non resources cooperation.This paper’s main new ideas include two aspects. First, there is a comprehensive analysis of business environment about the Central Asian countries from the macro and micro perspective. Through the literature review it is found that the number of previous research literature related to trade facilitation is relatively large, but the literature concerning the “double convenience”—trade and investment facilitation of Central Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is relatively small, and the current literature which studies business environment is mainly from a macro point of view, this paper conducts a comprehensive analysis of business environment in Central Asia from both macro and micro point of view, and lay a solid foundation for the follow-up study. Second, based on the deliberate analysis of the characteristics of Shanghai cooperation organization member states, this paper puts forward suggestions about the model of speeding up the establishment of the SCO Development Bank: "from the bilateral to multilateral cooperation", that is started from Kazakhstan, then gradually extended to all the member states. Third, combined with previous studies, this paper studies factors affecting China’s direct investment in the five Central Asian countries by empirical analysis, which provide premise forfollow-up questions and countermeasures analysis.