The Study On The Problems Of Economic Cooperation And Development Among Arab Gulf Countries

This thesis studied the importance of Gulf Cooperation Council and its role in promoting the economic development of Gulf countries from the perspective of economics. By analyzing the Gulf region and the GCC countries Economy, the history of the Gulf country's economic development before the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council, status of economic development in the Gulf States after the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council, trade relations among Gulf States and other countries and Gulf Cooperation Council's role and the implementation of specific measures of promoting the economic development of Gulf countries were studied. After that, some specific measures and suggestions of how to respond to future opportunities and challenges for Gulf Cooperation Council were proposed. The thesis was divided into seven chapters.The first chapter was the introduction which presented the research background, significance, current research status of this subject and the innovation, deficiency, structure of this thesis. In this chapter, we introduced the review of GCC economic development by British economists and the review of Gulf countries'system of free markets and free elections. As for the reviews by Chinese scholars, we introduced Professor Wu Zhaoyang's work, Analysis on regional economic integration in the perspective of organization economics, and the empirical study of regional economic integration among developed countries and less developed countries.The second chapter began to discuss the theory of regional economic integration. The theory of regional economic development, regional industrial structure, regional division of labor and regional economic linkage were studied. The theory of regional economic development included cumulative causation model, regional sustainable development theory, gradient theory and the theory of imbalance development of regional economy. The theory of regional industrial structure included the theory of regional economic specialization, the theory of coordinated development of primary, secondary and basic industries, flying geese theory and dual economy model. Adam Smith and David Ricardo's regional division of labor theory, dynamic theory of comparative costs and Bertil Ohlin's theory of price differences were discussed in the section of the theory of regional division of labor. And the theory of regional economic linkage included cycle theory of regional economic integration, the theory of regional economic system and the regional development and interdependence theory. All these four kind of regional economic integration theories are very important, since each of them has a major impact on regional economic organizations. At the same time, the study of these theories provided a foundation for the following research of Gulf Cooperation Council's role and the suggestions of how to respond to future opportunities and challenges for Gulf Cooperation Council.The third chapter was a brief introduction of Gulf economies and Gulf Cooperation Council, which introduced the characteristics and overall conditions of economic development of the Gulf States, namely United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The economic development of these GCC Countries has their own characteristics as well as some similarities. They have all developed a major economic growth pattern based on energy industry, tourism and hospitality industry, banking and so on. In addition, this chapter introduced the status of GCC, namely Gulf Cooperation Council that was established in Abu Dhabi in May 1981. The institutions and organizations as well as the main functions of Gulf Cooperation Council were studied too. Important achievements of aspects of economic, political, diplomatic, and security after the establishment of GCC were also discussed in this chapter.The fourth chapter was arranged in three parts in chronological order to study the past and present of GCC Countries'economic development. The economic developments before the establishment of GCC, between the establishment of GCC and the Gulf crisis, and during the Gulf War were studied respectively. Before the establishment of GCC, the economies of GCC Countries were lagging behind with a single economic development pattern. Between the establishment of GCC and the Gulf crisis, GCC Countries'economies improved to some extent, meanwhile their political and diplomatic situations were gradually opening up. With the instability of the world economy and the promotion of regional economic integration, the importance of GCC was reflected increasingly. GCC Countries'economies were once seriously affected during the Gulf War. But with the informed decisions of GCC and the rich oil resources, GCC Countries'economies recovered rapidly. The GCC Countries'economic development and the problems of security and single economic development pattern after the Gulf War were also discussed in this chapter, as well as the solution of economic integration and single currency.Chapter five studied the cooperation of Gulf Cooperation Council and other economic cooperation organization, countries and regions. As for the trade relationship between GCC Countries and United States, for a long time, Gulf States were quite close with the world's only superpower, were the rare'good buddy'of the United States among the Middle East and Arab countries, and always followed the lead of USA in dealing the international affairs. As for the trade relationship between GCC Countries and European Union, Middle East were the periphery of EU, and GCC holds an extremely important strategic position in the entire Middle East region, the EU's policy of GCC is an important part of EU external relations. In a word, the relationship between EU, USA and the GCC Countries were both cooperation and competition in all fields. This chapter also discussed the trade relations between GCC countries and Egypt, GCC countries and China, GCC countries and other Arab countries and so on. The trade relations between GCC countries and Egypt were carried on under the economic and trade agreements signed by both sides. The trade relations between GCC countries and China developed rapidly in recent years, especially the import and export trade. China has become the fourth largest trading partner of GCC countries following the European Union, Japan, and United States.GCC's role in promoting the economic development of the Gulf States was studied in chapter six. Since its establishment, the major role of GCC was to accelerate the economic integration process and establish the free trade zone, which help the SMEs in the Gulf States to benefit from funds of rich Gulf countries, meanwhile contribute to the diversification of domestic production and create more domestic employment opportunities. GCC also developed a liberal economic model, lay down a number of rules and regulations and established several economic and technical cooperation agencies, including Gulf investment agencies, the department of specifications of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, commercial arbitration center and so on. These contributions lead to the rapid growth of GDP of GCC Countries, the expansion of foreign trade market and the improvement of the technological content of products. But Gulf States still lack high-tech exports, and the reason of which was discussed in this chapter too. The policies and strategies for promoting high-tech exports, such as improving the capital market and the financing environment, encouraging high-tech enterprises to attract foreign investment actively, finance from international capital markets and so on were later proposed.The last chapter discussed the specific measures and suggestions of how to respond to future opportunities and challenges for Gulf Cooperation Council. The author proposed some suggestions as follows. First of all, GCC should focus on the whole world, implement some active policies, such as implementation of unified economic development strategy, eastward shift of foreign investment, carrying forward the economic system transformation, strengthen energy cooperation and carrying out multilateral foreign economic and trade cooperation actively. Secondly, GCC Countries should introduce advanced science and technology further, develop advanced refining technology and their own nuclear and other emerging energy development plan, plan ahead to save non-renewable energy, allocate special funds as the budget of energy development plan to design, build and manage the implementation and operation of energy projects. In addition, GCC Countries should introduce outstanding compound talent, since the personnel needed by the energy and oil projects not only must acquire a certain amount of foreign language skills, but also master the oil expertise and knowledge of international trade so as to communicate and translate accurately. Other than that, international co-operation should be strengthened and the close contact among international and regional organizations should be kept. The last part was the conclusion that summarized the whole thesis.