The Influence Factors And Trade Potential Of Oilseed Trade In China: A Gravity Equation Analysis

China is one of the major producer, consumer and trader of edible oilseed in the world, with the largest production, and the largest consumption and trade volume. Since the 1990s, oilseed volume imported in China increased dramatically due to strong demand in domestic market. After releasing trade control in oilseed market, imported volume of soybean and rapeseed in China jumped rapidly, especially for soybean, with the lower tariff barrier, China imported 40% of the world total, which is 3 to 4 fold of domestic production, and made soybean the largest deficit account in China's agricultural trade. China is the largest producer of soybean and rapeseed, high volume of imported soybean and rapeseed, on the one hand, has shocked the oil-crop production and domestic consumption inevitably. And on the other hand, with the sustained booming of domestic demand, peanut and sunflowerseed, which are with traditional competitive edge, export decline in volume in a long trend. Studying on the influent factors in oilseed trade, especially the macroeconomic factors, is important and made a theoretic and realistic sense for estimating trade developing trend, increasing farmers'income, and improving social welfare.By descriptive statistics for oilseed production, consumption and trade in China and in the world, this paper select 4 kinds of oilseed as study samples, and on the product level, using trade gravity model to make an empirical study for imported soybean and rapeseed, and exported peanut and sunflowerseed. Based on the bilateral trade statistics datum between China and trade partner countries in the period of 1994-2009, empirical study use panel datum for soybean's import and peanut's export, and cross-section datum for rapeseed's import and sunflowerseed export respectively. The result show that the import volume of soybean and rapeseed are mainly influenced by supply-and-demand factors in domestic market, with high volume, however, the demand is not saturated yet; there is a large margin for import volume increase. Peanut trade volume is limited by domestic market factors, export volume decrease with soybean and rapeseed import increase, export potential is not high, export decrease in a long run. Sunflowerseed export is influenced by supply-and-demand factors of destination countries, and with low response to domestic market factors, China sunflowerseed export volume is on the rise.Empirical study on gravity model in this paper is based on the product level rather than on the agriculture section level. Taking the specific oilseeds as study object and using trade volume rather than trade value as dependent variable make the empirical study more realistic. This paper under different data structure make econometric analyses by using panel data and cross-section data, and make comparison of test result for soybean, rapeseed, peanut and sunflowerseed.