A Comparative Study On Industrial Competition Between China And AFTA

The 21st century has begun to see the world integration of regional economy in an accelerating process with increasing appearance of new integration organizations. Regional economic integration has become the main form of the global economic integration. Among which the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA) is now the most dynamic one in Asia. To cope with the trend of regional economic integration, China is paying more and more attention to the economic cooperation relationship with AFTA. This thesis focuses on AFTA (Mainly Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia) and proposes suggestions about how to promote the integration process of Sino-AFTA Economic tie by studying the industrial competition between China and the 5 members of AFTA.The main content of the thesis is as follows: The first chapter is an introductory part. In this chapter, the author gives the background of undertaking the topic, research objectives and approaches. The author also tries to study the industrial competition between China and AFTA through theoretical and realistic cases. Chapter Two brings forward the comparative advantage theory as the basis of free trade theory. As the core of the theoretical development, this chapter includes traditional comparative advantage theory and new trade concepts as well as their opinions about industrial competition. The third chapter is about the Sino-AFTA trade relationship. It introduces the idea and development of Sino-AFTA. The relationship between China and the 5 members of AFTA is analyzed from 4 aspects: trade relationship, complementary trade, mutual investment and economic cooperation, complementarities in market and technology. The fourth chapter compares the industries in Sino-AFTA and is the focus of the thesis. It compares the industrial competition in Sino-AFTA through the following aspects: the first is an analysis about trade data; the second is an analysis about industries, categorized by SITC, in China-AFTA on the basis of "Revealed" Comparative Advantage: the third is about the intra-industry trade situation inSino-AFTA on the basis of Intra Industry Trade Index. The fifth chapter puts forward several pieces of suggestions on the process of economic integration in Sino-AFTA based upon the conclusions reached from previous chapters.