Research On Chinese Direction Of Foreign Trade

There are three basic questions that the international trade theory should answer, namely, the reason, structure (include goods structure and market structure) and result of international trade. This thesis mainly discusses the question of market structure, so-called the direction of foreign trade. The existing research findings are concerning about commodity structure and industry structure upgrading, however, in the field of trade direction few research was carried on. The customs statistics shows that China's export mainly flows into those developed countries and areas, such as the US, Japan and European countries. With the industry development, the commodity structure of China's foreign trade will grow up. That is to say the export of capital-intensive and technology-intensive commodities will gradually take the main part of China's export, which will be convergent with the developed countries'trade structure. That will lead to more and more trade frictions, and further trade wars. In the 1990s, China adopted the strategy of diversified trade direction and made some achievements. But there are still many obstacles and problems in the process of strategy implementation. With the development of international trade situation, we should carry on essential adjustment to the diversified trade direction. This paper combines the theoretical analysis with the specific examples, is divided into four parts. Firstly, it investigates the overall trade direction of contemporary world, and analyzes the pros and cons of trade direction models. And then probes into the determining factors of trade direction. Secondly, we summarize characteristics and existing problems of China's current foreign trade direction on the base of investigation. And in order to examine China's foreign trade direction, we set up suitable trade gravity model by modifying the existing gravity model. It turns out to be that four factors: GDP, country area, space distance and APEC can explain china's foreign trade direction to a great extent. The third part of this paper carries on discussion to the strategy choosing of China's foreign trade direction, and analyzes the default of the diversified trade direction strategy implementation. Regarding to problems occurring in the diversified trade direction implementation, finally we put forward some feasible suggestion on the adjustment of the diversified trade direction strategy.