Study On China's Vegetables Export To Japan

As an essential part of Chinese agriculture, vegetable industry has a very important position in agricultural production, consumption and trade. Especially after China's WTO entry, vegetable industry, as a traditional labor-intensive industry, has very large comparative advantages, so China's vegetable export has developed quite rapidly into one of the agricultural industries which have a comparative advantage in production in the past decades. Since 1990s, with the rapid development, China's vegetable industry has long exceeded domestic demand, and the export volume has been increasing. China has become the world's vegetable production and export superpower. Even though the absolute volume of exports is quite large, the export share in production is less than 1%, lagging far behind other vegetables exporting countries, so there is enormous room for the development of vegetable export industry. The promotion of vegetable export does not only accord with the traditional theory, make China enjoy the comparative advantages and earn foreign exchange through exports, but also defuses the situation of over supply in domestic market, develop the foreign market and take part in the international market. Japan is the largest market for Chinese export vegetables, absorbing about 40% of the export vegetables. The study on China's vegetables export to Japan will provide the reference and guidance for the better development of China's vegetables export to Japan or even the world.With the rapid development of China's vegetable export trade, Sino-Japanese Vegetables trade relations become closer and closer. On the one hand, Japan has replaced the Hong Kong area becoming the largest Chinese vegetable market; on the other hand, China gradually catches up and passes the United States and has become Japan's largest vegetable supplier. In recent years, as China's vegetable exports to Japan increased dramatically, the quality standards of Japanese vegetables are constant increased. In the Japanese market, producers of vegetables are not a simple price competition, and quality competition tends to be fierce. Whether Chinese vegetable exports to Japan is to maintain a good development momentum in paid much attention by the people of all sections of society, aiming at which, the paper takes systematic study of Chinese vegetable exports trade to Japan since the late 80's of 20th century.Only by transforming comparative advantages into competitive advantages, can an industry generate practical competitiveness.Vegetable industry is one of few Chinese exporting industries which enjoy comparative advantage since China's entry into WTO. However, with the environment change of the international economy and trade, the single comparative advantage can no longer decide the trade flow of a country, which means that the products with comparative advantage may not become the products with competitive advantage. Therefore, although Chinese vegetable industry has comparative advantage, it does not mean that it has strong competitiveness in international market. Moreover, China is still in the transition period from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture in vegetable production and trade. And there is a series of problems in the vegetable production, transportation, procession and international trade, mainly shown in the slow develop of new vegetable variety, small scale of production, serious quality problem, low technology content, low value-added rate in vegetable process, sanitation quality and etc. which all impact Chinese vegetables' competitive advantages. So only continually improve the competitiveness of Chinese vegetable can guarantee the development of the export of Chinese vegetable. For this reason, the thesis also analyzes the competitiveness of Chinese vegetable and the factors that affect its competitiveness, and puts forward practical suggestions and strategies to improve the competitiveness of Chinese vegetable in Japanese market.Given the above situation, this paper aims to explore the possibilities of China's vegetable industry transforming its comparative advantages into competitive advantages in the development of Sino-Japan vegetable trade based on the theoretical base for the research. The paper first analyzes the competitive characteristics in vegetable market and reviews the development history and the general situation of Sino-Japan vegetable trade to show the China's vegetable industry. Then, the paper analyzes Chinese vegetables'competitiveness in Japanese market and points out the challenges and problems to China's vegetable export and puts forward suggestions and strategies to improve Chinese vegetables' competitiveness.This paper is divided into seven parts:The first part of is the introduction of the overall thesis and the situation of Sino-Japan vegetable trade, it shows the benefits of continually developing the vegetable trade, and also the problems and challenges in the future development.The second section introduces the basic theories; the main trade theories supporting the Chinese vegetables export to Japan are Comparative Advantage Theory and Competitive Theory. Except the basic contents and the development of the theories, the second section also analysis the theories'practical support to Sino-Japanese vegetable trade. Comparative Advantage Theory provides practical guidance to Sino-Japan vegetable trade and the basis for the development of Chinese vegetable exports. Comparing with Japan, China possesses, besides cost advantage, the factor endowments for the development of vegetable industry, such as labor, natural resources, capital and technology. Therefore, the development of China's vegetable exports will help Chinese vegetable products develop their comparative advantage. And for the comparative advantage of vegetable products changes dynamically, we should form and improve Chinese vegetable's comparative advantage from various ways.Porter competitive advantage theory provides supports for Sino-Japan vegetable trade a basis for analyzing the competitive advantage; better explains that these countries' competitive advantage arises from the continuously created factors; emphasizes the importance of domestic demand; attaches the importance to the role that governments play to determine the competitive advantage of the industries, which provide the direction for Chinese vegetable industry to improve its competitive advantages.The third section describes the overview of China's vegetable exports to Japan. It starts from the analysis of the evolving traits of vegetable consumption. With the development of the society and the improvement of the quality of life, vegetable consumption has some new traits; it increases with the increasing income levels. Fresh and frozen vegetables have an increasing the proportion in vegetable consumption, people have increasing demand for health vegetables, organic vegetables and industrial vegetable food, and the increasing demand of all year round supply. Then, it introduces the general situation of China's vegetable export to Japan and analysis the reasons for the growth of Japan's import and China's export from both sides, then comes out the characteristics of China's vegetable export to Japan.The fourth part analyzes the factors impact international competitiveness of vegetables and China's competitiveness in Japanese vegetable import market; it analyzes the general situation, overall competitiveness as well as the different vegetables items'competitiveness of China's vegetables export to Japan, it also carries on the analysis of the prospect of Chinese vegetables exported to the Japanese market.The research generally indicates that Chinese vegetables have a quite high percentage in Japanese vegetable import market, and displays the year by year increasing tendency; Looking from the concrete vegetables items, the major Chinese export vegetables have the strong competitive advantage in Japanese vegetable market, with high market share, Both in the importing enterprises mainly adopted the price competition strategy and contested more market share by decreasing price. In the importing markets of freeze vegetables, dehydration vegetables, Chinese exporting enterprises maintained the former price and mainly adopted non-price competition strategy. In the importing markets of processed goods of vegetable, the price superiority of Chinese products was not evident, and non-price competition existed. In view of the Japanese requirement of import vegetables as well as the change in the item structure, only by guaranteeing the export vegetables'excellent quality and reasonable export structure can China maintain the development of Sino-Japan vegetable export trade.The fifth part discusses the problems and challenges in China's vegetable exports. The challenges from Japan that bring to Chinese vegetables export to Japan are mainly the trade barriers due to Japan's Positive List System. Positive List System improved the threshold of Japan's agricultural imports; increased the difficulty of vegetable exports; and has increased the cost of vegetable exports and decreased the competitiveness of China. In vegetable export, Chinese vegetables mainly have the following problems:single vegetable verities, serious quality problems, and lag-behind standardization, which all the obstacles for Chinese vegetables export to Japan. In order to eliminate negative effects that affect Chinese vegetables export to Japan, China should overcome the challenges from Japanese various kind of trade protectionism as well as its own problems in vegetables'production, processing, and marketing, and this paper has given the constructive suggestions and strategies to maintain Chinese vegetables'competitiveness in exporting to Japan and to promote its better development.The sixth part gives recommendations to improve the competitiveness of China's vegetable industries based on the characteristics and reasons of the problems and challenges, including three aspects of government, industry and enterprises.The government should transform its functions to provide institutional guarantee, including strengthening agricultural domestic support in the framework of WTO rule; establishing agricultural insurance system; take appropriate measures to actively respond to the foreign non-tariff barriers to trade; establish and develop vegetable export policy; establish a sound vegetable information service system; strengthen construction of laws and regulations for vegetables; promoting and enhancing the consciousness of "green consumption", etc.While the vegetable industry should improve infrastructure systems to enhance vegetables'quality, including improving vegetable quality standards and inspection system, processing system, tech-aid system and industrialization system. And the enterprises could improve their marketing ability by adopting brand marketing, focusing on brand image, developing the international market and enhancing the marketing level.The last part summarizes the thesis and naturally comes to the conclusion. In the past period of time, Chinese vegetable might successfully enjoy rather high market share in pure price competition. However, with the enhancement and system criterion of agricultural products quality standard, the quality-oriented competition is more and fiercer and the low cost advantages of Chinese labor may be offset by the inferior quality. Although we still enjoy certain comparative advantages in vegetable export, we face a hard and challenging situation in vegetable exports. In order to maintain the advantages and guarantee a better development, we must focus on improving the competitiveness. Hence, we must timely comprehend the dynamic quality criterion for agricultural products adopted by developed countries, make scientific analysis, and take proper measures to enhance our vegetable quality. Though facing various problems and challenges, China, with huge potentials in vegetable production, will certainly achieve the goal through the joint effort of the government, industry and enterprises. Therefore, Chinese vegetable will maintain its advantages and continually develop the export to Japan.