| Border trade is a special kind of trade form between neighboring countries, and is an important part in one country's foreign economic and trade. In China's border trade, Sino-Mongolian border trade has been playing a very important role. The two countries share a 4710 km long border line. Since the normalization of Sino-Mongolian trade relations, the bilateral economic and trade in border areas has developed tremendously. With "Western Development Strategy", the development of border trade in the western border areas has received widespread attention, including Sino-Russian and Sino-Mongolian border trade. The state has introduced a series of regulations and policies to encourage the development of border trade. For example, in June 2005, the State Council promulgated "Regulations on the Implementation of Further Expanding and Opening up of the Northeast Old Industrial Bases", and in 2007, formulated "Northeast Revitalization Plan", including Hulunbeir City, Xing'an League, Tongliao City, Chifeng City and Xinlin Gol League and other adjacent regions to Mongolia as the key programming areas. In 2008, the Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs and State Administration of Taxation promulgated "Notification on the Fiscal and Taxation Policies of Border Trade", in which it regulated that if the value of the daily necessities traded through mutual trade between border inhabitants per day was less than 8 000 yuan, the import duties and import linkage taxes would be exempted. On Jun.1st 2010 Premier Wen Jiabao paid an official visit to Mongolia and held talks in Ulan Bator with Mongolian Prime Minister Batbold. The two parties signed 9 cooperation documents, one of which was "Treaty on Sino-Mongolian Intergovernmental Border Trade Management System". The two prime ministers both said that it was historically significant for Sino-Mongolian border trade, and it would improve the protection of border areas, prevent border violations, strengthen the legal environment and facilitate the bilateral economic development.Sino-Mongolian border ports have reached a high level both in terms of quantity and quality. On July 5th 2004, the two countries signed "The PRC Government and the Government of Mongolia Agreement on the Sino-Mongolian Border Ports and Management System", which replaced the relevant agreements of 1991, opening up 13 pairs of border ports, in which 9 pairs were distributed in the contiguous region between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and 4 pairs in the contiguous region between Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Among these ports, there were 7 pairs of ports for seasonal opening and 6 pairs for perennial opening. With the development of the bilateral trade in recent years, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has approved several ports. Along the border between the two countries there are now 18 ports (including three airports in Manchuria, Hohhot and Hailar), and these ports are playing an important role in the bilateral economic and trade cooperation, especially in border trade. Chinese and Mongolian governments both attach a great importance to the bilateral economy and trade, which establishes a good foundation for the development of Sino-Mongolian border trade. However, there are some problems impeding the development of the bilateral border trade, and the resolution of these problems will greatly promote the development.The main body of this paper is divided into three major parts.The first part includes ChapterⅡand ChapterⅢ. ChapterⅡdefines border trade, sums up the characteristics, and studies the chief theoretical basis. Like most of the similar theses, this paper makes use of the general international trade theories, including David Ricardo's comparative advantage theory and Heckscher-Olin's factor endowments theory. Unlike them, this paper also applies new economic geography theory. These theories put the introduction and development of border trade into a unified theoretical framework, and in ChapterⅥa systematic analysis will be presented. New economic geography, mainly put forward by Paul R. Krugman in the 1990s, brings transportation cost into its theoretical analysis framework, because the decrease of transportation cost will cause agglomeration economies, externality, economies of scale, etc. If these factors are put into enterprises'location, regional economical increase and issues like convergence and divergence, a new standpoint rather different from the traditional regional economical theory will come out. Sino-Mongolian border trade described in this paper also involves transportation costs, and thus involves the infrastructure and port construction in the border areas. These elements are the determinants in Sino-Mongolian border trade. Chapter III summarizes the history of Sino-Mongolian economic and trade cooperation. Sino-Mongolian trade before 1911 was not actually bilateral trade, because then Mongolia was a part of China. According to the historical records, Sino-Mongolian economic and trade exchanges could date back to the era of Huns. The paper studies the three representative periods:the large unification of Yuan Dynasty, the North-South divided management of Ming Dynasty and the antagonistic cooperation of Qing Dynasty. After that, it summarizes the Sino-Mongolian border trade development from 1911 to 1949 and after the foundation of the new China, and the status quo of the bilateral border trade.The second part includes ChapterⅥand ChapterⅤ. Chapter IV conducts an empirical analysis to Sino-Mongolian border trade. According to comparative advantage theory, the paper uses the bilateral trade specialization index-Normalized Trade Balance (NTB) to analyze the bilateral trading commodities structure and the advantages and disadvantages of the both sides. And then the paper analyzes the bilateral border trade according to new economic geography's trading costs. It mainly analyzes the influences that border trade policies, transportation costs and the relevant logistic service system have on Sino-Mongolian border trade. ChapterⅤsummarizes the border trade situation of the main ports, abandoning the traditional analytical way in terms of types of goods. Since border trade is a special type of international trade, mainly taking part in border cities, especially through ports, this paper analyzes the border trade situation in the main ports and briefly summarizes the trade volumes. Among these, the main trading commodities are being discussed, such as:the imported goods-minerals, crude oil, livestock products, etc, and the exported goods-mechanical and electrical products, daily necessities, grains, etc. These trading commodities also reflect the great complementarity of the bilateral border trade.The third part includes ChapterⅥand ChapterⅦ. Sino-Mongolian border trade has an optimistic prospect, but there are still many problems that we can not ignore. ChapterⅥoutlines the main problems in Sino-Mongolian border trade, including China's problems, such as:singleness of bilateral trade structure and investment mode and the existence of fake and shoddy commodities, Mongolian problems, such as:poor infrastructure and high transportation costs and shortage of the Mongolian human resources, the common problems, such as:imperfection of trade policies and the ports construction, and some other factors which impede the border trade, such as:the complicated international relationship and political factors. Mongolia has continued to relax the restriction of trade and investment policies, and there are plenty of strategic resources reserves like oil, copper, uranium, phosphate, coal and other resources, which attracts many countries'attention. Countries like the United States, Japan, Russia and Australia have already taken active measures to enhance the political and economic cooperation with Mongolia, in order to get more Mongolian markets and more resources. Mongolia pursues a balanced foreign policy, seeking a balance between a few large countries. It, sandwiched between China and Russia, takes the relationship with the two countries as its priority. However, in order to increase its value, it also gets America's assistance and attaches importance to relations with Japan and South Korea. This would affect the Sino-Mongolian trade and economic cooperation to some extent by the impact of big power relations. ChapterⅦlooks into the prospect of the bilateral border trade and puts forward several suggestions about the main problems, such as:developing specialized economy and advantageous industry and implementing the strategy of success through quality, improving the quality of exported commodities and perfecting the goods structures, accelerating the infrastructure construction of the border areas, rectifying the border trade order, perfecting the management and services, enlarging the businesses of border trade enterprises and encouraging overseas investment, and so on. The implementation of these suggestions is expected to solve the main problems that impede the rapid development of Sino-Mongolian border trade, which will upgrade the bilateral border trade and enlarge the bilateral cooperation domain. |
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