A Study On The Commodity Composition Of Foreign Trade In China

The commodity composition of foreign trade is the comprehensivereflection of a country's development level of economy and technology,its condition of industrial structure, its international competitiveness ofcommodities, and also, its status in the international division of labor andinternational trade. Looking back the development of China's foreigntrade from its reform and opening to the outside world to its entry into theWTO, we can see that the long-term growth of China's foreign trade hasdepended mainly on the development of its own comparative advantagesand the demand from the world market. The condition and change ofChina's comparative advantages were deeply reflected on the commoditycomposition of its foreign trade. Therefore, a comprehensive, systematicand thorough analysis of and research on the commodity composition offoreign trade can serve as a basis for the judgment of the long-termdeveloping tendency of China's foreign trade and the establishment ofstrategies and policies of the developmentof China's foreign trade.The traditional theories of international trade have many disadvantages inexplaining the trade structure of the present industrialized countries. The trade among North America, Europe and Japan indicates that scaleeconomy, imperfect competition, product differentiation, etc. havebecome the dominant factors in today's international trade. Especially inthe intra-region trade and intra-industry trade, it is the fact that thefunction of scale economy has exceeded that of comparative advantage.Similarly, owing to the change of China's trade structure in last severalyears, we cannot draw out a reasonable explanation of this change, norcan we exactly predict the tendency of this change by using the Theory ofComparative Advantage. However, how to analyze and predict theadjustment direction of China's trade structure so as to have a betterdevelopment in foreign trade is the problem we face and have to study.This paper studies the relationship between China's commoditycomposition of foreign trade and China's industrial development byanalyzing the characteristic of China's commodity composition of foreigntrade and its development trend, and explores the change in the pattern ofChina's foreign trade. It concludes that China's commodity compositionof foreign trade basically complies with the feature of China's factorendowment and the condition of industry development. Intra-industrytrade is becoming increasingly important in China's trade pattern, but thevertical intra-industry trade is the main trade pattern. In recent years, ourcountry's commodity structure of foreign trade has been improved to some extent, the export share of capital-intensive andtechnology-intensive commodities has increased and the internationalcompetitiveness has been enhanced, but the labor-intensive productsremain a high proportion and the benefits from foreign trade mainlyconcentrates on the export of labor-intensive product. Based on thesefacts, the paper finally puts forward some suggestions on improving thecommodity structure of China's foreign trade.