An Empirical Analysis Of China Trade Interdependence(1985-2004)

Since the beginning of reform and opening to the outside world, China's trade volume has been developed at a striking speed, and the trade interdependence has risen yearly. Kinds of reviews on our present situation of trade interdependence have been published by many scholars. Some holds that our present trade interdependence is too high, measures to slow down our foreign trade should be taken; some holds that our present trade interdependence is not that high by revised calculation, measures should be taken to promote our foreign trade; some holds that the variation law of trade interdependence is more important than the real value of it.This paper holds that when doing research on the trade interdependence, the real value and the changing law of it should be both taken into consideration, so as to research the economic influences caused by the variation of trade interdependence in a comparatively right and objective view. In this paper one revised method is cited to calculate China's trade interdependence in last 20 consecutive years and a regression between trade interdependence and GDP, forex-rate, FDI is established to analyze the relationship between trade interdependence and its related factors, meantime, a regression between GDP and trade interdependence is established to analyze their relationship. Trade interdependence of different enterprises'quality and different trade ways are calculated to analyze present relationship between trade interdependence and economy.Through these analyses, the following conclusions are made: the absolute value of our present trade interdependence is not high, only 17.21%, and the varying range of it in the past 20 years is also not big, from 10.23% in 1985 to 17.21% in 2004. the relationship between trade interdependence and GDP, forex-rate, FDI is positive; the relationship between GDP and trade interdependence is also positive, and the economic increase brought by export is offset by import partly; the trade interdependence of state-owned enterprises is much lower than that of foreign funded enterprises, and the trade interdependence of ordinary trade is also lower than that of processing trade. This means that in spite of our present big total trade volume, the impacts on our main economy caused by foreign trade are not that large like the data reflected.