"early Harvest" Program Of The Greater Mekong Sub-regional Agricultural Trade

Approved by ADB, the Great Mekong River Sub-region cooperation was founded in 1992 including six parties which as China (Yunnan province), Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar as well as Cambodia, the cooperated fields of which are mainly in circulation and investment fields. Wherein, the agricultural trade is of important significance to strengthen the cooperation inside GMS further as one of the effective methods to improve the regional economic growth and relieve poverty. In 2002, Chinese leaders as well as leaders of ASEAN mutually signed the agreement on the outline of integral economic cooperation between China and ASEAN together in which it ensured that the cooperation between China and ASEAN should be divided into two phases. Wherein, the first phase is fixed between 2004 and 2006 during when the tariff rates of about six hundred varieties of agricultural commodities gradually decreased to zero. Furthermore, concerning all the six hundred commodities fixed to be conducted tariff reduction in the first phase are mainly agricultural commodities, the program is so-called Early Harvest Plan which aims to reduce the trade conflicts between China (Yunnan province) and six old ASEAN countries with GMS countries included and then promote the scale of agricultural trade. Starting with the background of GMS agricultural trade cooperation, this paper aims to discover and research what effects of implementing EHP will exert on GMS countries, how's the current situation of agricultural trade among GMS countries as well as relevant factors which affect the agricultural trade among GMS countries. To sum up, this paper aims to recommend on the further development of GMS agricultural trade by applying empirical analysis.