Analysis Of The Conclusion Of The Sino-rok Fta Motives, Obstacles And Prospects

The multilateral free trade negotiation under the framework of WTO has made little progress since 1990s. With that background, in order to cope with the challenges of globalization and regional integration, Northeast Asian countries have changed their trade policies from relying on multilateral trading system to pursuing FTA development strategy. But so far, Northeast Asian countries still haven't entered into any bilateral or multilateral FTA among themselves, which is quite striking contrast with the boom of regional integration in the rest of the world.In the long run, the development of China needs the support of the region where it located, and the most realistic path for promoting the process of East Asia regionalization is through the establishment of China-ROK FTA; Then, under the base of China-ROK FTA, building the trilateral China-Japan-Korea and eventually constructing the multilateral East Asian FTA which includes the ASEAN, China, Japan and Korea. Therefore, as the first step of East Asia integration, China-ROK FTA becomes a vital part of the strategic interests of China.If only analyzing it from the perspective of economic, we can easily find that with the solid development of ROK-China trade-exchange and the high degree of economic interdependence, the time has ripped for concluding China-ROK FTA: Korea has been the beneficiary from the rise of China's economy since 1990s.However, in fact, compared to proactive attitude of China, Korea holds relatively negative perception of China-ROK FTA. The China-ROK FTA hasn't been put into the agenda of negotiation and still under the joint research stage. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the process and characteristic of China's FTA strategy and Korea's FTA strategy and compare their similarities and differences. Then, the article will analyze the pros and cons of the China-ROK FTA from the economic and non-economic perspectives. Out of the consideration of the political effect about China-ROK FTA, Korea government has given priority to ROK-U.S, ROK-EU FTA instead of the China-ROK FTA.There are three types of possibility about the prospect of the China-ROK FTA. Scenario One:the China-ROK FTA will be replaced by China-Japan-ROK FTA. Therefore there is little chance for China-ROK FTA to be signed in the foreseeable future; Scenario Two:China-ROK FTA will be signed in the short term; Scenario Three:It will take 5 to 10 years for China and Korea to build the bilateral free trade area step by step and eventually complete the China-ROK FTA.Compared to scenario One and Two, the third one is more likely to bring about in the future. However, it's quite difficult to predict exactly when China-ROK FTA will enter into negotiation stage, because it is not only deeply affected by the changing of Korea and China's domestic policies but also influenced by the external powers such as the United States and Japan.