China And Asean Manufactures Industry Trade In Empirical Research

The construction of China - ASEAN Free Trade Area has made a substantial progress, and the largest free trade area between developing countries will come true in sight. Corresponding with it, the economic and trade cooperation between them has become one highlight. There is a very important aspect which is worth our while researching, namely the development of intra-industry trade of manufactured goods between them and its decisive factors. Although China and the members of ASEAN are still developing countries, manufactured goods have taken up more than 80% in total trade value. In the meantime, the intra-industry trade has developed rapidly. This will result in two effects. On the one hand, this will strengthen the complementarity among intra-industries, and to some degree overcome the lack of complimentarity in South-South integrated organizations. On the other hand, the economic adjustment cost of intra-industry trade is much lower than that of inter-industry trade during their trade liberalization, because the development of intra-industry trade always leads to the movement of production factors among one industry.Research of intra-industry trade is still one of the frontiers of international trade. Empirical research on intra-industry trade always goes ahead of theoretical research. There is a large number of empirical research on whether intra-industry trade exists truly, how to measure the level of intra-industry trade and the decisive factors of intra-industry trade, etc. The new trends and transitions of trade patterns make people begin to question on assumptions of traditional theories. Based on Chamberlin's monopolistic competition model, people try to explain the decisive factors and benefits of intra-industry trade with imperfect competition, economies of scale, product differentiation and firm's competitive strategy.In this thesis, author will analyze the intra-industry trade of manufactured goods between China and ASEAN in following aspects: the aggregate level, countries' characteristics, structure of industries, main characteristics, decisive factors, and so on. Compared with the relative research already existing, this thesis tries to carry on exploratory research in several following aspects: first, Using nearly ten thousand data, author mainly focuses on analyzing intra-industry trade of manufactured goods and selects five members of ASEAN which have more close trade relationship with China.