The Trade Effects Of Economic Integration And Its Regional Differences In China

Since mid-1980s, a new round of regionalization, also called new regionalism has being steadily rising in the world economy, which is different with the old regionalism of 1950s-60s in the number of involved countries and continents, economic level of members, location of members, policy tendency of members and practical effects. Consistent with the fast development of new regionalism, China has paid more attention to regional economic integration and actively motivated and participated several negotiations on regional trade agreements, of which China-ASEAN FTA is the most significant. Meanwhile, there are still obvious economic discrepancy and development imbalance among Chinese provinces. Then, will China's part in international economic integration worsen its domestic provincial economic imbalance? Theoretically, regional economic integration may cause changes in international trade flows and international trade terms, etc. and bring different trade effects to independent member economy. What's more, regional protection and economic separation makes Chinese provinces relatively independent in China's intemational-economic-integration process; the initial division of industries and products and relative advantages render Chinese provincial divergent economic bases. All of these are inherent factors that will cause different trade effects among Chinese domestic provinces in China's international-economic-integration process. With the empirical study on benefits gained by Chinese provinces from exports to ASEAN members, it is found that trade partners' economic level, transaction costs, economic complementarities and overseas Chinese can directly influence trade between Chinese provinces and ASEAN members, and thus will bring unbalanced trade benefits to Chinese provinces in China's international-economic-integration process. With the review on "early harvest plan" of China-ASEAN FTA, the prediction is partly testified. And it reveals that detail policy arrangements have significant effects on unbalanced benefits distributed among Chinese provinces. All of those are direct factors that will cause different trade effects among Chinese provinces in China's international-economic-integration process. Undoubtedly, these...