Border Trade And Regional Stability

Frontier trade, which means the trade in goods between frontier residents or enterprises in the border areas, is mainly conducted in the markets of exchange, petty trade, production in the free trade zone, processing trade and so on.The stability of the border areas, on one hand, is both the foundation of smooth frontier trade development and an important guarantee of national stability and prosperity. On the other hand, a sound development of frontier trade will also promote and facilitate the stability of the border areas. Therefore, it is an interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between the frontier trade and the stability of border areas, which is a consistent thread running through the whole paper. This paper selected Manchuria and Erlianhot, two typical border port cities in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as the field points, and applied the methods of field surveys, interviews and literature collection, with the attempt to conduct a typical study on the frontier trade and the stable relationships of the border areas.The whole paper is divided into six chapters:Chapter One is an introduction part; Chapter Two and Three, respectively, recalls the history and describes the status quo of the frontier trade in Manchuria and Erlianhot ports, and in combination with the peripheral relationships of the two, intends to overlook their future; Chapter Four focuses on the relationship between the frontier trade and the neighboring relations, citing several typical surrounding countries as an example; Chapter Five briefly discusses the nature and characteristics of the worldwide financial crisis originated from2008, and further analyses its impact on China’s frontier trade; Chapter Six, as the conclusion part, refers to the vital role of energy in the frontier trade.Nowadays, there exist two security modes around China’s neighboring countries and regions:one is the military alliance (for example, the bilateral alliance of the United States with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand); another mode is the security cooperation (such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asia-Pacific Council for Security Cooperation and the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue Meeting). The former model is the core and foundation of the United States’Asia-Pacific strategies; therefore, the economic and trade relations in the allies also belong to the alliance nature. On the other hand, the latter model is, not with the alliance nature, a multilateral consultative mechanism. Under the diversified surrounding relationships and the context of the globalization, China should conform to the evolution of the environment, and promote a lasting and stable development of the frontier trade.