Research On Present Situation And Regional Differences Of African Agricultural Trade With China

With the economic globalization and the continuous improvement of the“South-South cooperation” mechanism, the economic and trade ties between Chinaand African countries are being strengthened. Besides, the foundation of China-AfricaCooperation Forum in2000provides a good opportunity to further trade andcooperation between China and Africa. China as a large agricultural country that uses7%of the world’s arable land to feed22%of the world’s population, and Africa as thesecond continent in the world that has a lot of agricultural resources but so far hasn’tsolved the food problem yet, both have deepen their agricultural trade with each otherunder the new situation. So the research on the trade in agricultural products betweenChina and Africa is being paid more attention.Based on international trade theories and regional economic cooperation theories,and supported by the panel data of China and38African countries from2000to2010,this paper presents an analysis of the basic environment, the main features, theregional differences and the major factors of African agricultural trade with China byseveral research methods in economics. Also, some suggestions are given to improvethe “quality” and “quantity” of the Sino-Africa trade in agricultural products.The research shows several valuable conclusions as follows. First, agricultureresources and the present situation of China and Africa agriculture is the naturalbasement for African agricultural trade with China, and the healthy and orderlyinternational and bilateral trade environment provide a favorable platform for thetrade. Second, the scale of Sino-Africa agricultural trade grows rapidly but relativelyless, the trade balance has changed, but the market concentration is too high;Revealed Comparative Advantage Index tells that African agricultural products have strong competitive advantages in the world but have some disadvantages in the tradewith China; besides, China and Africa are highly complementary in the plant productscategory, the tobacco and the textile materials category. Third, based on the regionaldistribution of agriculture in Africa, African agricultural trade with China presentssome regional differences in different regions of Africa; West African region, SouthAfrican region are the main exporters for China, and West African region, NorthAfrican region are the importers of China. Fourth, the model of CMS shows thegrowth of the trade mainly results from the requirements of scale and the overallcompetitiveness effects, while the trade gravity model further presents the averageeconomic scale of China and African countries, and the FDI from China to everyAfrican country have played positive roles in the growth of the agricultural tradebetween them. Besides, China must seize the good opportunity of the Forum, increasethe FDI and technical output, and implement different strategies in different regionsof Africa to make the trade in agricultural products between China and Africa growmuch faster and better.