Research On The Evaluation Of The Competitiveness Of Marine Industry In China

Ocean has been the basic environment and important resource for human’s survival and development and also the link for every country integrating into the global economic system since ancient times. When faced with the intensity of land resource and energy shortage and the world is now aiming at marine resources, our country actively involves in the development of marine industry. After stepping into the21st century, our country explicitly demanded the development of marine economy and marine economic development has been referred to the national strategic level. Meanwhile, China’s marine industry has maintained the steady growth trend. China’s marine GDP increased from3trillion yuan in2008to5trillion yuan in2012and marine GDP keeps taking up9.5%or more of Chinese GDP. Therefore, the marine industry has become an important pillar of our national economy. However, the unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable marine economy development situation is still outstanding in China and the extensive mode of growth has not been fundamentally changed. There are several problems of marine industry development, including the irrational industrial structure and layout, imperfect ocean legal system, inadequate law enforcement, weak innovation and technological achievements transformation capability and intensified constraints of resources and ecological environment. How to promote the healthy and stable development of marine industry and how to make marine industry with strong competitiveness have now become great theoretical and practical issues with strong reality and urgency.In addition, there are few studies on marine industrial competitiveness in China. And most quantitative researches focus on the evaluation of marine industry’s economic growth. Elements of evaluation are less hierarchical with less space and the index designs are not systematic, scientific and standardized enough and part of the research methods are difficult to operate. Therefore, in this paper, the influencing factors were firstly analyzed and a scientific, rational and easy-operated marine industrial competitiveness evaluation index system was established with the consideration of the practical situation of data availability of marine industry. After that a model of marine industrial competitiveness was built through the analysis of the empirical study of the marine industrial competitiveness in coastal provinces. And finally suggestions were proposes to improve the competitiveness of marine industry in China.This paper started with the definition of concepts related to marine industrial competitiveness. Concepts such as marine industry and industrial competitiveness were firstly illustrated and then the theoretical foundation, including industrial competitiveness, industry related theories and finally came the research literature review of researches on industrial competitiveness, marine industry and marine industrial competitiveness at home and abroad.Through the analysis on the situation of development of marine industry in the marine advanced countries like USA, Canada, Australia and Japan, and that of our country, the internal and external influencing factors of marine industrial competitiveness were found. The internal factors include natural resources, human resources, economic strength, industrial structure, capabilities in scientific research and technological innovation. The external factors include laws and regulations, industrial policy and development planning, environmental protection, regional development and international economic environment and trade barriers. Then, the preliminary marine industry competitiveness evaluation index system was established based on the consideration of the internal and external influencing factors and the actual situation in our country. The index system contains6variable layer including economic strength, investment and export capacity, output capacity, human resources, research capacity and environmental protection with totally17indicators.Subsequently, the data in "Chinese Ocean Statistical Yearbook","China Statistical Yearbook","Chinese Statistical Bulletin of Marine Economy" from2007to2011were collated and the competitiveness of marine industry in China was studied in depth through factor analysis and regression analysis. The factor analysis showed that17indicators could be explained by four common factors including comprehensive economic strength, research capacity, output capacity, capacity for environmental protection. And the ranking list of Chinese11coastal provinces and cities from2006to2010were formed by calculating the factor scores and factor composite score.The analysis showed that the competitiveness of marine industry of the11coastal cities can be divided into three levels. The first level represents the most competitive provinces and cities including Guangdong Province, Shandong Province, Shanghai City and Zhejiang Province. The second level represents the less competitive provinces and cities including Fujian Province, Jiangsu Province, Tianjin City and Liaoning Province. The third level represents the least competitive provinces and cities including Hebei Province, Guangxi Province and Hainan Province. In order to further the study of the influence of the comprehensive economic strength, research capacity, output capacity, capacity for environmental protection on marine industrial competitiveness regression analysis was used. The results of the analysis shows that the four factors all have on impacts on the competitiveness of the marine industry. However, their impacts varies from each other that the comprehensive economic strength has the greatest impact on marine industrial competitiveness, followed by the research capacity, and then comes then output capacity and finally the capacity for environmental protection has the least impact on marine industrial competitiveness. Based on the above analysis and enlightened by the experience of enhancing the competitiveness of marine industry home and abroad, countermeasures and suggestions of improving the competitiveness of Chinese marine industry were proposed in five respects, including macro guidance from the marine economy, innovation capability of marine industry, the coordinated development of each marine industry, green development of marine economy and regional marine industry development.