The Structural Change Of Import Demand In South African And Its Impact On Chinese Exports

In the theory and practice of international trade, import trade has been theconcern of the different social sectors. Many domestic and overseas scholars havecarried out extensive researches on the cause of import, the import and economicgrowth, and import demand functions for a long time, then the scholars have begun topay more attention to its structural problems in recent years. Usually the studies aremainly about the import demand of large countries and its impact on world trade andforeign trade of a specific country, and the small trade country, South Africa, itsimport demand can not get attention by scholars. South Africa and China belong to theBRICS, and their economic and trade relations is growing in recent years. It isnecessary to explore the structure of import demand in South Africa from the view ofdemand structure and supply structure, and further to analyze its relationship with theChinese export trade.In this paper, the method of normative analysis and empirical analysis,quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are used to study the changes of demandand supply structure since the establishment of the new South Africa. The constantmarket share model (CMS) is used to analyze the growth factors in Chinese exports toSouth Africa, to explore the demand effect, commodity structure effect andcompetitiveness effect. Firstly, this paper elaborates the changes of demand structureand supply structure in South Africa, and then uses the Moore index to measure thedegree of changes; Then this paper explores the factors of the changes in demandstructure and supply structure, inquiring the development direction of demandstructure and supply structure in the future. And the study draws a conclusion thatthere is a long-term structural imbalance between supply and demand in South Africa,in the form of oversupply for service and excess demand goods. Therefore, thereexists import demand on commodity for a long time in South Africa. Finally, thispaper further analyzes the situation of China’s exports to South Africa from2001to2011, and makes an empirical analysis of factors of changes in export growth.Combining with the changes in import demand structure of South Africa, the paperputs forward some specific advice on how to stabilizing promote the exports fromChina to South Africa.Through the above analysis, the paper gets the following conclusions andsuggestions: First, South Africa has the long-term stable import demand on commodity; Second, the most important factor in the growth of Chinese exports toSouth Africa is the strong competitiveness of Chinese export goods; Third, thepotential of the commodity structure effect in the growth of Chinese exports to SouthAfrica is to be discovered. This paper also suggests that Chinese enterprises shouldattach great importance to the existence of sufficient external demand, to maintain andimprove the competitiveness of Chinese export enterprises, and to develop more spaceof export.