China’s Africa Trade Policy:Evolution And Effect Evaluation

The economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa has been for a long time, but it develops slowly over a period of time. Until the early1990s, China began to pay attention to the African market, the trade began steady growth. Especially after the establishment of China-Africa Cooperation Forum in2000, China made a series of trade policy on Africa. The China-Africa trade and investment developed rapidly, its growth rate was higher than the same period China’s foreign trade growth rate, but the volume of trade is still very low proportion in China’s foreign trade. Therefore it has important strategic significance to study the evolution and effect of China’s Africa trade policy for further development of the African market.This paper first analyzes the evolution characteristics and reasons of China’s Africa trade policy. The research results show that China-Africa trade policy more political considerations before2000and taking more economic factors into account after2000. The economic factors include the development of new market in Africa, to ensure energy supply as well as dispersed trading partners to circumvent trade barriers and others. Then the paper studies the development of China-Africa trade and investment, the results show that the Sino-African trade policy has brought a series of changes in trade and investment. As far as the trade performance, the total trade rapid growth and diversification of trading partners as well as the diversification of product structure; investment mainly to the rapid expansion in total and areas, as well as investment field. Then in the evaluation of the effect of the implementation of the trade policy, this paper uses mechanism analysis and empirical test, taking the economic impact of China and Africa as evaluation goals. The evaluation results show that African economy benefits primarily from the indirect effects of trade policy. The benefits include improved trade terms, technology upgrading and increasing employment. The positive economic impact of China’s economic growth has been mainly due to the trade between China and Africa, as well as the investment indirect role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure. As a whole, the results achieve the target of the trade policy. Finally, this paper summarizes the unresolved issues in the China-Africa trade and put forward policy recommendations, providing theoretical support for the further improvement of China-Africa trade policy.