Current Situation And Development Prospect In Merchandise Trade Between South Africa And China

China is the most important economy of Asia and South Africa is the largest economy in Africa. Although the two countries are geographically distant, they have close trade relations as emerging economies. Despite that the trade volume between China and South Africa in2012is6.9%lower than the previous year, amounting to$24.72billion, China is still the largest trading partner of South Africa, and the largest export market and largest source of imports of South Africa. However, with the continuous expansion of trade volume, a number of trading features between China and South Africa have become more intense. Reasons for the formation of these features partly is South Africa’s strict restrictions on its imported products. For example, South Africa launches lots of anti-dumping investigations on Chinese products every year in order to protect its domestic enterprises. The other reason is the unreasonable structure of Chinese export products to South Africa. It is no doubt that these characteristics, such as overall trade imbalance between the two countries,are mostly trade friction which is not conducive to the development of trade between the two countries. If both counties do not pay attention to these features, the bilateral trade will inevitably be affected. Therefore, the study of characteristics of trade between South Africa and China and analysis of its causes have an important theoretical and practical significance for the development of South Africa trade.This article plans to use the statistics from the United Nations’bureau of trade database (UNCOMTRADE) statistical data, the world development target (WDI), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese Department of commercial affairs statistical data and so on, to summarize the South African and Chinese economics and the present trade development situation as well as the trading features. On the basis of the above analysis, the author analyzed the limiting factors which caused these characteristics, such as trade status, forecast in view of the South African and Chinese trade existence’s question as well as in the future both countries trade prospects for development and the hindrance, propose some related suggestion and the countermeasures.This paper uses comparative analysis and inductive method, collects a lot of Information and data, and analyses the trade features and trade prospects between South African and Chinese from this six parts:The first Part:Introduction. This Part introduces the background, significance, related literature review, research purposes and methods, content, innovation and deficiency of the research.The second Part:The theory of international trade. Including the Absolute Advantage theory, the Comparative Advantage theory, the factor endowment theory and the Super-protection theory, this Part is the theoretical base of the Paper.The third Part:Current situation and features in tangible goods trade between South Africa and China. Describe the current goods trade relationship and the features between China and South Africa through two parts. First, Current situation in tangible goods trade between South Africa and China. Second, the feature in tangible goods trade between South Africa and China. This part also analyzed the changes in trade relations since they established diplomatic.The fourth Part:Trade-restrictive factors between China and South Africa. Analyze the Trade-restrictive factors caused by China and South Africa respectively. There are six factors. First, China lacks effective coordination mechanisms. Second, products Chinese exported are too light. Third, Chinese enterprises lack foresight of the South African market. Fourth, South Africa’s anti-dumping measures hindered the development of bilateral trade. Fifth, South Africa’s policy adjustment increases the uncertainty of Chinese enterprises investment. Sixth, South Africa lacks mining and technical personnel.The fifth Part:Recommendations for goods trade between South Africa and China. There are six Proposals. First, China should build effective coordination mechanisms. Second, products Chinese exported should be improved. Third, Chinese enterprises should receive training and guidance. Fourth, Chinese enterprises should actively respond to trade barriers in South Africa. Fifth, Chinese enterprises should actively respond to policy changes in South Africa. Sixth, The Chinese government should accelerate human resource projects in China and South Africa.The sixth Part:Development prospect in merchandise trade between South Africa and China. First, this part analyzed trade potential between South Africa and China according to nearly a decade trade data, using regular market share model. Second, bilateral trade prospects were predicted.Finally, the author summarizes the conclusions of this study.Through analyzing related data, the conclusions of this paper are following: first, the trade between China and South Africa is large-scale and grows faster, and the two countries have alternate trade deficit in the last ten years. Second, China’s trade with South Africa have a strong complementarity both in exports and imports. The sustained economic growth of the two countries will drive the continued growth of bilateral trade. Bilateral trade potential has not been fully played, there is still room for further expansion. Finally, innovation of this paper is that it attempts to study bilateral trade through multi-angle, while the regular market share model is used to predict prospects. However, due to the weak research ability and time constraints, the summary of the characteristics of bilateral trade is not comprehensive, just selecting some typical characteristics discussed. There are many areas need to be improve.