Study On The Factors Of China’s Agricultural Trade

In recent years, China’s agricultural trade has been growing rapidly. However, thereare some important issues deserve our attention while the total trade is growing. First,China’s agricultural trade deficit is very serious and has an expanding trend. The seriousdeficit mainly affects two aspects: on one hand, it may bring great impact onagricultural production, hinder the development of the agricultural economy and reduceemployment; on the other hand, if the supply of agricultural products depends oninternational markets excessively, when the international financial and economicsituation changing, our country will fall into a passive situation, the national foodsecurity will be threatened. Second, there are still problems of low value-added exportvarieties and weak international competitiveness in China’s agricultural trade. On thewhole, China’s agricultural trade is facing pessimistic international trade environmentand trends. Agricultural trade issues have evolved into economic problems that can’t beignored. Accordingly, China’s major agricultural trading partners have been studied inthis article. Factors from the perspectives of trade gravity model and the status quo ofChina’s agricultural trade have been summarized. In this paper, an empirical analysis ofthese factors and the measure of potential of trade between China and the majoragricultural trading partners have been made. This analysis can provide a usefulthinking of changing the status quo of China’s agricultural trade deficit, improving thequality of China’s exports and promoting the development of China’s agricultural trade.Primary conclusions as follows can be drawn. First, in terms of agriculturalimports, the amount of China’s agricultural imports from Latin American countries isincreasing, especially from Brazil where it’s agricultural exports to China has beengrowing the fastest in the last20years; in terms of agricultural exports, Malaysia andother Southeast Asian countries has replaced Russia and become China’s importantagricultural export markets in recent years; in terms of the total agricultural trade, theUnited States now has become China’s largest agricultural trading country, and theamount is far ahead of Brazil and Japan that are in the second and third place. In thepast two years, the sequence of several major import and export markets of all kinds ofagricultural products was stable with little change. Second, the two trade countries’ GDP,total population and the attendance in the APEC of both countries can significantlypromote China’s agricultural trade while the two trade countries’ differences in per capita income, the distance between the capital of the two countries will hinder China’sagricultural trade, and the two countries’ attendance in the WTO and the internationalfinancial crisis will exhibit no significant effect on China’s agricultural trade. Third,Half of China’s agricultural trade with major partners has the trade potential for furthergrowth.According to the status analysis and empirical results, policy recommendations infour areas were proposed to promote the development of China’s agricultural trade.Accelerate the regional economic integration; promote agricultural trade with theAsia-Pacific countries especially neighboring countries actively. Strengthen theagricultural trade with emerging trade partners; develop new markets vigorously.Improve the technology of exports of agricultural products and enhance thedifferentiation of production to improve the international competitiveness. Reduce theagricultural trade deficit and improve the food safety system in our country.