The Effect Of RTAs On Economic Globalization

The process of economic globalization has started for a long time, but since thelate nineteen fifties, the regional economic cooperation developed rapidly. Under the pressure ofWTO’s weakening ability to solve the dispute between its members, countries are more prone todeveloping bilateral free trade agreement.Bhagwati (1993) first observe the effect of regionaltrade agreements (RTA) on world multilateral trade liberalization--the famous "stumblingblock" and"stepping stone" problem.Today, this problem remains unresolved.Since joining the WTO, China has change its doubts and wait-and-see attitude, began toactively integrate into the regional economic integration process. China has involved in manykinds of regional economic cooperationwith different identity, especially plays an important rolein East Asia. So, Does China’s accelerating pace to participate in RTA help China to make abetter cooperation under the framework of WTO?In order to answer this two problem, after the analysis of the development status of theregional trade agreements, this paper qualitatively analyze the cause of regional economiccooperation and its influence on economic globalization, and then based on the gravitymodel,using the panel data in142countries during2000-2010, this paper examine the effect ofregional economic cooperation on economic globalization from the perspective of Chineseforeign trade. The results show: the economic cooperation organization generallypromoteChina’s foreign trade, but the impetus brought by WTOis the smallest. With its flexibilityand operability, regional economic cooperation is becoming a “stumbling block” of economicglobalization, which also partly explains why China is accelerating regional economiccooperation footsteps.