Research On The International Competitiveness Of China’s Groundnut Products

This paper focuses on the substance of the international competitiveness of agricultural products, basing on the comparative advantage and the competitive theory, collecting and analyzing a large number of relevant data on raw groundnuts (including shelled groundnuts and unshelled groundnuts) and prepared groundnuts, to study the international competiveness of China’s groundnut. Selecting the world’s other major groundnut producing and trading countries such as the United States, India and Argentina, establishing indicators from groundnut production, product price, quality and safety aspects, including the cost of production, producing scale, yield, export price, quality and safety, using different methods to do quantitative analysis, and then using the range normalization method to do dimensionless analysis on indicators as comprehensive comparative advantage index of groundnut production, the export price of groundnut products, groundnut product quality competitiveness index and the RASFF notification batches of groundnut products aflatoxin, to get a final indicator to measure the level of the international competiveness of China’s groundnut products. The method is big innovation in the research on international competitiveness of groundnut products. It turns out that, the groundnut products international competiveness index of China, the United States, India and Argentina is 0.61,0.72,0.60 and 0.57. In the comprehensive comparative advantage index, China gets 0.83, ranking first and surpasses the United States, showing that China has a relatively strong competitiveness in groundnut yields and producing scale. In price competitiveness indicator, China gets 0.63, ranking second but less than India. In recent years, due to the rising labor costs, the increasing export price weaken China’s competitiveness. In the quality competitiveness index, China gets 0.63, ranking the second, lower than the United States, the reason is that China’s major export products are raw groundnuts and primary prepared groundnut products with low value-addition, it is urgent ne to adjust the structure of export products, increasing the proportion of high groundnut products with value-addition. Finally, in the security competition force indicator, China gets 0.38, which is the lowest in four countries, driving down the overall score of the international competitiveness of China’s groundnut products. China’s groundnut products has serious quality and safety problems which badly affecting the international competitiveness of China’s groundnut products.The paper concludes that China has a certain international competitiveness of groundnut products. China has a comparative advantage in the production level, the advantages of producing scale and yields are the fundamental foundation on international competitiveness of China’s groundnut products. However, compared with the other three major groundnut producing and trading countries, China’s international competitiveness level ranking the last, where the quality and safety issues are the most important factors to weaken the international competitiveness of China’s groundnut products, coupled with the irrational export product structure and increasing export price of raw groundnut, Chinese groundnut products have gradually lost the traditional dominance in the international groundnut market.The paper presents relevant recommendations. Firstly, it presents to improve the producing scale, and create high-quality groundnut production base. Secondly, it suggests adjusting groundnut exports structure and cultivating the leading enterprises. Thirdly, it proposes to formulate strict limit standard of groundnut products aflatoxin, pesticide residues and heavy metals, and improve the ability of groundnut products inspection and quarantine. Finally, it propose to establish groundnut temporary storage system and increase the subsidies.