Agricultural Trade Research Development Between China And South Korea

Since China established a relationship formally with South Korea on August 24th 1992, rapid development has occurred between them. Although there were two devastating financial crisis during the special period, trade between China and South Korea still keeps on developing well. Total trade between the two countries rose to 228874 million US dollars in 2013 compared with 5030 million US dollars in 1992, showing an increase of more than 40 times during 20 years, which was the first time trade between China and South Korea exceeded that between America and South Korea. Currently, South Korea has become the third largest exporting destination and the fourth largest investing country of China. At the same time, agricultural products trade became hot like lightning, and the total trade rose to 4780 million US dollars in 2012 compared with 1041 million US dollars. However, the percentage of agricultural trade kept decreasing from 20.7% in 1992 to 2.22% in 2012. China has become the largest trade surplus countries of South Korea, but China has been maintaining a large agricultural trade surplus, which reached 3540 million US dollars in 2012. Increased quantity and types of agricultural products exported from China to South Korea, to some extent, inhibited the development of agriculture in South Korea, strong agricultural trade protection policies against China were formulated, which affected normal trade between the two countries. Finally, disputes appeared.This paper mostly aims at the fierce competition condition of agricultural trade between China and South Korea, analyzing competitiveness of agricultural exports from China to South Korea by using share of market, revealed comparative advantage index and trade intensity index. Researches show that share of market of agricultural products exported from China to Korea remains a high level, and the revealed comparative advantage index has been greater than 1 over these years, explaining China has stronger competitiveness among South Korean importing markets, especially the primary agricultural products, but its comparative advantage index has a trend of declining. And Chinese agricultural processing products lack comparative advantage. Intensity index of agricultural products trade from China to South Korea is almost greater than 1, showing a close relationship in all kinds of agricultural products trade between the two countries, on the basis of which agricultural trade is carried out adequately. China still has an opportunity for further cooperation with South Korea by means of analyzing trade complementarity between China and South Korea. South Korea is short of competitiveness in national agricultural markets, due to the limitation of natural resources、labor and high agricultural products prices. South Korean excessive protection policies such as tariff policy, technical barriers to trade and its own cultural ideas inhibits importing of agricultural products from China. Meanwhile, quality of agricultural products from China isn’t guaranteed, low secure standards and backward quarantine and test technique weakens the competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products in national markets. On this basis, this paper puts forward some policy recommendations in order to improve the competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products, and promote the sustained and healthy development of agricultural trade between China and South Korea.