Evaluation Of Tariff Reduction Of ASEAN-China Free Trade Area

In 2002,China began to discuss with ASEAN countries the idea of establishing a ASEAN-China FTA(hereinafter referred to as“ACFTA”).Once this idea was proposed,it received a positive response from ASEAN countries and attracted worldwide attention.In 2010,ACFTAwas fully established,marking thebirth of the largest economic cooperation organization involving the largest population and developing countries in the world.Since then,China and ASEAN entered the era of zero-tariff.On November 22,2015,China and ASEAN countries officially signed the ACFTA Upgrading Negotiation Outcome Document in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia,which marked a critical period for the upgrading of the China-ASEAN Free Trade area.The strategic partnership between China and ASEAN countries has been further deepened.In order to explore the effects of tariff concessions on the economic and trade relations between China and ASEAN countries during the construction of ACFTA from many angles,this paper collates a large number of relevant data and make a detailed research from the qualitative and quantitative aspects.At the same time,inspired by the "single country model" analysis method in the free trade zone theory,this paper limits the analysis angle to the impact of China's tariff concession to ASEAN on China's import trade.And then discuss the optimized direction of trade cooperation between China and ASEAN countries.Through the analysis of China's import tariff data on ASEAN,it is found that the tariff concessions of China to ASEAN countries will show different trends under the overall downward trend due to the differences between countries' internal and external factors,and at the same time,China's import trade volume to ASEAN countries also shows very obvious individualized differences.From the perspective of trade effect and degree of benefit,it can be roughly divided into four categories:(a)countries where tariff concessions do not have a significant impact on trade incentives,such as Brunei,;(b)countries where tariff concessions have a significant impact on trade incentives and where exporting countries have a higher degree of benefit,such as Cambodia,Indonesia,Malaysia,Myanmar,Thailand;(c)countries where tariff concessions do not significantly stimulate trade but are highly beneficial to exporting countries,such as the Philippines and Singapore;(d)countries where tariff concessions have a significant effect on trade incentives but which are not highly beneficial to exporting countries,such as Viet Nam.On the basis of qualitative analysis,this paper uses the modified trade gravity model to quantitatively analyze the effect of tariff concession from two dimensions.First of all,this paper constructs an econometric model which includes the basic variables of gravity model,such as gross domestic product(GDP),per capita GDP,distance and so on,as well as the main explanatory variables(tariff rate),and makes an empirical analysis using the data of 120 countries with trade relations with China from 1996 to 2015.The model has passed the robustness test,and has found that tariff concessions will promote China's import trade.Then,based on the above model,this paper makes a targeted empirical analysis of ASEAN countries as the research object.The results show that the effect of tariff concession on China's import trade from ASEAN countries is not stable.