South Korea's Choice Between TPP/CPTPP And BRI

South Korea is an important country in Asia-Pacific area,whose significant economic feature is export orientation.The situations of economy and power in Asia-Pacific area are deeply changing and transformed,and WTO has been halted.As a result,several major nations have taken strategic measures to promote regional economic integration,in which TPP/CPTPP and “the Belt and Road” are two main paths for both current situation and the future.South Korea's choice between these two is unavoidable due to its specific position in the competition among its political and economic partners the United States,China and Japan.On the basis of analysing South Korea's international political and economic co-opetition relationships,this research adopts GTAP model to quantitatively simulate the shocks for economy,welfare and sectors under Korea's different options and different integration levels,so that its strategic reaction between TPP/CPTPP and BRI can be decided.The conclusions are as follow:(1)US-Korea Alliance is the cornerstone of Korea's foreign relationships.China,its first biggest trade partner,has proposed BRI.Japan has led CPTPP.Sino-Korea mutual trust is fragile because of US-Korea relationship,and Japan-Korea cooperation is negatively influenced by trade competition and historical disputes.(2)In terms of regions,there are good economic and trade cooperation basises for Korea's joining TPP/CPTPP and BRI.But it has higher trade combined degree with BRI countries than that with TPP/CPTPP.In industry level,Korea's most revealed comparative industries(machinery and transport equipments,chemicals and related products)see decreasing complementarity with both TPP/CPTPP and BRI;resources-intensitive and labor-intensitive industries show more complementarity with TPP/CPTPP;technology-insentive industries show more complementarity with BRI.In terms of export competition,Korea-TPP/CPTPP performed worse than Korea-BRI,but this discrepancy is diminishing;especially,if US returns TPP,competition between Korea and TPP will be alleviated.(3)For Korea,there're political and economic driving factors to joinTPP/CPTPP or BRI,including improving mutual relationships with leading countries,enhancing regional power and influence and preventing heading on chaebols.Also,it is hampered to join those two by the negotiation difficulty due to historical and modern disputes,shocks for industries which perform low complementary and vigilance caused by the lack of political trust,etc..(4)By using GTAP to simulate scenarios under different integration levels and Korea's different strategic decision between TPP/CPTPP and BRI,the outputs say that: at the overall level of economy,the optimal strategy is to join both TPP/CPTPP and BRI,followed by only BRI;at the industrial level,the optimal strategy for its pillar industries(automobile and components;mechanical and electronic equipments)is to join only BRI,while joining TPP/CPTPP or both will have negative effects.(5)Based on comprehensive considerations,South Korea can choose BRI as a short-term option and TPP/CPTPP as a long-term one.China should take this as a basic point to promote South Korea's participation in BRI.