The Research On Integration Of Trade In Services And Barriers To Services Trade In The China-ASEAN FTA

Negotiations under WTO have been felled into Stagnation since 2001 after "General Agreement on Trade in Services"(GATS) has been signed. At the same time, the Agreements of trade in services since 2000 signed accounted for 84% of Trade in Services Agreement in 1958-2010. It is later in Asian than Europe, America and other countries to participate the integration of trade in services very early. But it is fastest growing.China is also actively involved in the construction of regional integration in trade in services. By 2010, China has been signed 11 regional agreements, mainly the south-south FTA. The China-ASEAN service trade agreement signed in 2007 is the first regional service trade agreements of China Among them.Based on the above background, the paper focuses on questions as following: Why the regional integration of trade in services is growing so quickly after 2000? to achieve liberalization of trade in services, a country how to choose the path between multilateral negotiations and regional integration? How the degree of regional trade integration services of CAFTA, the barriers to services trade and how the barriers effect the integration of trade in services.To address these concerns the problem, the main ideas of paper is as the following: Firstly, the paper summarized that the choice between services Multilateral and integration by analyzing the path to services liberalization and combined the characteristics of trade in services. Secondly, the paper elaborate the process of CAFTA service trade integration, empirical analyze the degree of integration of overall and sub-sector (such as transport, tourism, construction and financial). In addition, Competitiveness of trade in services between China and the ASEAN is further analyzed in the paper. Thirdly, barriers of overall and sub-sector (transport, tourism, construction and finance) in CAFTA trade integration services were analyzed practically by some measures. Finally, the paper shows some international and domestic recommendations to propose the process of integration. The results of the paper are as follows by above research:Firstly, Services trade is quite different with trade in goods. The integration of regional trade in services is more advantage than multilateral by the lobbying of interest Groups and features of regional negotiations. Therefore, the integration of trade in services is the optimal path which a country achieves trade in services liberalization by international economic cooperation.Secondly, BOP Statistics show that Service trade integration of CAFTA is primary, but some service sectors such as tourism, transportation has been basically formed. Overall, the degree of CAFTA is less than the EU and the NAFTA largely, but grew is much faster than the two. FAT Statistics also is similar with BOP statistics by Commercial presence mode.The status of sub-sectors is as follows:In integration of transport services, CAFTA has been built up three-dimensional system of sea and air transport network, but the software integration is later in 2002. The degree of transport integration is high level for the high level of integration of goods. But the services trade deficit of transport services is a long period.Tourism has set up the initial integration of tourism services. At present, tourism integration mainly is promoted by what China export to ASEAN. Dynamically, exports intensity has no significant change, as import intensity of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia declined and of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines increase.The level of exports integration of construction services maintain the rapid development and improve continuously. The regional structure and infrastructure changed very much after establish of CAFTA.Integration of financial services trade started later than transport, tourism, but increase rapidly. In recent years, the degree of CAFTA is higher than Japan—ASEAN and Korea—ASEAN, but only Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei remaining Close relationship with China. Dynamicly, closer financial ties in CAFTA and steadily improve.Thirdly, although the low level of integration, but complementary is great between China and ASEAN countries. Moreover, complementary between China and old members of ASEAN is greater than the new member states. Fourthly, Trade in services competitive between China and ASEAN show that all the States is not competitive, and only competitive in such as tourism, construction, telecommunications and computer services. Large Part of the financial and other resources and technology-intensive service sector is not competitive.Fifthly, Showed with a policy perspective, restrictions on trade in services is one of the major barriers in integration of CAFTA. The feature is as follows: services trade barriers are lower than the WTO, the barriers of market access are higher than the national treatment, and there is different in models, countries and sectors.Sixthly, the barriers of the typical sector of services trade show that there are different features in sectors and models, but barriers in mode three is Very common.the barriers in Singapore is minimum in all sector in addition to transport services. The highest barriers to trade are Vietnam in transport, is Thailand in tourism, is Philippines in construction and is China in financial.Seventhly, the dynamic trend of barriers in construction services tends to decline, among them; China is the sharpest decrease, followed by Thailand. On the other hand, the dynamic trend of financial services trade barriers was another big picture. Although the overall trend is down, but China, Vietnam and Malaysia showed a downward trend, while Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand rise after 1997 and only in 2006,2007, tend to decline gradually.Eighthly, the empirical analysis of influence of Restrictions on trade in services on the integration of construction shows that industry added value of GDP impact greatest services integration, followed by the impact of distance, the impact of trade barriers in third place. The empirical analysis of financial shows that restrictive policy impact greatest the integration.Lastly, barriers to services trade integration can not be ignored. For developing countries, we should view dialectically the appropriate protection and reduction of barriers. The paper proposed to carry out the right trade policy measures (Macro-view, middle-view, Micro-view), reduce barriers and promote the integration levels gradually.The main contribution of this paper is: Firstly, It is a long time in research on integration and multilateral and the results are very rich, but which mostly from the perspective of trade in goods. There is a little view on services and rare on CAFTA combined with the degree of integration, competitiveness and trade barriers to services comprehensive and systematically. Therefore, the paper has a relatively new perspective.Secondly, Traditional regionalism believes that the Government considers the foreign trade policy based on economic welfare.so Traditional regionalism think regional integration is the second best option compared to the multilateral represented by WTO. but the paper consider the transaction cost, the opposite attitude of developed and developing countries and regional integration, "subsit urity" of organizational principles of services trade integration, combined with the feature of GATS plus and self-improvement, under the background of the rise of new regionalism, difference of trade in services and trade in goods, using the principles of political economy of trade, by Trade Political Economy. At last, the paper believes that integration of trade in services is the optimal path to achieve trade liberalization.Thirdly, the paper choose the indexs of BOPS and FATS to measured the overall degree of Cross-border service trade, model, mode 2 and mode 4, and Commercial presence,mode 4.Again, compared with EU and NAFTA.the paper also measured the degree of typical sectors,such as Transportation, Travel,Architecture and Finance.Lastly, quantitative the degree of barriers:improved Hoekman index is used to measure the overall barriers; modified restrictions on trade in services index (STRI) and the templates and building services trade barriers is used to measure the degree of transport, tourism, construction and financial services sub-sectors.in additional, further measure the degree dynamicly based on the static measure.at last, the paper further analyzed the affect which services trade restrictions to services trade integration empirically by the use of panel data.