A Study On The Development Of China's Food Trade

In the mid-1990s,American scholar Mr. Brown had predicted that the Food exports of the World will fail to meet the demand of the China's food import in the years to come.Our scholars having been researched equally in the area of food production, consumption and trade in China and the World all the time.The food problem is also an issue that having been cared about by countries and international organizeation.With the rapid development of our social and economy,problems like "three agricultural" , population , land , environmental are emerging increasingly , which has inherent link to the food trade.What's more, having experienced more than 20 years'reform and opening up, China has entered a well-off society, the population consumption level has rose to a new level,and the whole socio-economic development level has got up to a new stage, so the Food trade has the need to meet the demand of this socio-economic development. Therefore,it is necessary to analysis such issues like what factors are promoting or inhibiting the development of China's food trade, what is the characteristics and trends of it, what role it played among the production and consumption of food,how we control the food trade and guide the development of food industry, and so on. So I choose the angle of the consumptiom demand to explore the development of China's food trade, which has inherent link to the above problems. But for a long time, the academic research are focus on the impact of supply factors, trade policy and trade relations to China's food trade development, and the result is fruitful, but from the consumeption demand point of view, the literature about the development of China's food trade is less .Here, the research of the impact of the fluctuate of food consumption at home and abroad to the development of food trade, which is benefical to enrich the consumer demand theory, and to strengthen the academic research on the impact and the decisive function of demand factors to the international trade development.So this research has certain theoretical significance.The paper first expoundes the development of China's food trade since 1980s, then analysis how the food consumption demand effect the food trade from the theoretical perspective, the general theoretical analysis is the basis of the next study, next, combines the qualitative method and quantitative methods,emphsizes the study of the impact and the decisive function of fluctuate of food consumption demand to our food export and import trade, and on this basis , explores China's security number of food. Therefore, the paper's basic contents are on the following:it systematicly collates and expounds the development of China's food trade since 1980s, including food trade structure , the evolution of the import and export of trade market, the growth trajectory of food trade; comments on the theory about the impact of consumer demand on the development of international trade, and analysis of food consumption demand to food trade theoretically; researches on the impact of fluctuate of the food consumption demand of the world and major trading partners to the development of our food export trade of import and export by a variety of methods; analyses empirically the impact of the changes of domestic food consumption demand to the development of our food export trade; studies the impact of the changes of domestic food consumption demand to the development of our food import trade with qualitative analysis method and quantitative analysis method; analyses the quantity security issues of China's food from the perspective of consumption and trade.The innovations of the paper are embodied in several respects. First, the paper summaries and explains the rules and the characteristics of the development of China's food trade. The growth rate of food export trade has a phased characteristics,the value of food import changed unstably,in recent years,it started to grow steadily; food export markets are relatively centralized,but the sources of food import are relatively dispersible;the structure of food import is stable,the export structure has a little change.Second, the paper reveals the intensity of the impact and rules of the consumption demand of domestic and international food to China's food trade. There are four conclusions about the impact of consumption demand of domestic and international food to China's food export trade.â‘ since the 1980s, particularly the 1990s, the growth of the world food consumption demand is the main factor which leads to the growth of China's food export, it is also a very important factor in recent years.â‘¡the growths of the main export partners' food consumption demand play a relatively large role in promoting China's food export, comparatively, the impact of the food consumption demand of the six countries of ASEAN are the most.â‘¢The structure of China's food export to Japan and Korea is affected more by food consumption need structures of Japan and Korea , and structures of China's food export to the United States and the EU is affected less by their food consumption structures.â‘£Quantities of consumption and export of our meat, vegetables, cereals, animal fat have cointegration and two-way causation relationships, and the cointegration equation change of consumption volumes has positive impact on export volumes. There are three conclusions about the impact of domestic consumption demand to China's food import trade: First, the impacts of our population growth, the improvement of the rural residents'income level, the GDP growth and the boost of urbanization to the number of our food imports are not remarkable, the increase of urban residents income has more significant impact on the growth of food import. Second, the effect of food consumption structure on food import is not apparent;and the effect of changes of the income elasticity of food consumption demand on food import trade effects are not obvious too. Third, Volumes of consumption and import of animal fats, plant fats and meat products have cointergration and two-way causation relationships, and volumes of consumption and import of fruit have the cointergration relationship too, but it is a one-way causation one, although volumes of consumption and import of grain, aquatic products, dairy products have cointergration relationship, there is not a causation relationship.Thirdly, being based on the previous studies, the paper makes a conclusion that there is no food quantity security verdict so far in China, and the advance of food trade is an important way that can resolve the food quantity security problem.