Regional Trade Liberalization, Political And Economic Analysis

There are a new wave of regional trade liberalization in the world since 1990s. Many of new regional trade agreements show an increasing sophistication, including liberalization of trade in services, investment, competition policy, labor and environment standards. The cooperation scope of the regional trade agreements is more and more abroad, differently with the old ones of 1950s. More regional trade agreements have signed as free trade agreements (abreviated as FTA). Also significant is the increasing numbers of north-north, north-south free trade agreements. China's enthusiasm in pursuing regional free trade agreement has lasted at least more than a decade. However this enthusiasm for signed free trade agreements dates only from the beginning of the twenty-first centry. In 2002 the China-ASEAN free trade agreement was signed. Thereafter China-Pakistan FTA, China-Chile FTA, China-Peru FTA and China-New Zealand FTA has signed. China is negotiating or studying dozens of FTAs with other developed and developing countries. The Report to 17th National Congress of CPC has pointed the importance of the Strategy of free trade areas. The strategy of free trade areas will be an important positive elements to China's economic deveplopment. The equilibrium of regional free trade is closely related to the regional trade liberalization policy-making process. Therefor, the study of regional trade liberalization policy-making process has important practical significance.The economic analysis of regional trade liberalization begins with Viner's seminal research in 1950. Many subsequent studies based on the Viner's'trade creation'and'trade diversion'have provided rich insights into this field. However, there are perplexities between some results and others. New theoretical method should be included in this field. New political economy of trade policy offered a plausible method for the research of regional trade agreement.The paper banded the new political economy and the real situation of China's regional trade liberalization acts, mainly analyzed the regional trade liberalization politics in China. The main body and research results of the paper as follows.In the regional trade liberalization theory and empirical study review parts. We introduced from the early theory and emipircal papers, mainly described two research clues. The first is the pure economic analysis on the regional trade liberalization. The second clue is political economic methods, which include the policy-making process in the analysis framework to predict the equilibrium of regional trade agreements. This part summarised and contrasted the related research conclusions and methods.The China's regional trade liberalization and National goals part. First, used a general analytical framework of the policy-making, I proposed that China's national goals of the regional trade liberalization is an important consideration in the policy decisions. And then, the empirical analysis results of the tariff reduction of industries pruducts in China's regional trade agreements have suported the above-mentioned judgement. Third, the empirical analysis results show that there is a positive correlation between the regional trade liberalization and export expands,economic growth of China.The China's regional trade liberalization and the interest groups'pressure part. First, I analyized the participation bodies in the policy-making process of China's regional trade liberalization and their motiviations, and their capacity differences. Secondly, the empirical analysis results show that China's domestic interest groups have limited capacity on the regional trade liberalization policy-making. This result consistent with China's political and economic realities.The China's regional trade liberalization and the impacts of external factors. With the integration into the world economy, the external pressure including WTO institution settings, bilateral relationship with major trading partners and other regionalisms, on China determines the government to implement regional trade liberalization strategy actively.Conclusions and outlines of the further study part. Summarized the main findings, and further research directions.