Study On The Relationship Between Foreign Trade Structure And Industrial Structure In China

In an open economy, the coordinated development between internal economy and external economy in a country or region is the important guarantee of stable and healthy development. In any internal economy, industrial structure directly determines the economic strength; while in any external economy, structure of foreign trade mainly reflects the position of international division of labor and industrial competence. So what the mutual relationship between the two structures is and how to coordinate them in order to promote economic development of a country or region have become key issues to be solved, and have both theoretical significance as well as practical significance.This dissertation conducted both theoretical and empirical study on the mutual relationship and internal mechanism between foreign trade structure and industrial structure by applying related theories of economics and statistics, thus it perfected theoretical analysis in this field and explored the detailed way of upgrading them and how to advance their good and rapid development, which can provide theoretical and experience support for government decision-makers when making national trade and industry policies. In this study, the dissertation comes to some valuable conclusions and innovative results as follow:First, the concept of general foreign trade structure includes composition of foreign trade, mode of foreign trade, main forces of foreign trade, and region structure of foreign trade, all of them have the characteristics of level diversity, technology variation, system dominance, region agglomeration as well as dynamic evolution, and are influenced by many factors; industrial structure is influenced by both decisive and auxiliary factors, its development has a general rule of from low added value to high added value, and has three patterns including flying geese pattern, product circular development pattern and simultaneous development pattern; foreign trade structure and industrial structure have balanced development and unbalanced development relationships, and they have a mutual transmission mechanism.Second, generally speaking, both the foreign trade volume and structure in China have a tendency of sound development, however, problems like low-level trade composition, low value-added trade mode, high dependence on foreign force and excessive concentration of trade region are still existent at current stage; the industrial structure in China is improving steadily when China is experiencing its transitional period from the middle stage of industrialization to post-industrialization stage, but it still has problems that industrial structure needs optimizing, relative productivity gap in each industry enlarges, unreasonable structural energy benefits and poor circular economy in different industry; from the angle of developmental trajectories and basic trend, there is a coupling relationship between foreign trade structure and industrial structure in China.Third, the empirical study on China's foreign trade structure and industrial structure shows that:trade sector has a positive external effect on non-trade sector in technology spillovers which has promoted the development of economy and industry in China, however, the total factor productivity (TFP) in each trade structure sector and even the entire trade sector is still at a relatively low level; the change of industrial structure is significantly influenced by both itself and the change of trade structure, while the change of trade structure is also significantly influenced by both itself and the change of industrial structure; for both export trade structure and import trade structure, their optimization has an obvious promotion towards industrial structure optimization in which export trade structure has a greater positive role than import trade structure.Fourth, in order to coordinate the development between foreign trade structure and industrial structure in China, trade growth pattern should be changed when upgrading industrial structure, its detailed way can be generalized in four aspects, namely:strategic composition of foreign trade, generalized mode of foreign trade, privatized main forces of foreign trade and diversified region structure of foreign trade. Meanwhile, to actualize the sustainable development of trade, industrial structure should be also optimized by accelerating the modernization of agricultural production and agricultural structure, promoting moderate development of labor-intensive industry, placing high importance on capital-and-technology-intensive industry, especially strategic hi-tech industry, boosting rapid development and structural optimization of tertiary industry, intensifying self-innovative capability and achieving a rational and efficient resource allocation.