Study On Comparative Advantage Of Chinese Agricultural Products Exporting To USA

According to the statistic of China Customs, USA is the third market for the export of Chinese agricultural products. The trade quantity between China and USA is increasing year by year, and the structure of trade presents diversification as well. However, China is standing position of adverse balance for agricultural trade between China and USA during the period from 1994 to 2004. The author argues that the study on comparative advantage and its related factors is the key approach to analyze the agricultural products trade status between China and USA.The author tries to summarize the status of Chinese agricultural products exporting to USA and describe bilateral trade structure. On the basis of those descriptions, the paper analyzes the comparative advantage of Chinese agricultural products by some commonly used indicators (Market share, Trade Specialization Coefficient, and Relative Trade Advantage). The paper also analyzes the role of competitiveness in increasing export quantity to USA by Constant Market Share model.The results of research show that the Chinese agricultural products exporting to USA are of rather comparative disadvantage in general, but some of them are of comparative advantage, especially the type of labor intensive agricultural commodities. Meanwhile, competitiveness of agricultural products is playing an important role in increasing export to USA. Therefore, the main way of expanding Chinese agricultural products exporting to USA is to improve comparative advantage of Chinese agricultural products. The thesis analyses the factors affecting comparative advantage, which include production factors, science and technology factors and non-production factors. Among them, effect of the non-production factors is stronger than the others. In order to enlarge the share of Chinese agricultural products in the USA, some suggestions are proposed based on the results of analysis.