A Research Into Chinese Agricultural Export To EU(15) Over 1995—2004

Sino-EU(15) trade and economic relations have experienced a rapid growth since the late 1990's, the EU(15) became China's largest trading partner in 2004. However, the growth rate of Sino-EU(15) agricultural trade in value is much lower than that of gross trade volume. This dissertation first analyses Sino-EU(15) agricultural trade pattern over 1995-2004, especially China's agricultural export structure from the aspect of total agricultural trade structure, product-specific structure and market-specific structure. Then the competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products on EU(15) market is measured synthetically, using Revealed Comparative Advantages (RCA) index, trade intensity (IT) index, Export Similarity (XS) index and Trade Complement (TC) index.The paper finds, the dominant agricultural products China exported to EU(15) are preparation of fruits & vegetables, animal feed, fruits, raw tobacco, vegetables and vegetable fats & oils. The competitiveness of the dominant agricultural products on EU(15) market is boosting up except animal feed, especially preparation of fruits & vegetables show strongest competitiveness on EU(15) market; Exports of live animals and animal products from China to EU(15) have declined over 1995-2004, competitiveness is weakened too, meanwhile, EU(15) increased live animals and animal products imports from other main exporters; In the agricultural products export from China to EU(15), raw agricultural products occupied more than 85%, but increased slowly, on the contrary, exports of prepared agricultural products increased quickly. RCA index indicates medium competitiveness of both raw and prepared agricultural products, the competitiveness of prepared agricultural products enhanced continually, while the constant competitiveness level of raw agricultural products implies more export barriers; IT index indicates export share of Chinese agricultural commodities on EU(15) market is much lower than that on the world market, which means Chinese agricultural products don't exert their real competitiveness on EU(15) market. But XS and TC indexes show wide difference in agricultural export structure between China and EU(15) and strong complementation in bilateral agricultural trade.Then, the dissertation elucidates five main barriers of Chinese agricultural exports to EU(15), namely: TBT, antidumping measures, EU incorporating policies, other non-tariff barriers and transport distance. Finally, countermeasures are put forward to improve bilateral agricultural trade relations on Chinese government and enterprise levels, including: accelerating agricultural standardization and legislation on...