Cooperation And Competition In The Trade Of Agricultural Products Between China And Australia

Agricultural trade is an important component of the international trade. With economic globalization and regional integration, the economic relationship, including agricultural trade among countries or areas, is becoming increasingly closer. China and Australia both are major agricultural product producing and exporting countries in the world, but they have different agricultural resources. So the competition between two countries in the agricultural trade is limited, and instead complementarity is the mainstream and direction. Strengthening the bilateral cooperation between China and Australia will bring about benefits from agricultural product trade enlargements.What is the trade pattern and trade structure of agricultural products between China and Australia? Where lies each country's advantage? What factors influence bilateral agricultural product trade fluctuations? These issues on which this thesis will focus are of both theoretical and practical significance. With regard to the above questions, this thesis analyses the trade pattern and trade relationships of agricultural products between China and Australia, tries to find out the complementary and competitive agricultural products. Based on this, the constant market share analysis model (CMS) is applied to explore and verify what factors affect bilateral agricultural products trade fluctuations and to what extend such kind of impact is. Furthermore, the export matrix and export map are applied to show the evolution of product competitiveness.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:First, the similarity in agricultural export product's structure between China and Australia is low, and hence the competition between the two countries in the world market is weak.Secondly, China has been in a deficit position in the bilateral agricultural products trade. Australia's export to China is concentrated in several products. In contrast, China's export to Australia does not appear such patter.Thirdly, the agricultural trade between China and Australia is based on the different factor endowment, and the bilateral trade is mainly intra-industry trade. The complemetarities between two countries is big, so the trade potential is tremendous.Fourthly, the trade bias index of Australia's exporting to China is large, which indicates that China is Australia's major export market.Finally, the increase of Australia's export to China is mainly driven by the increased demand for agricultural products due to China's sustained economic growth. In contrast, the growth of China's agricultural exports to Australia is mainly driven by the improvement of the competitiveness of China's agricultural products.