A Comparative Study On Agricultrual Trade Between China, Japan And Korea

The three countries China, Japan and Republic of Korea has the same geographic location, similar consumption custom, they are important trading partners one another. But compare with other industries, the development of agricultural products trading is slower, and also the volume is much smaller. In the process of establishing China-Japan-Korea FTA, it is the three countries' agricultural department that each cannot easily obtain free-trade-agreement with the other two. This situation does a lot with the condition of each country's economy development, land resource and agricultural policy etc. This article wants to search the possibility of further cooperation of the three countries by analysis the trading condition of their agricultural products.This article firstly, showing the basic condition of agricultural development and agricultural policy of each country to point out the trading restriction from domestic facts. Then by calculation of RCA index, similarity index in American market and RTA index of the three countries' agricultural products, we find out products that a country has comparative advantage, or products countries competing fiercely. Of all the agricultural products, the three countries all have comparative advantage in aquatic products and China has more advantage on horticultural products while the other two have more advantage on forest products. Generally speaking, the competition of agricultural products between Japan and Korea is fiercer than the competition between China and Korea or China and Japan.Also, by the calculation of OBC index, I_ij index, we find products that one country have comparative advantage and also as a complement product on the country market. There are many such kinds of products we don't show them here. In the research of complementarity, we also calculated the intra-industry trade index and inter-industry trade index of the three countries. Japan-Korea intra-industry trade index is a little higher but still it is not the best condition we can find. The China-Japan total intra-industry index is lower than China-Korea and Japan-Korea, but some special products that take big rate in trading have high intra-industry index. Although China-Korea haven't high intra-industry index, they have 13 kinds of agricultural products with intra-industry index higher than 0.5, means that these 13 products have more advantage on intra-industry trading. Genially speaking, the main form of three countries bilateral agricultural products trade is the inter-industry trade based on the difference of resource endowment the complementarity of agricultural products in the three countries is comparatively strong.The research shows that, in the bilateral trading between China, Japan and Korea, Japan has give full play to the comparative advantage she have on agricultural products, and the other countries' still have a big development space.