Analysis On The International Competitiveness Of Aquatic Products In Shandong Province

As one of China's major aquatic province, Shandong Province is rich in marine resources. Relying on various resource advantages, Shandong Province has made significant achievements in aquaculture. Shandong Province has ranked first of all provinces in the output of aquatic products for many years. In 2009, the output of aquatic products in Shandong Province was up to 7.536 million tons, accounting for about 15% of China's total aquatic products output. Meanwhile, Shandong Province is also one of China's major export provinces of aquatic products, and its export amount has ranked first in China for many years, which makes significant contribution to Shandong Province's economic construction. In 2009, the export amount of aquatic products in Shandong Province was up to 3.374 billion, which was far more than that of the second Guangdong Province.However, in recent years, there are many problems in the export of aquatic products in Shandong Province, including the over-concentration of export market, disorderly competition between export enterprises, the lack of self-discipline, low quality of export products, the backwardness of quality detection system, single species and low additional value, the emergence of more and more green trade barriers, poor brand awareness as well as low level of information technology in fishery. All these problems restrict the export of aquatic products of Shandong Province. How to get rid of the constraints and increase the competitiveness of aquatic products in Shandong Province has become a pressing issue. Under such background, this thesis analyzes the international competitiveness of aquatic products in Shandong Province from its comparative advantage and competitive advantage, and proposes some countermeasures and suggestions for further improvement. The author hopes the thesis can be helpful to aquatic breeding, processing and export enterprises as well as some relevant departments.The thesis is divided into five parts.The first chapter introduces the background and the significance of this thesis, discusses some domestic and foreign relevant research and points out the shortcomings of existing studies. On the basis of this, this part puts forward content and methods of this thesis, and summarizes the innovation and deficiency of this thesis.The second chapter introduces the theoretical basis of the thesis:comparative advantage theory and competitive advantage theory, and also analyzes the links and differences between the two theories.The third chapter mainly introduces present export situation of aquatic products in Shandong Province from export quantity, main export markets as well as export trade methods, and discusses the existing problems of aquatic products export in Shandong Province.The forth chapter makes empirical analysis on the international competitiveness of aquatic products in Shandong Province from its comparative advantage and competitive advantage. Firstly, the chapter adopts three evaluation indexes (TC, RCA, and NEPR) to measure the comparative advantage of aquatic products in Shandong Province, suggesting that the aquatic products of Shandong Province have strong comparative advantage, which however reveals a downward trend. Then through "Diamond Model", the chapter analyzes Shandong Province's competitive advantage from the factors of production elements, demand conditions, related and supporting industry as well as business strategy, structure and inner competition, finding that the competitive advantage of aquatic products in Shandong Province is mainly based on the basic factors, and the advanced factors are not fully developed.ChapterⅤproposes some countermeasures and suggestions for further improvement on the basis of the analysis of previous section. These countermeasures and suggestions include:improve the quality of aquatic products, respond to green trade barriers actively, implement the diversification strategy, give full play to trade associations, carry out brand marketing strategy and improve the level of information technology in fishery.Compared with existing studies, innovations of the thesis rest with:(1)Most of the existing studies analyze the international competitiveness of aquatic products from the national level. So the biggest innovation of this thesis is making a deep research on the issue from provincial level and making up for limitations of the existing studies.(2)Comparative advantage theory and competitive advantage theory are used concurrently to analyze the international competitiveness of aquatic products of Shandong Province, while most of the existing studies only use one of the two theories.(3)Through relevant evaluation indexes, the thesis makes empirical analysis on the comparative advantage of aquatic products of Shandong Province.