Analysis On The Foreign Trade Structure Complementarities And Competitions Between China And ASEAN

CAFTA officially launched in Jan1st,2010, which symbolized the economic cooperation between China and ASEAN entered into a new developing period. CAFTA is the third largest free trade zone after EU and NAFTA, and it is mainly made by developing countries. What’s more, its future development not only affects China and ASEAN’s trade and economic relationship profoundly, but also provides experience for the developing countries to build trade zones among them.Experience has shown that whether or not the regional trade arrangements are successful has a close link with the members’trade complementary competition situation, and the degree is higher, the regional trade arrangements are easier successful, otherwise they will fail easily. As a new regional trade arrangement, except Singapore the members of CAFTA are developing countries, and they are rather similar in the aspects of resource endowment, industrial structure and so on, which maybe led to their fierce competition in the external markets. However, bilateral trade between China and ASEAN has developed fast in recent years, both of them still have strong complementary advantages besides competition, and the complementary advantages are the base of promoting China and ASEAN to enlarge trade scale. Based on analyzing the trade structure of China and ASEAN, this paper researches the degree of complement and competition. Under the background of CAFTA launching in2010, this paper will analyze the foreign trade’s complement and competition, and find out the reasonable reasons as well as the detailed aspects in China and ASEAN. Researching these problems will provide the strong base for recognizing the scale of free trade zone as well as the direction of future cooperation. From this aspect, this paper has very important significance and researching value.There are five parts in this paper. The first part is introduction, and it mainly explain the background, researching meaning, researching methods, basic concepts and innovation as well as shortcomings The second part is the review of relevant literature at home and abroad. Firstly, it’s about foreign trade structure, and then it’s about the recent situation of China and ASEAN’s trade structure.The third part is the analysis about products structure, model structure and regional structure, which will provide base for researching China and ASEAN’s foreign trade structure. In the view of products structure, except Indonesia, China and other members of ASEAN have already achieved the shift from primary products to industrial products, and the import and export occupy absolutely leading statue. In the view of model structure, the model of China’s primary products is mainly intra-industry trade, and the model of industrial products is the same so; in the five countries of ASEAN, the level of intra-industry trade in Singapore is the highest, and Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines’s levels are lower. The four countries have achieved the shift from inter-industry trade to intra-industry trade, but Indonesia still mainly depends on intra-industry trade. In the aspect of foreign trade regional structure, the main markets of China and ASEAN are America, EU and Japan, but from the data of2000and later, this central tendency is proved obviously, and the import and export markets are extending to all over the world, which not only helps to reduce the foreign trade risk of all the countries, but also relieve the excessive competition situation in the third part export markets.The fourth part is the core of this paper. Firstly, the paper uses Drysdale trade complementary index and export similarity index improved by Click as well as Rose to finger out the responding indexes of China and ASEAN respectively. Then on the base of quantitative analysis, this paper explains the reasons. If take China as the standard, from the developing level of economy, Singapore has some characteristics of developed countries, but other members all belong to developing countries; from the technological level, Singapore belongs to the high-tech countries, but others and China belong to middle-level-tech countries. This paper finds out that because of the different developing levels, ASEAN come to different degrees of complimentary and competing relationships in the same kind of products. Except the third kind of products, China and Singapore have strong complimentary advantages on other primary products; in the view of industrial products, both countries have strong complimentary advantages in labor-intensive industry and competition in capital-intensive industry to some extent, while the degree is lower in recent years. The conditions about China and other four members are following:from the aspect of primary products, the four members have more mineral resources, fossil fuels and industrial raw materials, so they have strong complementary advantages with China in the second, third and fourth kinds of products. China and Thailand have both complementary and competition advantages on agricultural products; from the aspect of industrial products, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have the pattern of cooperation in competition and competition in cooperation. However, if the classification of the goods is more detailed, the complementary advantages are more obvious, and the competition is weaker.In the fifth part, this paper proposes several policy suggestions. China and ASEAN have wild complementary advantages and competition in some degree. How to promote the future cooperation and development? This paper suggests several policies:firstly, we should evaluate the compliment and competition correctly. Secondly, we should promote the regulation of industrial structure and enhance the competitiveness. Thirdly, we should focus on R&D and innovation, and achieve bilateral difference development. Fourthly, we should deepen the cooperation and development in the important product areas. The last point is that China should continue to implement diversity strategy of export markets, and lower the central tendency of export.The innovation of this paper are the following:firstly, this paper uses the data of under SITC three-digital classification to count, which is different from the experts choosing the data of under two-digital classification, and the results are more correct. Secondly, the analysis method is innovative. In the past, the majority of scholars do the research in the whole view or two or three countries. Based on the indexes, this paper analyzes the complement and competition of each country respectively, which is clearer to know the situation, and provide the foundation for future economic and trade cooperation.