Study On Trading And The Influencing Factors Between China And Arab Countries

With the successful holding of China-Arab States Expo, strategic cooperation between China and Arab countries in energy, commodity trade, and technology was booming. New breakthroughs came to the international trade between China and Arab countries after thousands years of trade. Bilateral trade between China and Arab countries grew by nearly14times from2000to2012, soared from$15.2billion to$218.7billion, with the continuous development of foreign trade relationship since1949. Although the bilateral trade has increased year by year, the trade scale is still small comparing with the trade scale with their major trading partners such as USA, EU, and UK. Study on development situation and analysis of the factors affecting the China Arab trade will provide theoretical guidance for exploring a broader Arab market, which has important significance in promoting China Arab economic and trade development.The study analyzed current status and influence factors of the trade between China and Arab countries based on the bilateral trade import and export data, with the reference of aggregated commodity import and export data from China Customs. First of all, analysis of the statistic data shows that, the trade of two sides has the very strong complementarity, which means both parties are exporting their competitive products, e.g. petroleum from Arab countries, electronic products and light textiles from China. Secondly, qualitative analysis of the factors affecting the bilateral trade, mainly from the positive and negative aspects, shows the economic growth, political instability, trade protection and other factors have certain influence on the bilateral trade. Finally, the gravity model demonstrating the effects of GDP, GDP per capita, geographic distance on both sides of trade, shows that GDP has the greatest impact on both sides of trade, which means that the main factors affecting the bilateral trade is economic growth. In short, the ultimate purpose of the study is to increase the trade volume of both sides, to develop the complementary trade with advantages from both parties, to open new areas of cooperation, which will promote the common development of bilateral trade and benefit both sides in the expanding trade.