Research On The Competitiveness Of Thailand Fruit In Chinese Market

Thailand is a traditional agricultural country. Majority of its population live in countryside and are engaged in agriculture, so agricultural products are considered very important exports in Thailand’s trade. Fruit is one of the country’s major agricultural products, annually Thailand generates revenues of more than1billion dollars from exporting fruit. Thailand grows a variety of fruits loved by customers at home and abroad. The fruit is exported to numerous countries including China, Japan, the United States, Europe, as well as other countries. Especially in China, since2003October, China and Thailand agreed to a zero tariff agreement on fruit and vegetable products. The official establishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade in2010greatly promoted the development of fruit trade between China and Thailand. In recent years, the import and export sales in fruit between China and ASEAN have grown rapidly, which has been a very important part in the fruit import and export market. From2012to2014China was the largest fresh fruit importer of Thailand products. However, this fruit exported from Thailand to China has confronted many obstacles and met increased competition in the market, most notably from Vietnam and China. In this case, it is vital to improve Thai competitiveness in fruit export to China.In this paper, the SWOT analysis method is applied to analyze the competitive status of Thai fruit in the Chinese market; in addition, the competitive advantage index (TC) and the revealed comparative advantage index (RCA) are applied to measure the international competitiveness of Thai fruit in the Chinese market and analyze the factors restricting the export competitiveness of Thai fruit. Finally, some conclusions have been reached with some countermeasures and suggestions made.