The Empirical Study On Trade Scale And Structure Potential Of CAFTA Based On The Stochastic Frontier Gravity Model

The strategic layout of "Maritime Silk Road" in the 21 st century has strengthened the cooperation and exchanges between China and other countries on the new silk road, among which the further deepening and development of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area has got a lot of attention. The bilateral trade of China-ASEAN has got remarkable achievements in the framework of cooperation, China has become the ASEAN’s largest trading partner driven in the environment, and ASEAN has become the the Chinese largest trading partner in Asia and the third trading partner in the world. The construction of "Marine Silk Road" in the 21 st century provides an opportunity for deepening the China-ASEAN cooperation, building updated version of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area and starting a new “Diamond ten years”. It is of practical significance to study the potential and its influence factors of bilateral trade volume and structure between China and ASEAN, which is to improve the quality of the bilateral trade and expand trade scale.First of all, this article expounds related trade theories on the basis of generalizes the literatures in domestic and foreign, and analyzes the china-ASEAN bilateral trade development present situation and characteristics. It is found that great achievements have been made in bilateral trade, tariffs on goods is almost to zero, trade is getting new records, and it exists a phenomenon of competition and complementarities in trade structure. Then, the study introduces the stochastic frontier gravity model to calculate the exports and imports trade efficiency between China and six countries in ASEAN from the angle of the trade scale and the structure respectively on the basis of experience of predecessors’ research, and analyses the influencing factors of trade by the method of one-step. Research shows that:(1) the influence factors: the economic scale, population, distance, Chinese are the core factors that affect the bilateral trade, tariffs, customs clearance formalities, transport facilitation, economic and financial openness, political territorial disputes in different extent, which affect the efficiency of trade.(2) trade efficiency: As to different countries, there is big different trade efficiency between China and six countries in ASEAN. China’s exports to ASEAN countries with high efficiency are Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Philippines’ s export efficiency is very low. China’s imports of ASEAN countries with high efficiency are Singapore and Thailand, and Vietnam, Indonesia. While Malaysia import efficiency is low. As to the structure, it is found that the high efficiency of China’s exports to ASEAN countries is concentrated in the low technology in manufactured goods and varieties, and high efficiency of China’s imports from ASEAN countries is focused on the technology processing products and electronic power products, the rest of the import and export commodity structure efficiency is relatively low and there still have room for further improvements. At last, for the problem of China-ASEAN trade scale and structure of low efficiency, it puts forward some countermeasure, such as strengthen the construction of the degree of bilateral trade facilitation, strengthen industrial cooperation, adjust the export structure, balance of trade development, strengthen the political and cultural exchanges and cooperation, to expand the China and ASEAN bilateral trade.