| The construction of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area(CAFTA)is one of the major achievements in China’s FTA negotiations.The "Early Harvest Plan" and "Agreement on Trade in Goods of the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation" are two important breakthroughs in agricultural trade.During the negotiation,many scholars thought that the construction of CAFTA would bring huge trade growth to both sides according to prediction models.Since CAFTA came into effect,agricultural trade between China and ASEAN has experienced tremendous growth.However,it is clear that many factors led to the growth.So,how much did CAFTA contribute to the growth ? The purpose of this paper is to use a new policy evaluation method—Synthetic Control Method—to explore the answer.The method is based on actual trade data rather than simulation sence to identify the effect of CAFTA construction from a ex post perspective.This paper evaluated the influence of CAFTA on agricultural products trade between China and ASEAN by using the Synthetic Control Method to compare the difference between the actual trade value and the "counterfactual" estimated trade volume,combining the annual panel trade data of China and 67 countries from 1992 to 2018.The experiment was carried out in two stages and in different agricultural products to evaluate the differentiated trade effect of CAFTA on different types of agricultural products at different stages.Firstly,it distinguished two important point-the “Early Harvest Program”(involving HS01-08 agricultural products)came into force in 2004 and the “Agreement on Trade in Goods”(involving HS09-24 agricultural products)came into force in 2005.Secondly,it evaluated the trade effect of CAFTA from two aspects: the trade effect of all the agricultural products and of different categories of agricultural products.The results of the study showed that,in general,in the process of CAFTA construction,the "Early Harvest Plan" and the "Agreement on Trade in Goods" bothhad significant impact on agricultural trade between China and ASEAN."Early Harvest Plan" significantly promoted import and export of agricultural products,including chapter HS01-08.The promoting effect both lasted until the end of the sample period.The effects of "Agreement on Trade in Goods" on the export and import of agricultural products of chapter HS09-24 were different.The export effect was a significant promotion effect,while the import effect was a significant negative effect.Further more,from the perspective of different agricultural products,CAFTA produced significant export and import trade creation effect on China’s major agricultural products such as edible vegetables and fruits,and the effect lasted till the end of the period of study.However,it exhibited time lag in the export trade creation effect of some products such as grain,tobacco and tea.Based on the above study,it is recommended that China should speed up the implementation of relevant agreements in China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.Meanwhile,China should carry out more negotiations and cooperation in more areas with ASEAN and other countries at a right time.In addition,China’s agricultural technology innovation should be promoted to enhance technology content of agricultural products,so as to ease the increasing pressure from agricultural products import,and improve the quality and competitiveness of China’s agricultural products.What’s more,when signing FTAs with other countries,we could learn successful experience from CAFTA construction,combining our agricultural advantages and promoting bilateral agricultural trade. |
