| The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation is a new cooperation platform between countries established by China and 53 African countries since the beginning of the 21 st century,which serves as a mechanism guarantee for all-round political,economic and cultural cooperation between China and Africa in the future.Moreover,agriculture is a very important basic industry of national economy for both China and Africa,bearing great significance.As one of the important projects of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation,agricultural cooperation has achieved fruitful results in the past 20 years.Among them,China-Africa agricultural trade is an important operation channel of China-Africa agricultural cooperation,and bilateral trade has greatly increased in terms of trade amount and trade varieties.However,there are some problems in China-Africa agricultural trade,such as unbalanced trade structure,weak competitiveness of mutual agricultural products and low proportion of agricultural trade in the total economic and trade volume.Taking 2000,when the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was established,as the time point,the panel data of agricultural trade between China and Africa from 2000 to 2019 is selected to study the structural characteristics and trade influencing factors of China-Africa agricultural trade under the background of the Forum in this paper.The theoretical basis of this study are classical international trade theory,comparative advantage theory and H-O factor endowment theory.The research methods adopted in this paper are descriptive research,comparative research and empirical research.Research tools being used in this paper include statistical data description,trade index calculation and CMS model decomposition.The author tries to analyze the similarities and differences between China and Africa in the agricultural trade between China and Africa on the basis of a series of chart analysis,and puts forward some suggestions for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to further formulate agricultural trade promotion policies.Firstly,it sorts out and reviews the historical process of the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation,and introduces the organizational structure and operational mechanism of the Forum at present.Then,it collates the policy measures on agricultural cooperation and trade promotion in the action programs of previous forums.It find out that agricultural cooperation is indeed one of the key topics of previous forums on China-Africa Cooperation,and ensuring food security,promoting bilateral agricultural cooperation and promoting the development of agricultural trade are important goals of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.Further,it describes the current situation and development of China-Africa agricultural trade in the past 20 years,and analyzes the characteristics of China-Africa agricultural trade through data collation: low trade weight,concentrated trade market,obvious regional differences and single trade products.Therefore,this paper selects trade integration index,relative dominant comparative advantage index and trade complementarity index to further explain the structure of China-Africa agricultural trade.According to the index data,China’s agricultural trade with Africa is loose and has been declining for many years,while Africa’s agricultural trade with China fluctuates greatly,but they all show an increasing trend after 2018.In terms of varieties,plant products,tobacco and textile raw materials,the trade integration between the two sides is high,while the trade integration of animal and vegetable oils is low.Compared with African agricultural products,China has certain advantages,but there are great differences in various varieties.In terms of trade complementarity,the complementarity of agricultural products between China and Africa is only strong in a few categories,but generally weak.All these indicate that the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation needs to introduce stimulus policies to improve the bilateral trade structure and promote trade growth.Finally,the author uses the second-order decomposition of CMS model to divide 2000-2019 into several periods,which correspond to several important sessions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.According to the calculation results,the author finds that the demand factor is the main reason for the growth of bilateral agricultural trade,while the structural factor has a long-term inhibitory effect on the growth of bilateral agricultural trade.After the fourth period,the overall competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products and the specific competitiveness of African agricultural products began to promote the growth of bilateral trade.Relevant trade policies do play a certain role in enhancing competitiveness.After distinguishing the analysis results according to countries,the author finds that preferential policies such as tax reduction mainly act on African countries with the highest trade rankings,and structural effects and competitive effects have a great impact on some backward African countries.Based on the above analysis,this paper puts forward five policy suggestions.Firstly,to build a vertical and horizontal governance structure of the forum;Secondly,to developed trading according to local conditions based on regional differences in Africa;Thirdly,to support the construction of a free trade zone on the African continent and conduct free trade negotiations with Africa;Fourthly,to promote China-Africa ecommerce cooperation and establish new platforms such as cross-border e-commerce;Fifthly,to strengthen technology transfer and talent exchange.It is hoped that these measures can enhance the influencing factors of China-Africa agricultural trade growth,cooperate with the national Belt and Road initiative and the United Nations South-South cooperation projects,and promote the high-quality development of China-Africa agricultural trade in the future. |
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