Research On China-Japan-ROK International Tourism Cooperation-competition Under The Background Of Regional Economic Integration

Since the second half of the 20 th century,a new pattern of free trade featured by regional economic integration has been taking its shape,and international tourism has developed considerably.At the same time,the rapid development of international tourism has boosted economic development of countries and regions around the world.The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP),the world’s largest free trade agreement,was officially signed on November 15,2020.As the first trade agreement of China-Japan-ROK trilateral participation,RCEP is also the most liberalized trade agreement between them,providing a good foundation for international tourism cooperation-competition.In this context,this paper focuses on the international tourism cooperation-competition among China,Japan and South Korea under the background of regional economic integration.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used in the systematical study of the cooperation foundation,competition status and cooperation-competition potential of international tourism.Firstly,the qualitative information including tourism development policies,trilateral cooperation and exchange policies and practices are analyzed in a comprehensive way.In addition,international tourism practical cooperation basis are quantized,thus to searching for travel preference of the residents in three countries.Secondly,this paper uses the index method to compare the three countries’ international tourism market share,mutual similarity,competitive advantages and apparent comparative advantages,and then arrives at the advantages and disadvantages in the international tourism competition.Thirdly,stochastic frontier gravity model is adopted to analyze China-Japan-ROK international tourism cooperation-competition potential,taking RCEP member states and the United States as research objects,population,per capita GDP,and distance to the capital city of the source and destination countries as core variables.Furthermore,seven factors affecting the efficiency of China-Japan-ROK international tourism are further discussed.Conclusions are as follows:(1)China,Japan and South Korea are important source countries for each other with great development potential.(2)China,Japan and South Korea share more opportunities for cooperation rather than competition with the world’s major source countries.(3)The implementation of RCEP is bound to promote international tourism of the three countries.Based on the conclusions above,this paper proposes the international tourism cooperation-competition strategies of China,Japan and South Korea from three aspects in combination with the elaboration of three core elements(impact,intimacy and vision)of cooperation-competition theory put forward by Neil Rackham:(1)Enhancing the partner impact,which includes integrating tourism resources on the basis of RCEP;leveraging each other’s advantages to upgrade competitiveness;intriguing subjective initiative into full play and creating new profit growth.(2)Improving the partner intimacy,which includes building mutual trust and intimacy;sharing information to master new trends;unifying standards and integrating enterprises.(3)Establishing an overall long-term vision,which includes setting up a unified plan to eradicate vicious competition;establishing a sound benefit distribution system and building a favorable market environment.