Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
animals (SITC0) rose from 1.0 in 1998 to 1.23 in 2005. The TCI for ASEAN's
exports and Chna's mports of all agrcultural products also ncreased
quickly, from 1.07 in 2001 to 1.48 in 2005. These trends demonstrate that
the complementarty of ASEAN's exports and Chna's mports has been
ncreasng n recent years. Ths mples that ASEAN mght have undergone
a structural adjustment n ts agrcultural sectors n response to Chna's
rsng status as an export destnaton for ts agrcultural products. Such an
adjustment has not, however, been witnessed in China—at least, not one
as significant as in ASEAN.
It should be relatvely easy for ASEAN to gan access to the Chnese
market durng the ntegraton between the two economes. The hgh and
ncreasng value of the TCI for ASEAN's exports and Chna's mports reveals
the strong market match between ASEAN and Chna: ASEAN s sellng what
China wants to buy. Therefore, the structural adjustment in agricultural
producton n ASEAN (shown by the rsng TCI) should mprove ASEAN's
capactes to grasp the opportuntes provded by Chna's huge market.
There is, however, also competition in some agricultural products and
certain structural adjustments are inevitable. For example, as China's imports
from ASEAN in tropical fruits increased quickly in recent years, many Chinese
farmers producng tropcal fruts n coastal areas found that they were losng
profits and domestic market shares (Newspaper of Southern Agriculture 2006).
As a result, many fruit trees have been destroyed. Therefore, certain policies
should be taken to assst the transton to dfferent farmng actvtes or to
help farmers move to non-agrcultural sectors.
Economic effects of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement
Yang and Chen (see Chapter 13) assessed the economic effects of the ACFTA
n ts two stages up to 2010. The analyss s based on an mproved recursve
GTAP model. The data are based on Version 6.0 of the GTAP database
for 2001, together with data derived from other sources. There are two
distinguishing characteristics of this study. The first is that, in addition to
the commitments in the ACFTA, it incorporates trade liberalisation in China
(Chna's WTO commtments) and trade lberalsaton n ASEAN (ASEAN free
trade commtments). The second s that t has separated and explored the
different effects of the two-stage implementation of the ACFTA.
