The Competitiveness of Agricultural Products of China

In the paper, the author firstly analyzed the development of agricultural trade and then calculated the Market Share, Revealed Comparative Advantage Index and Competitiveness Index of agricultural products of China. It is found that import and export of agricultural products have been growing for the last ten years except in the period of Southeast Asian Financial crisis; there exists fluctuation for the trend of the trade balance; the proportion of import and export of agricultural products on the total foreign trade in our country is very low; the share of imports and exports of agricultural products on the total import and export has been declining especially for export; the geographical direction of trade on agricultural products is not only wide but also concentrated; export trade of agricultural products mainly benefits from a handful of markets; labor intensive products account for the dominant import and export. From calculation of the Market Share, Revealed Comparative Advantage Index and Competitiveness Index of agricultural products of China, we conclude that the international competitiveness of agricultural products of China has been decreasing and some of the export products which used to have competitiveness in the world market have lost their competitiveness now.