Analysis on international trade patterns of China's labor-intensive agricultural products: Export market structure and positioning

Labor-intensive agricultural commodities are expected to be major exporting items of China's agricultural products after the WTO accession. However, the export of these products met with unprecedented difficulties in the recent years. While there are studies indicating the country's comparative advantage in producing these commodities because of the low labor cost, little has been done analyzing the management of their exporting market structure and positioning, which are equally essential to the products' export performances. Based on country specific trade data of the past 10 years, this study provides an analysis on China's trade patterns and marketing structure of three major categories of labor-intensive agricultural commodities, i.e., meat, horticultural and fishery products. The results show that the growth of their export expansion is not balanced, with vigorous market exploitation increasingly concentrated on a limited number of trading partners such as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, etc, while leaving other world's major potential market underdeveloped. This may entail greater market risk and trade conflicts and hinder the country's further pursuit in increasing their export share in the world market.