A study of trade complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its development strategies

Zheng, Xiaosong; Jia, Lijun; Bao, Jiawen; Chen, Jiao Article A study of trade complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its development strategies Amfiteatru Economic Journal Provided in Cooperation with: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies Suggested Citation: Zheng, Xiaosong; Jia, Lijun; Bao, Jiawen; Chen, Jiao (2018) : A study of trade complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its development strategies, Amfiteatru Economic Journal, ISSN 2247-9104, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Vol. 20, Iss. 49, pp. 788-803, https://doi.org/10.24818/EA/2018/49/788 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/196464 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ AE A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies 788 Amfiteatru Economic A STUDY OF TRADE COMPLEMENTARITY BETWEEN CHINA AND THE BALTIC STATES AND ITS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES Xiaosong Zheng1, Lijun Jia2 * , Jiawen Bao3 and Jiao Chen4 1), 2), 3), 4) Shanghai University, Shanghai, China Please cite this article as: Zheng, X., Jia, L., Bao, J. and Chen, J., 2018. A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies. Amfiteatru Economic, 20(49), pp. 788-803. DOI: 10.24818/EA/2018/49/788 Article History Received: 12 March 2018 Revised: 20 May 2018 Accepted: 26 June 2018 Abstract The paper mainly studies trade complementarity between China and three Baltic States, namely Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The paper first introduces China and the three Baltic States’ current trade situation. It then makes an empirical analysis on the trade complementarity between China and the three Baltic States by using models of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) and trade complementarity index (TCI) respectively, which reveals that complementarities of China to the Baltic States are mainly in the laborintensive products, while complementarities of the three Baltic States to China are in the resource-intensive products. However, the current structure of imported goods from the Baltic States to China is different from the results of complementarity analysis. In this study an expanded trade gravity model is used to analyze trade potential, which helps to develop feasible trade strategies and it shows that trade between China and the Baltic States needs to be fully exploited. Keywords: Baltic States, China, complementarity, trade potential, trade gravity model JEL Classification: F13, F14 * Corresponding author, Lijun Jia – [email protected] This research is funded by General Project of National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (2015, Project No.15BJL080). It is also funded by Major Project of National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (2014, Project No. 14AGJ006). Economic Interferences AE Vol. 20 • No. 49 • August 2018 789 Introduction In 2013, President Xi Jinping coined a strategic conception of the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, known as “One Belt One Road”. The three Baltic States, namely Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, are of a strategic location to connect the active East Asian economic area and the highly developed European economic area, which play an important role to the successful development of “One Belt One Road” project. Since then, the trade between China and the Baltic States has been more closely connected which has significant influences on mutual benefits of countries along the “One Belt One Road”. For a more successful and improved trade situation, how to decide future development strategies of China and the Baltic States based on trade complementarity will be one of the key concerns. However, the studies on trade complementarity have never included complementarity between China and the Baltic States and this paper is written to fill in this gap and to emphasize the importance of research on Sino-Baltic trade complementarity as well. The paper is divided into six sections. First, a brief introduction and the structure of the paper are presented and a literature review is followed after the introduction. Then the current trade patterns between China and the Baltic States are illustrated. The fourth section is an empirical analysis concerning Sino-Baltic trade complementarity by adopting models of RCA and TCI. The expanded trade gravity model is used in the fifth section to find out trade potential between China and the Baltic States. Lastly, the conclusion and Sino-Baltic trade development strategies are made and discussed. 1. Literature review Since there have no empirical studies on trade complementarity between China and the Baltic States, the complementarity between other countries can be used as a reference for this study. Peridy (2005) concluded that trade complementarity among Pan-Arab countries, which included Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, was low and it limited future trade potential among those countries. Basu and Datta (2007) found that Bangladesh lacked trade complementarity to India by calculating the revealed comparative advantage index, which may lead to problems on trade balance. Zhou et al. (2007) examined the trade complementarity on agriculture trade between China and Australia, which a result of high level of complementarity and growing trend. Andreosso (2009) found obvious trade complementarity between South Korea and the European Union when using different indexes, such as RCA and TCI, to measure it. Lv and Xiang (2010) used the revealed comparative advantage analysis and Intra-Industry Index to identify trade complementarity between China and USA. According to Munemo (2011), the result of empirical research showed that trade complementarity of China to Southern African countries was much higher than Southern African countries to China. Hatab et al. (2012) suggested that trade complementarity of China to Egypt was increasing, while that of Egypt to China was decreasing from the analysis. Natos et al. (2014) concluded that the calculation results of the indexes, like the trade complementarity index, indicated that complementarity of Western Balkans to other EU member states was not quite favorable. Vahalik (2014) analyzed the trade complementarity among EU, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which implied that EU was a bigger trading partner to ASEAN than to China. Khadan and Hosein (2015) argued that the trade complementarity level of AE A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies 790 Amfiteatru Economic Caribbean Community bloc to Canada was relative low and had a decreasing trend. Kumar and Ahmed (2015) investigated India-Sir Lanka intra-industry trade and its trade complementarity through calculating a number of indexes. All these trade complementarity studies have some implications for Sino-Baltic trade complementarity study. In the following sections a detailed study of Sino-Baltic trade complementarity is presented. 2. China’s trade with the Baltic States: the current pattern In this section, trade data from 2002 to 2015 of China with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are compiled from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade Database), are used to analyze their current trade pattern. In addition, the Standard Industrial Trade Classification Revision 3 (SITC Rev3) is used for trade classification, in which SITC0 to SITC4 are resource-intensive products, while SITC5 and SITC7 are capital-intensive products and SITC6 and SITC8 are labor-intensive products. 2.1. Import and export structure between China and Lithuania From the databases, we find that SITC6, SITC7 and SITC8 account for the major proportions, which are 88.93% total in average from 2002 to 2015, of all the goods exported to Lithuania. Meanwhile, SITC0, SITC2 and SITC5 account for 10.88% of the total export. However, the proportion of the rest four categories is only 0.19% in average, which is negligible. That is, capital-intensive products and labor-intensive products are major parts of goods exported from China to Lithuania from 2002 to 2015, especially SITC7. Meanwhile, resource-intensive products are just a minority part of the goods exported to Lithuania. In addition, it shows that there have been great changes in the import structure of China from Lithuania from 2002 to 2015. Overall, the import structure of China from Lithuania currently has a trend of labor-intensive products, especially SITC8, instead of the resourceintensive products. 2.2. Import and export structure between China and Latvia SITC6, SITC7 and SITC8 are the majority of goods exported from China to Latvia, and the proportion of SITC6 and SITC7 has an upward trend, while SITC8 presents a downward trend, which means labor-intensive goods account for the most part of export products, following by capital-intensive products. In addition, for the import, one of the most obvious changes happened in SITC2, rising from 18.06% to 60%, while the import of SITC5 and SITC7 dropped from 19.10% and 38.04% to 5.19% and 6.62% respectively. Meanwhile, the proportion of SITC6 and SITC8 ascended as well. In conclusion, the import structure tends to be the resource-intensive goods, especially SITC2 and SITC3, instead of capital-intensive products. Economic Interferences AE Vol. 20 • No. 49 • August 2018 791 2.3. Import and export structure between China and Estonia SITC7 occupies the majority of export goods from China to Estonia, but it has a dropping trend from 71.43% in 2002 to 50.32% in 2015. On the contrary, the proportion of SITC8 and SITC6 grows steadily. The rest categories only make up a small proportion of goods exported from China to Estonia. The above data show that capital-intensive products and labor-intensive products are mainly export commodities, especially SITC7. However, the capital-intensive goods have a dropping trend, while the labor-intensive goods show a positive trend. As for the import, the import structure of China from Estonia currently has a tendency of changing to capital-intensive goods and labor-intensives goods, particularly capital-intensive products, instead of resource-intensive goods. 3. Trade Complementarity Analysis between China and the Baltic States 3.1. Methodology and data source 3.1.1. Comparative Advantage Theory Smith (1776) proposed the theory of absolute advantage, which means that if the labor productivity of Country A in one product is higher than Country B, Country A will export this product. However, in reality, developed countries have absolute advantage in almost all products and still trade with other countries. Under this circumstance, Ricardo (1817) put forward the law of comparative advantage. In his opinion, even if Country A has absolute advantages in both products and Country B has absolute disadvantages, the possibility of trade would still exist if the absolute advantages are different. The comparative advantages can be determined by factor endowments, differences in labor productivity or production levels and technology characteristics. In this research, revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index is used to measure the comparative advantage of China and the Baltic States. The notion of RCA was proposed by Balassa (1965), which was defined as the ratio between the proportion of a particular commodity in the total export of the country and the share of this commodity in the world total export. RCA can be written as: (1) Where: This index can be regarded as an indicator for evaluating comparative advantage and international competitiveness. In general, if RCA<0.8, it means that this commodity owns little world competitiveness; if RCA is between 0.8 and 1.25, it starts to enjoy certain comparative advantage; if RCA is between 1.25 and 2.5, the competitiveness is considerable; if RCA>2.5, this kind of goods is strongly competitive. – comparative advantage of export product k in country i – total export of product k in country i – total export of product k in the whole world w – total export of country i – total export of all countries AE A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies 792 Amfiteatru Economic 3.1.2. Trade Complementarity Index One of the most common methods to measure trade complementarity and the trade relationship between different countries is using trade complementarity index (TCI). Drysdale (1969) defined TCI as product of the revealed comparative advantage index measured by the export of one country in a certain commodity and the revealed comparative disadvantage index measured by the import of the other country in that commodity. TCI can be expressed as: (2) (3) Where: – trade complementarity index of country i and j in product k – comparative advantage of export product k in country i – comparative advantage of export product k in country j – total import of product k in country j – total import of country j – total import of product k in the world w – total import of the world w Generally, if TCI>1, the trade complementarity is strong, otherwise it is weak. When the export commodity of one country is identical with the import commodity of the other country, TCI tends to be greater. In the following analysis, the trade data between China and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are selected from UN Comtrade. Meanwhile, all the data are based on SITC Rev3. 3.2. Empirical analysis 3.2.1. RCA analysis The RCA for China and the Baltic States can be seen in table no. 1, table no. 2, table no. 3 and table no. 4 below. From these tables, it can be seen that the comparative advantages of China mainly occur in the labor-intensive goods from 2002 to 2015, especially SITC8. Meanwhile, the SITC7 has achieved certain competitiveness as well. Considering the three Baltic States, the comparative advantages occurred in the resource-intensive goods, particularly SITC0, SITC1 and SITC2. These results are consistent with the resource endowment in China and the Baltic States. Table no. 1: RCA of China from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 SITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 0.796 0.318 0.461 0.288 0.079 0.457 1.183 0.965 2.482 0.048 2003 0.715 0.251 0.383 0.268 0.064 0.423 1.154 1.080 2.327 0.050 2004 0.604 0.240 0.315 0.238 0.061 0.418 1.206 1.153 2.226 0.043 2005 0.575 0.194 0.308 0.188 0.095 0.442 1.217 1.207 2.204 0.055 Economic Interferences AE Vol. 20 • No. 49 • August 2018 793 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 SITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2006 0.547 0.162 0.243 0.132 0.105 0.447 1.281 1.253 2.220 0.063 2007 0.498 0.148 0.212 0.131 0.058 0.468 1.252 1.280 2.214 0.043 2008 0.435 0.144 0.225 0.135 0.075 0.531 1.334 1.369 2.255 0.027 2009 0.442 0.156 0.198 0.126 0.054 0.451 1.221 1.439 2.141 0.024 2010 0.463 0.159 0.183 0.113 0.047 0.504 1.227 1.450 2.189 0.018 2011 0.469 0.162 0.184 0.099 0.049 0.564 1.302 1.471 2.284 0.024 2012 0.444 0.163 0.174 0.089 0.048 0.525 1.323 1.441 2.389 0.013 2013 0.427 0.149 0.168 0.092 0.054 0.515 1.349 1.439 2.373 0.014 2014 0.411 0.154 0.181 0.097 0.056 0.536 1.380 1.350 2.261 0.020 2015 0.405 0.174 0.177 0.120 0.058 0.511 1.368 1.276 2.044 0.015 Source: UN Comtrade database and own calculations Table no. 2: RCA of Lithuania from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 1.656 0.774 2.199 2.072 0.509 0.718 0.894 0.642 1.501 0.056 2003 1.853 0.649 2.052 2.054 0.372 0.714 0.763 0.665 1.514 0.052 2004 1.917 0.827 1.884 2.441 0.419 0.747 0.764 0.551 1.471 0.083 2005 2.047 1.529 1.592 2.164 0.445 0.794 0.750 0.562 1.317 0.207 2006 2.407 2.144 1.359 1.694 0.596 0.882 0.768 0.595 1.398 0.189 2007 2.767 2.412 1.533 1.021 0.612 1.265 0.814 0.621 1.459 0.238 2008 2.520 1.826 1.109 1.508 0.683 1.300 0.695 0.543 1.285 0.245 2009 2.593 2.169 1.088 1.585 0.654 1.177 0.788 0.491 1.283 0.299 2010 2.546 2.638 1.092 1.559 0.328 1.169 0.776 0.519 1.247 0.302 2011 2.276 2.998 1.011 1.480 0.294 1.263 0.745 0.545 1.201 0.315 2012 2.496 2.844 1.080 1.449 0.356 1.228 0.776 0.531 1.159 0.348 2013 2.497 3.340 1.090 1.379 0.449 1.152 0.810 0.537 1.247 0.313 2014 2.345 3.586 1.148 1.156 0.615 1.221 0.827 0.580 1.293 0.505 2015 2.294 3.140 1.395 1.603 0.811 1.321 0.847 0.495 1.255 0.367 Source: UN Comtrade database and own calculations Table no. 3: RCA of Latvia from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 1.210 3.115 9.125 0.164 0.093 0.575 2.138 0.205 1.443 0.068 2003 1.205 2.066 9.447 0.146 0.152 0.581 2.093 0.230 1.415 0.071 2004 1.238 2.683 7.156 0.450 0.313 0.565 2.103 0.259 1.368 0.502 2005 1.591 2.931 6.168 0.723 0.420 0.567 1.851 0.323 1.112 0.985 2006 1.895 3.302 5.525 0.373 0.535 0.724 1.832 0.399 1.128 0.995 2007 1.743 4.936 5.185 0.280 0.342 0.766 1.778 0.463 0.967 0.897 2008 2.070 4.992 4.085 0.209 0.352 0.874 1.845 0.553 0.949 0.905 AE A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies 794 Amfiteatru Economic Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2009 2.091 3.856 3.990 0.376 0.271 0.790 1.679 0.598 0.870 0.726 2010 2.105 4.899 4.173 0.354 0.537 0.752 1.736 0.539 0.880 0.660 2011 1.773 5.217 3.615 0.483 0.456 0.757 1.678 0.570 0.826 1.004 2012 2.210 6.109 3.311 0.463 0.445 0.671 1.741 0.549 0.777 1.132 2013 2.130 6.404 3.348 0.461 0.584 0.681 1.550 0.568 0.845 1.279 2014 1.965 6.496 3.613 0.489 0.589 0.694 1.425 0.609 0.809 1.291 2015 1.988 4.812 3.903 0.609 0.417 0.706 1.451 0.640 0.785 0.717 Source: UN Comtrade database and own calculations Table no.4: RCA of Estonia from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 1.829 0.928 3.523 0.592 1.258 0.544 1.557 0.681 1.449 0.000 2003 1.619 1.233 3.480 0.448 0.795 0.592 1.521 0.744 1.479 0.001 2004 1.460 1.522 3.011 0.446 0.698 0.500 1.299 0.825 1.469 0.787 2005 1.253 1.508 2.676 0.589 0.691 0.477 1.207 0.872 1.293 1.613 2006 1.161 1.966 2.384 1.120 0.771 0.474 1.099 0.799 1.224 1.366 2007 1.269 3.168 2.397 0.951 0.687 0.514 1.224 0.743 1.312 1.187 2008 1.242 2.701 2.241 0.718 0.777 0.586 1.336 0.814 1.390 0.983 2009 1.290 1.765 1.833 1.224 0.747 0.512 1.210 0.788 1.260 0.824 2010 1.363 1.946 1.982 1.052 0.860 0.490 1.176 0.811 1.334 0.756 2011 1.211 1.861 1.575 0.981 0.472 0.519 1.104 0.937 1.289 0.827 2012 1.252 2.041 1.569 0.954 0.486 0.541 1.195 0.919 1.222 0.858 2013 1.342 2.069 1.728 0.612 0.652 0.584 1.261 0.977 1.314 0.902 2014 1.335 1.959 1.909 0.729 0.632 0.496 1.118 0.955 1.240 1.155 2015 1.334 1.480 2.081 1.079 0.627 0.466 1.087 0.862 1.207 1.081 Source: UN Comtrade database and own calculations 3.2.2. TCI analysis Table no. 5 to table no. 10 demonstrates the TCI between China and the Baltic States respectively. The specific analysis is discussed in the following parts.  TCI between China and Lithuania From table no. 5 it is known that China does not have obvious trade complementarity with Lithuania in resource-intensive goods from 2002 to 2015, since all the TCI are less than 1. For the capital-intensive goods, China lacks complementarity with Lithuania generally as well. However, the complementarity of China to Lithuania in the labor-intensive goods is quite strong and steady. As a result, China should strengthen the trade in labor-intensive goods and limit the trade in resource-intensive goods. Economic Interferences AE Vol. 20 • No. 49 • August 2018 795 Table no. 5: TCI of Sino-Lithuania from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 0.856 0.306 0.565 0.504 0.124 0.489 1.538 0.822 1.374 0.027 2003 0.809 0.227 0.429 0.439 0.090 0.447 1.440 0.958 1.356 0.022 2004 0.731 0.259 0.321 0.397 0.092 0.447 1.537 0.966 1.345 0.013 2005 0.718 0.246 0.290 0.331 0.115 0.447 1.389 0.965 1.283 0.028 2006 0.775 0.262 0.206 0.203 0.129 0.486 1.431 1.067 1.427 0.013 2007 0.729 0.247 0.167 0.151 0.061 0.546 1.433 1.202 1.550 0.014 2008 0.694 0.259 0.196 0.215 0.086 0.561 1.227 1.072 1.509 0.011 2009 0.788 0.359 0.175 0.245 0.073 0.560 1.178 0.803 1.416 0.011 2010 0.817 0.361 0.132 0.236 0.047 0.590 1.093 0.821 1.248 0.010 2011 0.752 0.378 0.127 0.187 0.041 0.631 1.138 0.935 1.287 0.014 2012 0.768 0.421 0.123 0.166 0.050 0.599 1.196 0.847 1.274 0.008 2013 0.773 0.417 0.124 0.157 0.065 0.577 1.287 0.910 1.444 0.008 2014 0.691 0.436 0.137 0.145 0.070 0.627 1.390 0.930 1.571 0.016 2015 0.660 0.444 0.170 0.216 0.073 0.649 1.409 0.830 1.410 0.012 Source: UN Comtrade database and own calculations From table no. 6 it can be observed that Lithuania has quite obvious trade complementarity in some categories of the resource-intensive goods from 2002 to 2015, which are SITC2, SITC3 and SITC4, especially for SITC2. However, Lithuania does not have trade complementarity to China in SITC0 and SITC1. Concerning the capital-intensive goods, Lithuania has some fading complementarities. For SITC7, the complementarity has lost since 2008. Meanwhile, for the labor-intensive goods, Lithuania does not have complementarity with China in most years from 2002 to 2015, especially for SITC8. Overall, the trade complementarity of Lithuania to China mainly reflects the resourceintensive goods, particularly SITC2, and SITC5 of the capital-intensive goods. Consequently, Lithuania should export more resource-intensive goods and chemical products and less labor-intensive products. Table no. 6: TCI of Lithuania-Sino from 2002 to 2015 Year SITC0 SITC1 SITC2 SITC3 SITC4 S ITC5 SITC6 SITC7 SITC8 SITC9 2002 0.327 0.131 2.865 1.214 2.333 1.322 1.573 1.006 0.286 0.082 2003 0.283 0.116 2.759 1.132 2.467 1.151 1.441 1.073 0.367 0.037 2004 0.368 0.122 2.788 1.276 2.757 1.151 1.226 0.988 0.447 0.023 2005 0.345 0.183 2.798 1.248 1.670 1.095 1.036 0.945 0.458 0.051 2006 0.363 0.277 2.407 1.181 1.661 1.130 0.898 1.050 0.516 0.013 2007 0.343 0.314 2.432 0.901 1.980 1.212 0.879 1.128 0.578 0.022 2008 0.374 0.420 3.064 1.366 2.047 1.037 0.650 0.915 0.557 0.038 2009 0.427 0.507 3.227 1.676 1.988 1.168 0.841 0.666 0.487 0.031 2010 0.485 0.517 2.449 1.854 1.242 1.095 0.664 0.648 0.429 0.179 2011 0.464 0.654 2.330 1.691 0.914 1.025 0.598 0.708 0.403 0.415 AE A Study of Trade Complementarity between China and the Baltic States and its Development Strategies 802 Amfiteatru Economic it is found that the results are roughly the same between China and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from 1996 to 2015, which are around 1. 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