한·중 FTA 체결에 따른 경제적 효과 분석

Abstract

The world's economy extends continuous regional economic integration, such as Europe Union, NAFTA, and the structure of Ease-Asian economic block. The Korean economy is externally lagged behind the trend of regionalism and is orienting toward becoming an intermediary-trade country in order to increase its competitive power in the world market, joining the international FTA competition. Domestically, it is pursuing economic growth through the export-oriented growth strategy, but its potential growth rate is estimated to further decrease due to the low birth rate and the sustained aging of society. Since 2003, China has been the most important export country of Korea. Recently, the proportion of the import from China in the overall import has increased as well. China is a huge market whose population takes more the 20.5% of the world's population, and taking the regional proximity into account, the profit of economic integration is expected to increase. FTA has been proved to be one of the best ways to open up foreign markets for Korean exporters. The government of South Korea has always sought the opportunity to sign an FTA with other countries, including China that has been recognized to be the world largest market due to his large population. This paper discussed the strong economic interaction between Korea and China as well as the positive and negative economic effects with Korea-China FTA. The discussion of this paper mainly based on the manufacture industry because it could greatly reflect the real status of economic interaction between Korea and China. Also, the manufacture productions are the domain commodities flowing between China and Korea. By calculating the index of trade intensity, revealed comparative advantage, export similarity, and trade specialization, we can know that: the trade and industrial structure is different between Korea and China, and the FTA can bring the enormous benefit on both countries; the FTA is expected to promote the bilateral trade of both countries and reduce the trade barriers between them; the positive effect on GDP and trade condition will be promoted after signing FTA. Using a measure of commodity composition of trade, that provides insights on the export potential of countries and the bilateral trade possibilities between them, it appears that the Korean-China agreements are likely to have some negative impacts on some industries. The analysis also suggests that in order to take advantage of export possibilities and realize export potential, for both countries involved, the agreements should be carefully reviewed. We are currently introducing the trade similarity index as an explanatory variable in such models. The benefit of doing this, for our interests here, is to find whether countries with export potential have been able to turn that potential into actual exports. There are three innovations in the paper. The first, complementary relation of trade between China and South Korea was analyzed comprehensively on the base of re-classifying products according to technological content. The second, from the perspective of FTA's effects on the bilateral trade patterns and intra-industry trade, this paper proved the win-win effect from the establishment of Sion-South Korea Free Trade Area. The third, the paper analyzed the microeconomic effects on Chinese Auto industry by comparing the competitiveness of industries and identifying sensitive items.