A Positive Study on the Import Potential of Chinese Cotton

LIU Chunxiang;ZHU Liyuan;

Cotton is one of the most important resource agricultural products.Since 2003,China has become the world's largest importer of cotton.Overall,Chinese cotton import market is more concentrated.The three largest importing partners accounted for the total amount of 74.94%in 2013.What is the potential of cotton between China and the import partners? That should be answered by positive study.Based on the real status,this article has built up an improved gravity model,and used the panel data from 1992 until 2013 to analyze the potential by the top 40 countries,which have the big trading amount of cotton with China in 2013,with the help of the multiple linear regressions and Eviews 6.0.This positive analysis has drawn the conclusion that China has imported too much cotton from those 14 countries such as Switzerland,Nigeria,Bangladesh,Indonesia,Turkey and Australia.The importing markets of Cameroon,Egypt,Togo,Chad,Mali,India and the other 5 countries are already full enough.However,there is still much room to improve Chinese cotton importing capacity from such countries as The Ivory Coast,Zambia,Malaysia,Tajikistan,Brazil and the other 10 countries.China should give priority to Turkmenistan,Iran and Malaysia because of the lower export prices of cotton.In addition,China should expand the importing share from Brazil and Greece.