Trade Competitive Affair of Garment Products between Bangladesh and China: A Comparative Study

Abstract

China and Bangladesh both are large garment producing countries and the garment industry occupies a strong and important position in their national economies. Bangladesh is not only a participating country in China's promotion of the “Belt and Road” initiative, but also an important country in the establishment of the China-India-Bangladesh-Myanmar Economic Corridor. This article makes a comparative analysis of the reasons for the gap in the competitiveness of the bilateral trade of garment products between the two countries and provides some realistic suggestions for the development of the garments product trade between the two countries. This paper has mainly used secondary information particularly the Chinese and Bangladeshi garment trade data derived from the United Nations Trade Database for the period of 2007-2018. For analyzing purpose, this paper has utilized “Harmonize commodity name and coding system” Classification standard (HCNCS), Measure market share (MS), Trade competitiveness index (TCI) and Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index. The analysis shows that in terms of export market distribution, mostly the developed countries such as the European countries and United States are the main exporting countries of the Bangladeshi and Chinese garment products. The results further reveled that there is a certain gap in the scale of trade between Bangladesh and China in the garment industry, but the industrial trade structure is convergent. Finally, the authors identified that there is a fierce competition in the export of China-Bangladesh garments products in the international market. Policy recommendations have been suggested in order to improve the trade of garment products between Chin and Bangladesh.