Abstract

This study explores China’s soybean trade and production since soybean is an important commodity in China’s consumption market. It uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the productivity of China’s soybean, and then based on the DEA results it applies Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) to simulate China’s soybean import change concerning both potential productivity change and the pressure of currency upvaluation of RMB (Chinese Yuan). It appears that, with the currency upvaluation of RMB, North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) would be the biggest beneficiary from China’s soybean oil seeds imports even if China’s soybean producers could improve their efficiency.

Key words: Soybean, production, productivity, data envelopment analysis (DEA), trade, import, GTAP, efficiency.