The bilateral economic relations between China and Thailand have unprecedentedly increased since the signing of China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This paper describes the rapid economic relations between China and Thailand from the perspectives of bilateral trade and investment as well as other forms of economic cooperation within the latest one decade, and elaborates the spectacular features of Sino-Thai bilateral economic ties in comparison with ASEAN as a whole and the other ASEAN member countries. In addition to explore the driving factors in boosting these two countries' economic relations, the paper also explores the problems that exists since the two countries' economic exchanges are as matter of fact under a framework of "South to South" type that embrace inevitably the week pointes such as lacking of complementarities and the others, the effect of free trade pact of "earlier heaviest" concluded by Sino-Thai government since 2003 as an experimental arrangement of CAFTA will be revaluated.

1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Framework of Malmquist Index Decomposition 3. Parametric Estimation of the Malmquist Index 4. Data 5. Empirical Results and Discussion 6. Conclusion Appendix: Supplementary Tables References iv Tables 4.1-Descriptive statistics 5.1-Results of hypotheses tests 5.2-Parameter estimates of the translog output distance function 5.3-Technical efficiency in China 5.4-Decomposition of Malmquist productivity index 5.5-Decomposition of Malmquist productivity index by region A.1-Malmquist productivity index and its components by province A.2-Malmquist productivity index and its components by year 5.1-Evolution of TFP over time 5.2-Map of annual productivity growth v

This paper decomposes the Malmquist productivity index into several assembling components: technical change (further break down into technical change magnitude, input bias and output bias), technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change, and output-mix effect. A translog output distance function is chosen to represent the production technology and each component of the Malmquist index is computed using the estimated parameters. This parametric approach allows us to statistically test the hypothesis regarding different components of the Malmquist index and the natural of production technology. The empirical application in Chinese agriculture shows that the average productivity grows at 2 percent per year during 1978-2010. This growth is mostly driven by technical change, which is found to be neutral.

This article examines Philippine perspectives on the CAFTA and explores the reasons why Philippine official and business circles are not willing to accept the CAFTA concept. It makes a brief assessment of Sino-Philippine economic relations in the context of the CAFTA, and also illustrates the changing attitudes of Philippine official and business sectors toward the CAFTA.