Abstract: Nowadays, the trade between China and South Africa grows rapidly but with a high trade concentration, and South Africa has greater trade dependence on China than China to South Africa. Based on 1998-2014 bilateral trade data from UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database, this paper analyzes the factors that affect bilateral trade growth between China and South Africa from the perspective of market demand, market structure and competitive power with revised CMS model, finding the market demand effect plays a decisive role in the growth of China′s export trade to South Africa, while the market structure effect is the decisive factor to the increase of South Africa′s export to China; the competitiveness of China products continues to increase in South Africa, but the competitiveness of South African products is the opposite,at the same time, different trade products has different growth factors. Therefore, both sides should exploit trade potential, enhance the level of product, scale up the trade through optimizing export structure and improving market competitiveness.

Key words: trade between China and South Africa, CSM model, growth factor