This field includes the second-level discipline called “World Economy” which is in the first-level of theoretical economics as well as “international trade” which belongs to applied economics. It is mainly engaged in the studies of international economy and trade, international investment and transnational companies, world economy and other fields of the theory and its application in China's foreign economy. The Academic leaders and academic backbone are as follow:Professor Liu Haiyun,Professor Fang Qiyun, Professor Wei Ping,Professor Li Zhaohua,Professor Fan Hongzhong, Professor Han Mingchun,Associate Professor Xu Xiaoping,Associate Professor Raymond,Professor Zhong Xiwei,Associate Professor Qiu Huifang,Associate Professor Wei Yingchun,Dr. Xing FeiandDr. Fang Jing.

With the deepening development of China's reform and opening up, China is more closely integrated into world economic system. How to establish an open economy in the economic globalization and how to maintain China's competitive edges are major theoretical disciplines for China’s contemporary economists. In the current situations when world trade system and the financial system are undergoing profound changes, knowing how to use the advanced theoretical tools to serve China's reform and opening up is particularly important. It is from this understanding, that we decided to track the theoretical progress of international economics and will apply these theoretical developments to the realities of China's opening up. These two realities will be taken as the focus of the discipline development. After over 20 years’ of research and accumulation, the direction has formed some certain characteristics and has gained a large number of fruitful results.

As the leader of the research team, Prof. Liu Haiyun and his team focused on three aspects: (1) the comprehensive economic analyzing research about the behaviors of multinational corporations. The main research results are books likeAdvantage Evolution in the Operation of Multinational Corporations;(2) the research on the theory of foreign direct investment in developing countries and small and medium-sized enterprises. The main research results are "economies of scale and foreign direct investment in developing countries" and other works; (3) the research on political economy approaches and their countermeasures about international trade frictions. The main results are series of papers such as "monopoly competition, interest groups and trade war".

As the leader of the research team, Professor Li Zhaohua focused on the following work: (1) Introduce the current theories of strategic environmental policies into China, promoting the related research in the academic circle. (2) To examine and analyze the strategic environment policies which are targeted at consumption-generated pollution in international trade, so that the important expansion about the study of strategic environment policies can be done. (3) Based on the vertical difference product standard model, the difference emission reduction model is constructed, so that the existing study will be expanded in the field of vertical difference product research. As a result, the theoretical foundation of consumption-generated pollution will be set up. (4) The use of gravity model will be expanded and so on.

Professor Zhong Xiwei has long been committed to the Latin American economic issues and political relations research and the fruitful results have been gained. He presided over a number of important research topics including: the independent innovation project called " transformation and upgrading of "dependent export and OEM enterprises "; National Social Science Fund Project called the " Industrial dependence research of Latin American’s development mode"; Ministry of Education Fund Project called “the dynamic analysis of the technology content and economic growth of import and export commodities; the National Autonomous University of Mexico postdoctoral fund project called " Foreign Trade, Knowledge and Economic development "and so on. In the domestic and international important magazines such as "international trade issues", "financial problems research", "Latin American studies", "Technology in Society", dozens of papers have been published. Over the past 20 years, the teachers in this direction have published more than 40 monographs and teaching materials, some of these things have great impact on the Chinese societies. For example, the International Economy (for postgraduates) edited by Prof. Fang Qiyun (The Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, 2002 edition), the book’s theoretical system has both teaching and research characteristics, which makes it is one of the few domestic international economic books for postgraduates. This direction has taken 10 projects organized by the National Social Science Fund and the Natural Science Fund project. This direction also presided over the completion of over 100 provincial and ministerial level and other horizontal projects. More than 200 papers are published in the "Economic Research", "World Economy", "Economic Dynamics", "Economic Quarterly" "International Trade Issues" and other important publications. In addition, over ten scientific research achievement awards at the provincial and ministerial level has been gained in this direction.