Performance Evaluations and Influencing Factors of the Agricultural Product Trade Supply Chain between China and Central Asian Countries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The second version has shown some improvements. But this paper is not ready for publication. There are some more comments for further improvements.
[1] In line 18 “The results shows that…”, delete “s” in “shows” and it should be “The results show that…”.
[2] In line 115 “for 28% (Relavant data comes from the websites of the Ministry of Commerce of China)”, I suggest a reference number here for the website address.
[3] In line 876-881, it is better to add references numbers after those economic numbers and show the website in Reference. The same suggestion for Comment [2].
[4] Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6 don’t look good. There are too many lines between figures and figure titles.
[5] In line 169, I suggest adding some texts to connect the three sections. For example, “There are a lot of studies about agricultural product trade supply chain. Three types of topics are discussed below.”
[6] In line 172, 232 and 257, delete “Research on” in each section title.
[7] In line 300, add “AHP” after “hierarchy process”.
[8] In line 332, what is the full names for “BCC”? Or can some text be added for “BCC” like in line 325-326 “The CCR model is the first and most basic model of DEA proposed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978)”?
[9] In line 344 the title of Figure 2, there needs a space between “2.” and “Flow.
[10] In line 460 the title of Table 2, there needs a space between “2.” and “Partnership”.
[11] In line 461 “Source: According to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China”, delete “According to the website of” and add the website address after “China”.
[12] In line 618-620 “The relationship between factors (relevant indicators obtained by principal component analysis, see appendix) on the performance of China-Central Asia cross-border agricultural supply chain. Explained and explanatory variables.”, these two sentences look weird and are hard to understand.
[13] In line 635 “shown in Table 5, 6.”, I suggest “shown in Table 5 and Table 6.”
[14] In line 648 “are showTable7, 8 and Figure4”, I suggest “are shown in Table 7, Table 8 and Figure 4”.
[15] In line 661 “The specific contend is shown in Table 8.”, I think this sentence is repeated as in line 648. I suggest deleting this sentence.
[16] In line 697, where is section 4.3?
[17] In line 711 “First, it draws a scatterplot…”, where is “Second” and “Third”? Is there something wrong or missing here?
[18] In line 714, there need a space between “Figure” and “6”.
[19] In line 726 and line 732, there need a space between “Table” and “9”.
[20] In line 770 and 776, the section title has been split in two lines. What happens here?
[21] In Section “3 Material and methods”, can section “3.7 Indicators of influencing factors” be combined with section “3.2 DEA-BCC model”? I think the configuration of section 3 needs improvement. For example, move “3.4 Data source and Sample” to 3.1, then introduce all models used in this paper in 3.2, 3.3,.3,4…,etc. And I think the section for DEA and DEA-BCC model can be combined because DEA-BCC model is used in this paper and section “4.1 DEA-BCC comprehensive evaluation results” shows the results of DEA-BCC model. There is no need to introduce DEA as a separate section.
[22] In line 830-832 “The better development of e-commerce, the more conducive to changing the inefficiency of previous economic and trade cooperation, improving the information processing efficiency of both parties, and shortening the relevant payment and related trade links; The logistics and transportation efficiency…”, these sentences are hard to understand.
[23] The writing quality needs improvement. Some sentences are hard to understand, and some are repeated. Also, some texts are not necessary in this paper.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Manuscript significantly improved. My comments have been taken into account. I recommend for publication.Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear authors
I reviewed the manuscript entitled “Performance evaluations and influencing factors of agricultural product trade supply chain between China and Central Asian countries”. This manuscript is of great topic. Also, the respected authors have focused on an important and problem-oriented subject. However, there some concerns about the organization, methodology, discussion, and conclusion of the research that that should be addressed before consideration of it for publication in Sustainability. Please the following comments:
1. In the abstract section, the sentence “Therefore, building a sound and stable supply chain of agricultural products has important practical and theoretical significance for improving the level of economic and trade cooperation of countries along the "Belt and Road" and promoting China's high-quality economic development” does not read well. Please reword it.
2. In the abstract section, the sentence “The results shows that the trend line of agricultural product trade supply chain performance between China and Central Asia shows a significant downward trend, non-Data Envelopment Analysis efficiency still accounts for a large proportion, and the comprehensive benefits are largely affected by economies of scale, which is mainly related to the input and output levels of China and Central Asian countries and the economic conditions of Central Asian countries.” also does not read well. It should be reworded.
3. One of the most important policy implications should be highlighted in the end of abstract.
4. In my opinion the English of the manuscript has been written properly. However, using too long sentences makes it difficult for the reader to fluently read the manuscript. Therefore, I recommend the authors to go through the manuscript and revise the long sentences.
5. Key work should be revised. Since, all the keywords have been repeated within the title of the paper.
6. In the first paragraph of the introduction section (line 34 to 45) the authors have not used any references. These arguments and statistics should be supported by suitable references.
7. In the second paragraph of the introduction (Line 46 to 60) “n 2013, China proposed the "Belt and Road" initiative to provide development …. home and abroad, Insufficient domestic agricultural resources and improving the agricultural operation environment.”, the authors have not used any references. These arguments and statistics should be supported by suitable references.
8. In general, there first pages of the introduction section do not have any references. This is a little bit strange. Please support this section with suitable references.
9. In my opinion, the study has been contextualized very well in the introduction section. In other words, the authors have mentioned that why this study should have been conducted.
10. The originalities of the study in terms of theory and practice have not been explained in the end of introduction and literature review section. The originalities should be highlighted in the end of introduction section. What did you add to the body of knowledge in the field of performance evaluations and agricultural product trade supply chain? What are the differences of this study to the other similar studies in China and or other parts of the world?
11. The main sub-objective of the study should be mentioned in the end of literature review section.
12. Most parts of the manuscript have not been references vey well. For example, in the methodology section (Line 324 to 341) “At present, the most representative DEA methods have two basic models, the BCC model and the CCR model. CCR” there is no any references. Most of these contents should be supported by reliable references.
13. Again, using too long sentences reduces the readability of the paper in the methodology section.
14. In section 3.3. of the methodology, there is no supporting references.
15. In the methodology section, the authors should explain the methods used for the stability analysis of the index.
16. Using too long sentences in the results section again makes it difficult to understand the paper. There is a need for English editing in my opinion.
17. The study has not the discussion section. This section should be added to the paper. In this section, the results should be discussed and compared to the results of other researchers. Also, some international level recommendation should be presented based on the results. At the end of this section, the main theoretical and practical contributions should be summarized.
18. In the conclusion section, the main conclusions should be characterized in the form some bullet points.
19. The main limitations of the study should be highlighted. Then based on the conclusions and limitations, some future direction should be presented for the future researchers.
20. The main take-home message of the manuscript should be highlighted in the end of conclusion section.
In general, I believe that this manuscript can be published in Sustainability after an extensive English editing and also addressing above-mentioned specific and general comments.
Bests,
Reviewer
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear authors
Thank you very much for addressing my comments. I am satisfied with the revisions.
Good luck.
Reviewer
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The issues contained in the article are very important and topical if only due to the growing importance of international trade. The very good selection of the method (DEA)and its justification deserve recognition. However, the manuscript needs to be supplemented with information on the characteristics (volumes and other indicators that were used in statistical analyzes) of trade between the studied countries.
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments
This paper tried to evaluate impacts of the belt and road initiative on economies in China and Central Asian (CA) countries. Performance of agricultural trade supply chain was evaluated using DEA approach. This performance was also evaluated by estimated using Tobit model. Furthermore, this performance is analyzed using a threshold test model. These approaches are interested. However, there are comments as follows:
1. Each study should be split into three independent papers.
The relation among DEA approach, Tobit model analysis, and threshold test model is not clear. These studies should be published independently.
2. Section 3.4 is a part of literature review
Section 3.4 titled “construction of evaluation index system” is too long and tedious. The five items are not explained for what and these items are lacking in concreteness.
3. There is no data section
There are no explanations about the data for the analyses.
4. Comments on each section
(1) Introduction
1) There are no explanations why CA countries are selected as a target region.
The target countries of the belt and road initiative are not only CA countries.
2) There are no explanations about the CA countries.
It is not shown what countries are included in the CA countries.
3) There are no citations about the belt and road initiative.
4) Trade share of the CA countries to the world in China is not indicated.
(2) Literature review
1) The authors of the citations are concentrated on a specific country.
2) Lines of paragraphs are too long.
(3) Materials and methods
1) There are no explanations the CCR and BCC.
2) If the X max is close to X min, the Xij’ will be unstable.
It will be problem in some cases.
(4) Results analysis
1) “Results” should be written after analyses
2) There are no explanations of technical and scale benefit.
3) Figures are too small.
4) There is no analysis for the low performance even in the phase of increasing returns to scale.
5) It is hard to see the relations between analyses.
6) BE is maybe CE in equation (3)
7) The negative sign of CE is strange.
It means that if custom environment is improved, the supply chain performance will be decrease. This result is strange.
In the table 5 of Appendix, parameters of “customs clearance efficiency” and “trust” are strong positive numbers in the first principal. However, parameters of “prevalence of trade barriers” and “unconventional payments” are also strong positive strong numbers.
These opposite effects will lead the negative sign of the parameter of CE.
Re-selection of variables of the PCA is necessary.
8) An example of unit root test is not necessary.
9) Data is unclear. Are the data timeseries data?
10) The results of the threshold test shows that many parameters are not significant. The meaning of conducts this test is unclear.
(5) Appendix
Show the proportion of the variance of each principal component in Table 4 and 5.
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper doesn’t look ready for publication for low quality. The writing is poor. It needs careful check in writing and language. Some comments are as below.
[1] In line 17-19 “Studying the performance of …is the proper meaning to promote…”, this sentence is hard to understand.
[2] In line 20 “the set evaluation grade standard belongs to medium performance status”, it is also hard to understand.
[3] In line 22 “non-DEA”, I suggest full name for “DEA” instead of abbreviation for the first appearance.
[4] I found “the ‘Belt and Road’” and “One Belt, One Road” appeared several times in this paper, and there are “One Belt and One Road” in the reference. Which one is better? I don’t think it is good to use three different terms in this paper.
[5] In line 54 “the Central Document No.1 pointed out…”, it is hard for foreign readers to understand what “the Central Document No.1” is. It can be replaced by “the most important document of the Chinese government”.
[6] In line 66-159 “First…Second…Third…Fourth...Fifth…” I think it is too long to explain the importance of the issue in Introduction. The five paragraphs need to be summarized and shortened.
[7] In line 121-126, where do these economics data come from?
[8] Center all figures.
[9] Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5, Figure 6 and Figure 7 don’t look good.
[10] The literature review needs improvement. Don’t list authors’ name and their conclusions. Try to summarize these studies by group like method or conclusion, etc.
[11] In line 308 “AHP” and line 312 “analytic hierarchy process (AHP)”, I think the full name should be in line 308 and “AHP” can be in line 312.
[12] In line 306 “3.1 Introduction to Data Envelope Analysis (DEA) Method”, I think the section title can be “Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)”.
[13] In line 309, 336, 344 “data envelopment analysis (DEA) and line 328 “data envelopment analysis (DEA, Data Envelopment Analysis)”, the full name and abbreviation of data envelopment analysis appear several times and it looks repeatedly in line 328. The full name and abbreviation should be the first appearance and use abbreviation after that.
[14] In line 337 “BCC model and the CCR model “, what are the full name of BCC and CCR?
[15] In line 313 “the above methods are simple It is easy t0…”, is a “.” missing after “simple”?
[16] In line 313-314 “It is easy to implement and easy to implement”, I can’t understand this sentence.
[17] In line 344 “3.2 Data Standardization” and line 545 “3.6 Data sources and processing”, are they repeatedly? Can they be combined?
[18] In line 369 and 516, delete “Constructions” before “of”.
[19] In line 506 “This chapter selects the availability of indicator data…”, what is “This chapter”?
[20] In line 550 “4. Result analysis”, this title is not good. What is included in section 4? Only results or results and discussions? The configuration of this paper doesn’t look good.
[21] I think the sections for method and results needs improvement.
[22] In line 988-998 “This paper also has certain study limitations…In the future, it is hoped that…”, why not conduct the future work now?
[23] In line 997-998 “On the basis of abundant data, research on the sub-sectors of agricultural production trade supply chain.”, it is hard to understand this sentence.
