| Since President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative of building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road---referred to as “the Belt and Road Initiative”(BRI)in 2013,the construction of the “Five Links” with unimpeded trade as the core content has been listed as a priority area and key direction for China and the governments and enterprises along this route to pragmatically promote the highquality development of “One Belt and One Road”(OBOR).Although the trade development of countries along OBOR has entered the “fast lane”,meanwhile,a series of non-traditional security risks,especially terrorism,have gradually surpassed the traditional security dilemmas among countries,which has increasingly caused public security threats to the vast areas including countries along OBOR and other relevant countries.Standing in a new historical position,we must always adhere to the main tone of trade development,referred to as “improving quality and increasing efficiency in a steady way”,in the process of transforming the trade development mode of OBOR from “scale and speed type” in the first stage to “quality and efficiency type” in the second stage.At present,the meaning of leading the high-quality development of trade among countries along OBOR has already exceeded the limited scope of trade benefits,and has been endowed with the new era connotation of combining trade security with benefits.On the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the “9/11” terrorist attack,we need to objectively grasp the new characteristics and changes of influencing factors of terrorism from the perspective of economics,to comprehensively analyze the impact of terrorism on trade development and its transmitting mechanisms along OBOR,and to further refine the policy mix of high-quality development of trade and effectiveness of counter-terrorism efforts for countries along OBOR and China.According to the structure of “total-sub-total” arrangements,this dissertation comprehensively uses the research methods of induction and deduction,statistics and comparison,and the combination of theoretical and empirical research.First of all,through a comprehensive review of the literature progress of the theoretical and empirical research on the influencing factors of terrorism and the empirical research on the economic impacts of terrorism,this thesis clearly defines the definition of terrorism used in the full text,systematically summarizes and discusses the theoretical basis and development context directly related to this dissertation,and then determines the research starting point of the full text.Then,this thesis mainly starts from four chapters,namely,the influencing factors of terrorism along OBOR,the current situation and trend of “terrorism-trade development” along OBOR,and the causal identification and transmitting mechanism tests of impacts of terrorism on trade development along OBOR.We try to use the method of combing theoretical and empirical research,basically identified the causal relationship of “terrorism-trade development” along OBOR on the basis of understanding the formation logic of terrorism and the descriptive statistical analysis of present situation and trend of “terrorism-trade development” along OBOR.Relevant heterogeneous analyses are also carried out.Based on the aforementioned heterogeneous analysis,we further test the transmitting mechanism of terrorism affecting trade development from five specific aspects,including the “medium and long-term trade effects of terrorism”,“trade cost(transportation and supervision cost)”,“economic development level”,“psychological terror factors”,and “terrorism contagion from neighboring countries”,and get a large number of research findings from different samples of the entire OBOR and six key regions along OBOR.Finally,the main conclusions are summarized,and relevant policy path choices are proposed that are beneficial to lead trade activities of countries along OBOR and China towards to be “higher quality,more efficient,fairer,more sustainable and safer”.The main conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: First,important economic factors such as per capita GDP,net income inequality,and education are closely related to the increase(or decrease)of terrorist activities along OBOR;important non-economic factors,such as degree of democracy,internal conflicts,and religious fractionalization,also play significant roles in the formation process of terrorism along OBOR.Second,important economic and non-economic factors exert distinctive influence on domestic and transnational terrorism along OBOR,while the impacts of other economic and non-economic factors along OBOR is not significant.Third,in a general sense,the increase in the total incidence of terrorist attacks across the entire OBOR and key regions along OBOR(except the CIS)has significantly inhibited bilateral import trade.The classic variables of the traditional gravity model basically perform in line with theoretical expectations across the entire OBOR,but the model performances in each key region along OBOR varies a lot.Fourth,based on the perspective of heterogeneous analysis,the impacts of heterogeneous intensity,targets,and types of terrorist attacks on bilateral import trade across the entire OBOR and key regions along OBOR are still significantly negative.However,the manifestations of terrorism indicators in different heterogeneous dimensions are different and the differences are obvious.The above negative effects of terrorism on bilateral import trade based on the perspective of heterogeneous analysis have been further verified in the following robustness checks,including examine the robustness of basic regression conclusion by excluding the countries with high incidence of terrorist attacks and introducing the dummy variables of terrorism wave in the “Post-9/11 Era” in different sub-samples.Compared with the degree of change in the estimated coefficients measured from the perspective of statistical significance,people normally perceive the negative impacts of terrorism on trade development more intuitively and truly measured from the perspective of economic significance,namely,calculating the actual import loss caused by terrorist attack.Fifth,the causal relationship of “terrorism-trade development” across the entire OBOR and six key regions along OBOR is mainly affected through five specific transmitting mechanisms,including the “medium and long-term trade effects of terrorism”,“trade cost(transportation and supervision cost)”,“economic development level”,“psychological terror factors”,and “terrorism contagion from neighboring countries”.The corresponding empirical results and the explanation of logic mechanism well verified the transmitting channels of the above five facets.Especially,the mechanism analysis of “terrorism contagion from neighboring countries” expands the basic conclusion that heterogeneous terrorism has a significant negative effect on trade development from bilateral import to multilateral import with broader coverage of countries or regions.It is fully recognized that terrorism is a “global” feature that plagues trade development along OBOR and its related countries.It is urgent for countries along OBOR to build joint anti-terrorism action mechanism,gradually eliminates the breeding ground of terrorism,and helps the trade development along OBOR to be stable and long-term.Accordingly,in order to lead bilateral(or multilateral)trade activities of countries along OBOR and China to move steadily onto a road for development characterized as“higher quality,more efficient,fairer,more sustainable and safer”,we propose the following four specific policy recommendations.First,we need to build a regional security cooperation system that safeguards the national security of countries along OBOR and bilateral(or multilateral)trade development,so as to provide clear,flexible and feasible public goods of regional security for the steady progress of OBOR cooperation stepping into the second stage.Second,countries along OBOR and China should make full use of the existing regional(or cross-regional)economic,trade and security cooperation frameworks along OBOR,such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO),six specific economic corridors along OBOR,Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC),Regional Com-prehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP),etc.,so as to make up for common problems,such as poor trade stability and trade efficiency of countries along OBOR.Third,as the initiator and pioneer of trade cooperation along OBOR,China should encourage enterprises(or individuals)to carry out trade cooperation along OBOR and fully grasp core philosophy of the “dual circulation” development strategy in the process of “going out” and “going in”,while constantly strengthening the normalized monitoring,early warning and emergency preparedness capabilities for the risk of terrorism in areas along OBOR.Fourth,China and countries along OBOR need to jointly participate into peacekeeping operations to combat all kinds of non-traditional security threats like terrorism activities.By promoting high-quality development of trade for countries along OBOR,we need to eradicate the breeding ground for terrorism from the source.To help the “Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)” achieve steady and long-term growth,we must continue to foster longterm security and stability development environment for all the countries along OBOR. |
