A Research On The Regional Differences Of The Impact Of China’s International Trade On Employment

This paper first reviews the theoretical basis of the impact of the international trade onemployment, including traditional international trade theory, the theory of trade protection andtrade development strategy theory. Then analyze theoretically three paths of the impact onemployment of foreign trade, from three aspects: quantity, quality and structure, fully discuss themechanism of the impact of the foreign trade on employment. On this basis, this paper proposesthree theoretical assumptions. Then combined with the status and characteristics of thedevelopment of China’s foreign trade and employment, empirically analyze the effect of foreigntrade on employment through the establishment of the panel data model from1996to2010. Andcompare the differences of the impact between three regions: east, centre and west. Further explorethe changes of the effect as well as the changes of the regional differences.The main conclusions are as follows.(1) The employment effects of foreign trade not onlyrefers to the impact of international trade on the amount of employment, but also including theimpact on the quality of employment and the structure of the employment.And empirical resultsshow that the foreign trade affect employment quality greatly. The impact of foreign trade on theemployment structure is not significant. Overall, the employment effects of the eastern region aremore significant, followed by the central region.(2) The phase differences of the impact of foreigntrade on regional employment: the differences of the employment effects of three regionsdecreased. The eastern region’s employment quantity effects weaken while the central and westernregion’s employment effects strengthen; the quality effects of employment in three regions becomemore significant after the WTO accession; the export of eastern and central regions generateinfluence on employment structure while in the western region, only the import trade affect theemployment structure.(3) The inter-regional differences of the impact of foreign trade onemployment: the employment effects of either import or export, the coefficient values of eachprovince in the model are different. There exist obvious differences of the effect of import betweenthe provinces, and some show negative, some show positive; the employment effect of export arepositive exclude individual province which show non-significant. On the basis of the conclusions we draw a number of policy recommendations.(1) Optimizethe structure of export trade to promote the long-term sustainable development of employment.(2)Increase import moderately; make full use of foreign resources.(3) Strengthen regionalcooperation, and narrow the gap between three regions.(4) Balance the quantity and the quality ofemployment; simultaneously enhance the quantity and quality of employment.(5) Implement thestrategy of human resource development, and establish a unified labor market.