A Study Of The Trade Effect Of Infrastructure Construction Under "The Belt And Road" Initiative

The strategic concept of"The Belt and Road"is firstly put forward by the president Xi Jinping in September 2013.He called on the countries along the line to transform the advantages of political relations,geographical adjacency and economic complementarity into pragmatic cooperation and sustainable growth.However,the most of countries along the"the belt and road"are developing countries with low per capita income and low infrastructure coverage.It is difficult to convert abundant natural resources into efficient output.As a result,the production cost and efficiency of industrial products in Southeast Asia are high,and the openness of foreign trade is low.Therefore,through the construction of"Silk Road Economic Belt"and"Marine Silk Road of the 21st Century",with Asian countries as the key direction,economic corridors as the backing,and transport infrastructure as the breakthrough,the basic framework of Asian interconnection will be established,and road and trade links between countries along the lines will be strengthened.The practice of"the belt and road"development initiative is relatively short,and the output effect of capital input of various countries along the line is not comprehensive.Therefore,based on this background,the author plans to study the influence of infrastructure construction on the trade effects of the countries along the belt,and analyze the impact mechanism of infrastructure on regional trade from two perspectives:trade volume and trade quality that promoting the global transportation network and logistics service system layout adjustment,and the formation of new trade routes,logistics hub and transport corridors.This paper mainly focuses on the two levels that trade flows(trade volume)and trade quality(export technology complexity)to analyze the transmission effect of infrastructure on trade effect.The main contents of this paper include the following aspects.The Part 1 summarizes the literature review of theoretical and empirical studies of the related trade research about"the belt and road",including three aspects.The theoretical literature review based on the theory of FDI Promoting Trade,the FDI Substitution Trade Theory and the Intra-industry trade theory is summarized.(1)We build a theoretical model of trade and transportation costs on the basis of the demand-production function expansion model and the"cost discovery"model.(2)This paper analyses the current situation of infrastructure in countries along the route and its trade-driven effects on resolving international overcapacity and increasing trade market.(3)The Impact of Economic and Trade about Export Technology Complexity Based on Technology Spillover and Migration Equivalent.(4)The infrastructure’s impact on Export Technology Complexity.The Part 2 analyzes the current situation of infrastructure development and international trade development along the"the belt and road"country and summarizes the trade efficiency of countries along the line,the strategic significance and opportunities of Chinese foreign infrastructure construction.The Part 3 is an empirical study based on the trade scale effect of infrastructure along"the belt and road".We choose the transportation services,energy facilities,communication facilities,goods distribution,commodity market scale,credit score of countries along the route,national savings rate and total tax rate to establish empirical model to calculate.The results show that the improvement of transport facilities,energy facilities and communication facilities have significant positive impact on trade flows of countries along the route.And the biggest impact on transnational trade is maritime transport.As the internet penetration in some countries along the route is only 33%,and the number of non-Internet users accounts for three-quarters of the global non-Internet users that the low internet penetration rate restrains the development of bilateral trade between China and the countries along the route.The Part 4 is based on the manufacturing industry of the countries along the line to measure the impact of infrastructure construction on trade quality represented by export technology complexity.Based on the long period of infrastructure projects,we built a theoretical model to analyze the impact mechanism of infrastructure investment lagging effect on export technology complexity.By setting up the four secondary indicators of railway facilities,highway facilities,aviation facilities and port facilities,and separately discussing the two regions of the"maritime Silk Road"and"Silk Road Economic Belt",the impact of infrastructure construction on the technological complexity of the manufacturing industry of the countries along the belt and road is discussed.As a result,the highway and railway facilities are more significant than port facilities and aviation facilities for the Export Technology Complexity in "the Silk Road Economic Belt".And the port facilities and aviation facilities are more significant than land facilities for the Export Technology Complexity in"The Maritime Silk Road".The Part 5 is putting forward some policy suggestions according to the empirical results of this paper.Firstly,we should narrow the gap in infrastructure coverage among countries along the route and promote infrastructure to become the"accelerator"of foreign trade growth.Secondly,it should strengthen Internet cooperation and improve trade settlement methods between countries along "The Belt and Road".Thirdly,we should rationally plan outward FDI and R&D investment to avoid capital crowding-out effect.Fourthly,we should scientifically formulate the policy of"helping"infrastructure projects to match their physical and geographical characteristics.Fifthly,we should improve the absorption efficiency of internalized import technology and promote the quality of trade.Finally,we should break through the traditional static comparative advantage constraints and promote the complexity of export technology by innovation.