Research On Trade Potential Between China And Countries Along The "One Belt And One Road" Route

"One Belt And One Road"(OBOR)is a new globalization initiative to strengthen economic integration and policy coordination,and provides new opportunities for bilateral trade.OBOR countries have different resource endowments,different levels of economic development,and different trade influencing factors.Therefore,it is of great significance to accurately measure the trade potential between China and OBOR countries.Clustering the countries from economic development level and resource endowment will reduce the inpact of the traditional gravity model’s "average”characteristic on the estimation of trade potential.Based on the connotation of economic development level and resource endowment,this paper constructs a national evaluation system,and divide OBOR countries into four categories by using the hierarchical clustering analysis method:natural resource abundant countries(NR),labor resource abundant countries(LR),technology resource abundant countries(TR)and light development countries(LD).Secondly,analyze the current situation of China’s commodity trade with OBOR countries from trade scale,trade structure and trade complementarity.Then,estimate the trade potential and trade efficiency between China and OBOR countries by stochastic frontier gravity model,with panel data from gross level and country classification level,and analyze the factors influencing trade barriers from tariffs,trade agreements,infrastructure level,economic and policy environment.Finally,propose policy suggestions based on the research results.The result shows that(1)Most of the OBOR countries are LRs,with low level of economic development but obvious advantages in labor resources.China’s trade with such countries is large and closely linked,but the trade is inefficient and has huge potential.High tariff level and weak infrastructure are the main inefficiency factors.(2)China has high trade complementarity with NRs,TRs and LDs,but the trade links is not close and has a decreasing trend.Large gaps in infrastructure levels and economic systems are important barriers to bilateral trade.(3)Differences in resource endowment and economic development level of countries along the belt and road will have a significant impact on the estimation of trade potential:LRs will be underestimated,while the trade potential of other three types of countries will be overestimated.