Research On China's Imported Food Quality Structure

Against the background of the rapid increase of total imported food in China,China's imported high-quality food has increased more than low-quality ones,and China's imported food quality structure has continuously improved.Based on the assumption of non-homothetic preference,this paper constructs a theoretical model on the basis of Fieler(2011)and analyzes the impact of per capita income on the quality structure of imported food by using the firm import data from Chinese customs.The study finds that per capita income is a significant factor which affects the imported food quality structure in China.The higher the per capita income,the higher the imported food quality structure is.Furthermore,with China's per capita incomes increased,the quality structure of China's food imports from high-income countries is also improved significantly.Besides,per capita income has a significant positive impact on the imported food quality structure in different quality groups which indicates that China will import more food with "upper-middle" quality as China's per capita income increases.The results of the robustness test shows that the significant positive impact of per capita income in China on the quality structure of imported food in China will not change due to the existence of bulk commodities in food industry,nor will not be affected by changes in per capita income proxy variables or quality measurement methods.In addition,the implementation of the FTA strategy has significantly improved the quality of food imported from China's FTA countries.