Free Trade Agreement And Chinese Cultural Products Export

As a form combining trade in goods and trade in services,cultural trade plays an important role in international trade.Its strategic position is becoming increasingly prominent,and it has long-term economic and cultural transmission effects.Based on existing researches,further quantitative study on the influence factors of cultural exports will help perfect the institutional arrangements on Chinese cultural trade,explore and structure the system of Chinese cultural trade rules,enhance the international competitiveness of Chinese cultural products and conform to the strategy of building a cultural power in the important historical stage of reshaping global economic and trade rules.It contributes to enhancing China's influence and voice in the process of restructuring global trade rules and provides China with some inspiration for ongoing bilateral and multilateral FTA' upgrading negotiations.Cultural products have both “cultural attributes” and “commodity attributes”.Although a large number of documents published have studied the affecting factors of Chinese cultural products trade,which mainly involve bilateral cultural distance,linguistic similarity,religious beliefs and colonial history,cultural exchange factors represented by Confucius Institutes and sister cities,etc.,mostly concentrated on the“ cultural attribute ” side of cultural products.However,on the “ commodity attributes” side of cultural products,the impact of formal institutional factors on cultural trade has not been fully studied.In view of the trade promotion effect of bilateral free trade agreements,in order to explore whether the implementation of FTA can promote the export trade of Chinese cultural products,this paper studies and analyses the factors influencing the export trade of Chinese cultural products by introducing the variable of whether to reach FTA.It takes panel data of Chinese cultural products export trade with 43 countries from 1996 to 2017 as an example,and emphatically examines the impact of FTA signed by China on the export of Chinese cultural products.On the whole,the signing of FTA has played an active role in promoting cultural exchanges and weakening tariff and trade barriers,which is conducive to the development of Chinese cultural products export trade.The promotion brought about by FTA is more obvious in countries with higher degree of economic freedom and closer to Chinese culture.At the same time,FTA has product heterogeneity in promoting the export trade of cultural products.FTA has the strongest promoting effect on the export of visual art with Chinese traditionalaesthetic interest,and weaker promoting effect on books,newspapers and movies with strong Chinese cultural characteristics.From the perspective of trade barriers faced by Chinese cultural products,developing countries frequently adopt traditional tariff barriers,while developed countries adopt more non-tariff trade barriers such as technical barriers.The article holds that China should actively participate in and lead regional economic cooperation,expand and upgrade the free trade area constructed by China and its trading partner,promote the exchange of cultures and talents in the region and create a favorable trade environment for China's cultural products export.China should attach importance to the important role of non-tariff measures in cultural trade.In the process of updating the negotiation and implementation provisions of free trade agreements signed in the future,China should pay attention to the different trade barriers that cultural products may face when exporting to countries with different levels of development and screen the influence of FTA clauses on different cultural products in order to improve the competitiveness of China's cultural products export trade,enhance the competitive advantages of different cultural products and promote the structural adjustment of cultural products export trade.