The Impact Of Chinese Emigration Network On The Binary Margin Of China’s Export Trade

In the 1980 s,global trade entered a stage of rapid development,followed by the third wave of migration in the world.During the same period,China began to implement the policy of reform and opening up,began to gradually establish trade ties with other countries in the world,and exported Chinese emigrants.In 2001,China formally joined the WTO.In the following 20 years,the international trade and emigration of China developed rapidly.Up to now,China has become the world’s largest country in goods trading and the third largest exporter of emigrants,which plays a pivotal role in global trade and migration.Literature shows that scholars considered international trade and migration to be substitutes for each other at the beginning.However,with the development of international trade and migration in the 1980 s,more and more studies have found that international trade and migration are actually complements and facilitators for each other.With the maturity of social network-related theories,studies focusing on migrant’s networks and international trade have been gradually enriched,and some domestic scholars have begun to introduce the concept of migration networks into the study of China’s emigration and trade.However,as far as the current research is concerned,few studies have decomposed China’s trade to the binary margin level,and even less literature has examined the mechanism of the emigration network effect on the binary margin of China’s trade.This study takes it as the starting point to collect sample data and conducts some extended research.This study introduces emigration network variable into the heterogeneous firm model,constructs an extended gravity equation including emigration network variable,and explores the impact of Chinese emigration network on the binary margin of China’s exports using CEPII-BACI bilateral trade data and the UN Global Bilateral Migration Database.The study finds that Chinese emigration network have a significant contribution to the binary margin of China’s export trade.In particular,Chinese emigration network significantly contribute to the binary margin of China’s exports when they are in high-income countries,while only contribute to the extensive margin of China’s exports when they are in middle-and low-income countries.When the Chinese emigration network is located in Belt and Road countries,it significantly contributes to the extensive margin and suppresses the intensive margin of Chinese exports,while in non-Belt and Road countries,it only contributes to the intensive margin of Chinese exports.This paper further introduces the mediating variable of bilateral trade cost,and examines the mechanism of how Chinese emigration network affecting the binary marginal of Chinese exports.The results show that there is a consumption preference effect and a cost overcoming effect of Chinese emigration network,and they can directly facilitate the extensive margin of China’s exports through the consumption preference effect,and facilitate both the extensive margin and intensive margin of China’s exports through the cost overcoming effect.There is a partial mediating effect for the extensive margin,accounting for 11.6% of the total effect,and a full mediating effect for the intensive margin.