Research On The Impact Of RCEP Countries’ Trade Facilitation On Cross-Border E-commerce Exports Of China And South Korea

Since the outbreak of COVID-19,world economy has suffered a serious impact.But cross-border e-commerce has shown strong growth resilience in the post-pandemic era.Compared with traditional trade,cross-border e-commerce has advantages of shortening trade links,breaking the limit of time and space,and reducing transaction costs.While the growth rate of traditional trade is getting slower,cross-border ecommerce can still maintain rapid growth which has played a vital role in economy.Initiated by the 10 ASEAN countries in 2012,signed at the end of 2020 and officially effective in early 2022,the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP)has been committed to improving trade facilitation and increasing trade volume of member countries in the region through a number of initiatives.The signing and entry into force of RCEP has injected strong vitality into the economic revitalization of East Asian countries,and also brought new opportunities for cross-border e-commerce exports.Based on domestic and foreign research,the paper analyzes the impact of RCEP countries’ trade facilitation on cross-border e-commerce exports of China and South Korea.The reason why the development of cross-border e-commerce in China and South Korea are chosen for comparative analysis is that China and South Korea have close economic exchanges,the cross-border e-commerce industry is developing rapidly,and China is the largest exporter of cross-border e-commerce in South Korea.The paper firstly shows the status of cross-border e-commerce in China and South Korea and the cross-border e-commerce trade among China,South Korea and RCEP countries.Secondly,based on the connotation of trade facilitation,the paper refers to the evaluation system of Wilson(2003),combines the characteristics of cross-border ecommerce to construct a trade facilitation evaluation system covering 5 first-level indicators and 15 second-level indicators and then calculates the weight of each index by entropy method,and measures and analyzes the trade facilitation level of RCEP countries over the years.Thirdly,the vector autoregressive model is used to explore the relationship between the trade facilitation level of RCEP countries and the cross-border e-commerce exports of China and South Korea,and analyze the empirical results.The result of this paper shows that the trade facilitation level of RCEP countries has a positive effect on the cross-border e-commerce exports trade of China and South Korea.The impact of ASEAN trade facilitation on China’s cross-border e-commerce export value is more significant,and the impact of China’s trade facilitation level on South Korea’s cross-border e-commerce export value is also more significant.However,at present,the problem of unbalanced development in the level of trade facilitation of RCEP countries is still unsolved,with developed countries having a higher level of trade facilitation and developing countries having a relatively low level of trade facilitation.Therefore,RCEP countries should improve regional cooperation mechanisms,deepen cross-border trade facilitation reforms,and comprehensively improve the level of trade facilitation in all member countries.At the same time,it is necessary to consider the characteristics of different countries to promote vigorous development of cross-border e-commerce among China,South Korea and RCEP countries in different fields and in a focused manner under the RCEP framework.