The Impact Of COVID-19 On Chinese Agricultural Products Trade

In recent years,the development and popularization of agricultural science and technology and the government’s attention and support to agriculture have promoted the rapid development of agriculture in China.Limited by resource endowment,Chinese domestic agricultural production focuses on ensuring the safety of rations,which does not fully match the demand for agricultural products after consumption upgrading.China needs to make full use of the international agricultural market to regulate supplies,and is highly dependent on the international agricultural product market.COVID-19 broke out in China in early 2020 and quickly spread around the world.COVID-19 has seriously hindered the normal development of international trade.The stable supply of international agricultural products has been confronted with multiple challenges,and the stability and smoothness of cross-border agricultural supply chains have been destroyed.The stability of Chinese domestic agricultural products market has been severely tested.Under the condition of COVID-19 spreading,it is of great significance to further study the internal mechanism and effect of COVID-19 on Chinese agricultural products trade.It helps to accurately grasp the reality of Chinese agricultural products trade during the COVID-19,and provides reference for the government to issue targeted policies and ensure the safety of domestic agricultural products market.In the specific research,this paper adopts the combination of mechanism analysis and empirical analysis.First,this paper reviews past literature on COVID-19 and agricultural products trade.Based on the experience of predecessors,this paper finds the breakthrough point and puts forward the research objectives of this paper.Secondly,in order to have a comprehensive understanding of Chinese agricultural products trade,this paper combs the scale,commodity structure and market structure of agricultural products trade.It is found that the import and export trade of agricultural products showed an overall upward trend during the COVID-19,but the growth trend of different categories of agricultural products was not the same,and there were differences in trade markets.Thirdly,the paper expounds the mechanism of the impact of the global epidemic on Chinese agricultural products trade,so as to provide a theoretical basis for the following empirical analysis.Finally,the panel data of China and 35 countries and regions from January 2019 to December 2021 and the DID model are used to test the impact of the global epidemic impact on Chinese agricultural products trade,and on the premise of ensuring the robustness of the regression results,three group tests were carried out.The empirical results show that:(1)The impact of COVID-19 had a significant promotion effect on Chinese total trade and import of agricultural products,but had no significant impact on export.The results remained robust after undergoing robustness tests such as parallel trend and dynamic effect analysis,re-regression with the addition of control variables to the model,placebo tests,and changing the construction method of experimental group and control group.(2)The results of grouping regression by category of agricultural products show that the impact of COVID-19 would significantly promote Chinese export of Category 3 and Category 4 agricultural products,and ruduce Chinese export of Category 1 and Category 5 agricultural products.In addition,the impact of COVID-19 would significantly promote Chinese import of Category 1,Category 2,Category 3 and Category 4 agricultural products from trading countries.(3)According to the regression results by grouping of the geographical distance between trading countries and China,for agricultural products exports,although the geographical distance between trading countries and China is different,the impact of CO VID-19 did not have a significant impact on Chinese export of agricultural products.However,the impact of COVID-19 has a significant promotion effect on Chinese import of agricultural products from countries with a geographical distance of 5,000-10,000km and more than 10,000km from China,but has no significant impact on the import from countries with a geographical distance of less than 5,000km from China.(4)The results of grouping regression according to the income level of trading countries found that the impact of CO VID-19 does not significantly affect Chinese export of agricultural products to trading countries regardless of what its income level is.Chinese import from high-income countries and low-income countries were significantly promoted by COVID-19,but import from middle and high-income countries were not significantly affected by COVID-19.Based on the above research,this paper puts forward policy suggestions to deal with the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese agricultural products trade:carry out international agricultural exchanges and cooperation and promote the diversification of agricultural products trade,strengthen international consultation and coordination to reduce the impact of trade restrictions,improve the resistance of foreign trade enterprises to exchange rate risk and correctly use hedging instruments.