The Impact Of COVID-19 On China’s Imports And Exports

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020,the flow of goods and people has been blocked,the global production chain has not run smoothly,and global economic and trade activities are suffering a major blow.Although China’s own epidemic prevention and control measures have achieved good results,and domestic production has resumed in an orderly manner,many trading partners are still in the outbreak or recurring period of the epidemic.In this context,trade activities between China and various trading partners are facing severe challenges.In view of this,this article adds the index of "epidemic spread" of various countries to the gravity model.Based on the bilateral import and export data between China and other countries in the world in 2020,it empirically examines the impact of the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in trading partner countries on China and that country.On the basis of the impact of the total amount of inter-trade trade,further distinguish the trade direction(import,export)and trade type(intermediate goods,consumer goods)for analysis.The research results show that the spread of the epidemic in a trading partner country has had a significant negative impact on the total trade volume between China and that country,and the impact is mainly reflected in China’s exports,and the impact on imports is not significant.Furthermore,this study is based on the bilateral trade data of HS6 between China and various trading partners,and uses the BEC classification standard to classify the types of traded goods into intermediate inputs and final consumer goods,and finds the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the trade of intermediate goods.The impact is more significant,which may put pressure on the operation of the global production chain.Finally,based on the above conclusions,this study puts forward targeted policy recommendations in terms of precise prevention and control of the epidemic and rapid trade recovery.