The Influence Of Upgrading Provincial Development Zones On The Quality Of Export Products

Since the reform and opening up,China’s trade links with the rest of the world have become increasingly close,and the total volume of foreign trade has grown rapidly.China’s achievements in economic development have also attracted worldwide attention.Among a series of promoting factors,region-led policies are the key to driving China’s economic development.As a typical regional guided economic development mode,the development zone has established a number of provincial and national development zones under the strong support of the national and local governments,and subsequently increased investment to constantly promote the upgrading of development zones.This raises a question: Whether the upgrading of development zones,especially the upgrading of provincial development zones to national development zones,has achieved the expected policy effect? At present,the export volume of Chinese enterprises has been greatly increased,but the quality of export products has not reached the world-class level.It is obvious that the development mode of China’s foreign trade is in urgent need of transformation at present,and how to promote the high-quality development of trade has become an inevitable trend of future discussion.The "14th Five-Year Plan" proposes that under the new development pattern of "double cycle",the domestic great cycle should be taken as the main body to promote the domestic and international double cycle development,further optimize the international market layout and trade mode,change the previous unilateral pursuit of trade volume,and focus on improving the quality of export products.In this environment,it is of great significance in theory and practice to systematically evaluate and study the influence between the promotion of provincial development zones and the quality of export products of Chinese enterprises.Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the promotion policy of provincial development zones implemented in 2009,this paper uses the data of Chinese industrial enterprises and customs from 2004 to 2013,divides the enterprise data from the perspective of prefecture-level cities,and builds a DID model to investigate the impact of the promotion of development zones on the quality of local enterprises’ export products.The results show that:(1)the promotion of provincial development zones plays a certain role in promoting the quality of export products of urban enterprises,and this result has passed a series of robustness tests;(2)The analysis of function channels shows that the promotion of development zones mainly improves the quality of export products of local enterprises by providing preferential policies,improving labor productivity of enterprises and improving financing environment.(3)The heterogeneity analysis shows that from the regional perspective,the promotion policy of development zones has a more significant effect on the quality of export products in coastal areas and areas with a higher degree of marketization.From the perspective of enterprises,based on the differences of ownership nature,size and trade mode,it is found that the quality of export products of state-owned enterprises,small and medium-sized enterprises and processing and trading enterprises is more significantly affected by the promotion policy of development zones.Finally,the paper summarizes the whole paper,and puts forward relevant policy suggestions from five aspects: promoting the construction of a national unified large market,creating a financing environment conducive to export upgrading,reasonable layout according to local conditions,accelerating the transformation and upgrading of development zones,and emphasizing infrastructure construction to play the agglomeration effect.