Research On The Impact Of China’s Intellectual Property Protection On The Binary Marginal Of High-tech Product Imports

On 10 April 2018,General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed four major initiatives to expand China’s opening-up in the new era at the Boao Forum for Asia,one of which is to "actively expand imports",a major shift in China’s foreign trade policy that sends an extraordinary signal to the international community,demonstrating China’s firm determination to actively expand and open up and share market opportunities.The ZTE and Huawei incidents in recent years have made people aware of the urgent need for a breakthrough in the " strangle" problem and the need to achieve self-sufficiency in key core technologies.However,the real problem facing China is that enterprises generally lack the awareness and ability of independent innovation.High-tech products,on the one hand,have the characteristics of high added value,good growth and great drive,and are one of the directions for optimising China’s trade structure;on the other hand,imported high-tech products condense the advanced technology and R&D investment of various countries,which can help domestic enterprises to carry out independent innovation on the basis of imported technology reinvention On the other hand,imported high-tech products contain advanced technology and R&D investment from various countries,which can help domestic enterprises to carry out independent innovation on the basis of imported technology reinvention and improve the efficiency of technological innovation.Therefore,high-tech products have gradually become a key area of China’s import trade.The world is now experiencing the greatest change ever seen in a century,with the financial crisis,the new pneumonia epidemic,the game of big powers and other factors interacting with each other,making the international trade situation more complex and severe,with the resurgence of anti-globalisation thinking and the frequent rise of trade protectionism.Intellectual property protection has become a powerful weapon for developed countries to consolidate their trade position and restrict the export of high technology products.It is important to recognise that the protection of intellectual property rights is the protection of innovation.Against this background,it is important to study the impact of intellectual property protection on the binary margin of high-tech product imports,in order to expand the scale of high-tech product imports and improve the technological innovation capability of enterprises.This paper firstly analyses the mechanism of the impact of IPR protection on the binary margin of high-tech product imports from a theoretical perspective;secondly,it summarises the current situation of IPR protection for high-tech products in China;then it introduces the decomposition framework of the binary margin and decomposes the total trade volume of high-tech product imports into the intensive margin and the extended margin;then,through an extended gravity model,it combines the total trade volume of high-tech product imports from 50 trading partner countries from 2007-2019 with the total trade volume of high-tech products in China.Then,using an extended gravity model,we empirically analyze the impact of IPR protection on the binary margins of high-technology product imports by combining panel data on China’s high-technology product imports from 50 trading partner countries(regions) from2007-2019,and conclude that strengthening IPR protection in China has a positive impact on both the intensive and extended margins of high-technology product imports.Finally,in light of the above analysis and empirical findings,targeted suggestions are made to strengthen intellectual property protection and thus expand imports of high-tech products.