| In recent years,international political and economic relations have been complex and volatile,global trade uncertainties have increased,the free trade rules under the WTO framework have been undermined,trade frictions have occurred repeatedly,and countries are facing greater risks and challenges in agricultural trade.As a labour-intensive agricultural product and a high value-added cash crop,tea has significant comparative advantages in terms of export earnings.China is the world’s largest tea exporter,but China’s tea exports have long suffered from problems such as lower export unit prices than the world average and lower production standards than international standards,traditional trade measures have still not been eliminated,and new trade measures represented by technical measures and green measures have led to a grim situation for China’s tea exports.Against this background,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the impact of SPS measures under the WTO framework on China’s tea export trade.This thesis mainly includes the following contents: firstly,a factual description of the current situation,an analysis of the current situation of China’s tea export trade and its characteristics from the aspects of export scale,regional distribution of markets and types of export products,and a sorting out of the SPS notification situation faced by China’s tea exports;secondly,a theoretical analysis,an analysis of the impact of SPS measures on China’s tea export trade with the help of the new trade protectionism theory,information asymmetry theory and game dominance theory.Thirdly,the empirical analysis is carried out to investigate the impact of SPS measures on China’s tea export trade empirically through the HMR model by selecting tea data from 2000 to 2021 and conducting robustness tests using the zero inflation negative binomial Poisson model(ZINBPML model)and core variable substitution,followed by robustness tests for different regions,different levels of economic development and different tea categories.A comparative analysis is then conducted on different regions,different levels of economic development and different tea categories,and the stage characteristics of SPS measures are explored in depth based on a threshold panel effects model to further test the hypothesis.The findings show that:(1)the impact of SPS measures on China’s tea export trade is characterized by phases within the study period.In the early stage,SPS measures inhibit the growth of China’s tea export trade volume,and there is a mechanism of action with bilateral agricultural trade costs as a mediating variable in its impact process,and the mediating effect accounts for 12.26% of the total effect.In the middle and later stages,SPS measures will force tea enterprises to improve quality control requirements and technological innovation,and the trade promotion effect of SPS measures will slowly become more prominent and gradually expand in depth.(2)The higher the level of SPS measures in the importing country,the stronger the tendency of tea exporters to shift their trade,i.e.the more likely the export market will shift.For every 1% increase in SPS measures,the probability of Chinese tea exporters choosing to continue exporting will decrease by 0.158% to 0.315%,the magnitude of which is mainly related to the level of economic development of the importing country.(3)By region,the increase in SPS measures in Asian and African countries has a stronger restrictive effect on the breadth of trade in Chinese tea exports than the measures in European and American countries,while the restrictive effect on the depth of trade is less than that of European and American countries.(4)By level of economic development,the restrictive effect of SPS measures in developing countries is higher than the restrictive effect of SPS measures in developed countries.Therefore,this paper suggests deepening the whole industrial chain of the tea industry,establishing and improving the standard system of SPS measures,improving policy support to strictly control domestic tea pesticide residues and optimizing the structure of tea exports in order to effectively respond to SPS and other technical trade measures and enhance the international competitiveness of Chinese tea. |
