The Belt And Road Initiative And China’s Export Growth To The Countries Along The Routes

The Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)is a modern great concept integrating the politics and economy,internal affairs and diplomacy,which proposed by Chinese government by taking both the domestic and international situations into consideration.It will provide an important opportunity of economic and trade cooperation for China and other countries in Asia and Europe.Nowadays,the BRI has been proposed for more than seven years,it is quite necessary to provide empirical evidence of the important role of the BRI in trade promotion,mutually beneficial cooperation,equitable and inclusive development for participating economies.Trade facilitation is a comprehensive measure that simplifying related procedures and improving the trade efficiency,which is covering the various systems and services that promoting a free cross-border flow of goods and services between the sellers and buyers.Many countries along the Belt and Road are developing and emerging economies,and the development of trade facilitation has generally lagged behind.Trade facilitation is the main content of the BRI,it can play a positive role in trade,investment and personnel exchanges for China and countries along the routes.The Co-construction of the Belt and Road has a positive influence on the level of trade facilitation through five approaches: policy,infrastructure,trade,finance,hearts and minds.Improving the level of trade facilitation will promote export growth in three ways: reduce the environmental uncertainty,reduce the trade cost,and expand the market demand preference.Hence,the BRI will promote China’s export growth through the mechanism of improving the trade facilitation.In order to analyze the trade effect of the BRI and the mediation effect of trade facilitation,this paper firstly highlights the connotation of the BRI and the broad definition of trade facilitation,and discusses the related theoretical basis,and analyzes the mechanism of how the BRI to promote China’s export growth by improving the level of trade facilitation of countries along the routes,which can be named the mediation effect of trade facilitation.Secondly,this paper analyzes the situation of China’s export and China’s export to countries along the routes from three perspectives of export size,product categories and market distribution.Thirdly,this paper sets up the indicators system of trade facilitation,and uses the principal component analysis to determine the weight of each index,to calculate the level of trade facilitation from year 2006 to 2018,and carries out a comparative analysis of countries and trends.Finally,this paper uses the difference-in-differences model and the mediation effect model to analyze the effect of the BRI on the export growth and the mediation effect of the trade facilitation,distinguishes the effect between different indicators,and analyzes the regional heterogeneity and the export growth path.The empirical results show that the BRI has significantly promoted China’s export growth to the countries along the routes and promoting the trade facilitation has a significant mediation effect.Among the indicators of trade facilitation,improving the level of e-commerce and customs efficiency are effective ways for the BRI to promote China’s export growth.The analysis of regional heterogeneity shows that the effect is different in "One Belt" and "One Road",neighboring and non-neighboring countries.The analysis of export growth path shows that the BRI significantly promotes China’s export growth by expanding the types and increasing the price of export products,and under the BRI the expanding of export products types is mainly achieved through the mediation effect of the trade facilitation.According to the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward some policy advice.Firstly,promoting the soft environment of regional trade facilitation to optimize,improving the supporting infrastructure construction.Secondly,the policymakers should focus on regional heterogeneity,steadily expanding the scope of the Belt and Road cooperation.Thirdly,fostering new export growth drivers,achieving high-quality development of export.