Research on the Impact of Trade Facilitation on China-ASEAN Bilateral Trade Volume

Abstract

With the increasingly significant degree of economic globalization, trade liberalization has developed to a certain extent, some insignificant but far-reaching trade barriers have begun to attract the attention of countries and regions: too long transportation time, complicated declaration documents, layers of declaration procedures, the government supervision system is not perfect, etc. Over the past ten years since the establishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, the two sides have issued many policies to improve the economic and trade environment and enhance the level of facilitation. However, due to the differences in the infrastructure and business environment, the level of trade facilitation between China and ASEAN member states is not high enough. Based on this, the paper takes the China-ASEAN trade volume as the research object, establishes the trade facilitation evaluation index system, measures the level of trade facilitation in the ten ASEAN countries, studies the influence of it and its four primary indicators on the total trade volume based on the gravity model. The results show that the level of trade facilitation has an important impact on the bilateral trade between China and ASEAN. There is a significant positive correlation between the trade facilitation level of partner countries and trade volume. For every 1% increase in the trade facilitation level of ASEAN partners, its trade volume with China will increase by about 1.248%. Countries can improve the customs and institutional environment, improve the construction of high-efficiency ports and high-level e-commerce to improve the level of trade facilitation, and strengthen trade cooperation with China.