Chinese Exports Research Articles

US trade policy uncertainty on Chinese agricultural imports and exports: An aggregate and product-level analysis

This paper empirically investigates the impact of US trade policy uncertainty on China's agricultural imports and exports by using Chinese aggregate and product-level data. First, we find that increased US trade policy uncertainty has reduced China's agricultural exports to the US and imports from the US, with effects that outweigh traditional exchange rate factors. Second, increased US trade policy uncertainty has raised China's total agricultural imports from the world as it shifts from North America to South America, Europe, and Asia. Third, the product-level analysis suggests that increased US trade policy uncertainty will not threaten China's food security but will lead to higher import prices for some important products. This study enriches our understanding of the effects of trade policy uncertainty and provides insights for the government to prevent large fluctuations in agricultural markets and stabilize the national economy.

The Impact of U.S. Trade Policy Uncertainty on the Trade Margins of China’s Export to the U.S.

Since the subprime crisis, the U.S. has begun to adjust its international trade policies due to the worldwide economic slowdown, leaving its trading partners facing great uncertainty in trade policy. In this study, we developed a panel model to empirically analyze the impact of U.S. trade policy uncertainty on the extensive margin, intensive margin, price margin, and quantity margin of Chinese exports of U.S. goods. We found that U.S. trade policy uncertainty is also a trade barrier for China’s export trade. The extensive margin, intensive margin, price margin, and quantity margin of Chinese exports to the U.S. are all adversely connected with U.S. trade policy uncertainty. The increase in U.S. trade policy uncertainty significantly inhibits the increase in the extensive margin, intensive margin, and quantity margin of China’s exports to America, and the degree of inhibition of the quantity margin is five times that of the extensive margin. Increased U.S. trade policy uncertainty also restrains the increase in the price margin of Chinese exports to America, but this is not statistically significant. In this study, we emphasize the significant impact that U.S. trade policy uncertainty has had on the trade margins of Chinese exports of goods to America. To stabilize China’s exports to the United States, China should increase support for export enterprises’ technological R&D and innovation, expand bilateral or multilateral free trade agreements with other countries, and so on.

The influence of trade facilitation on agricultural product exports of China: empirical evidence from ASEAN countries

The trade of agricultural products plays an essential role in agricultural development. Agricultural trade is more complicated and diversified than other industrial products, influenced by product characteristics for perishable. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is one of the most important markets for China’s agricultural exports. This study aimed to analyze the impact of trade facilitation indicators on China’s agricultural exports to ASEAN countries. A gravity model was adopted by taking the volume of Chinese agricultural exports to ASEAN countries from 2006–2020 as the dependent variable. Indicators such as economic freedom (EF), trade across borders (TAB), and infrastructure quality (Infra) were introduced that were representing trade facilitation as the core independent variable. Also, an empirical analysis was carried out using a mixed regression model. The results show that the three proxy indicators of trade facilitation had a significantly positive impact on the scale of China’s agricultural exports to the ASEAN market. The results could play a guiding role in strengthening the cooperation between China and the ASEAN regarding trade facilitation and expansion of the scale of agricultural trade.

The impact of FTAs on export duration: Evidence from China’s agricultural firms

A growing body of literature has emerged on the links between free trade agreement (FTA) and agricultural export margins. As a key component of intensive margins, export survival and duration play essential roles in long-term and sustainable export growth. We investigated the impact of FTAs on agricultural export duration from the perspective of firm-destination pair. Based on highly disaggregated firm-level panel data of Chinese agricultural exporters covering the period of 2000–2016, we applied the proper survival method to empirically analyze the effect of FTA on export duration and survival. The results identify dynamic export stylized facts among firm-destination country pairs: although most of the agricultural firm-destination export relations demonstrated longer duration than those of other industries in China, they were still short-lived. Most importantly, we confirmed that FTA produced two opposite effects: Compared to non-FTA partners, the FTA membership role helps extend the length of export duration for agricultural export relation in general. However, for newly created relations, the implementation of FTA increased the hazard rate of export failure and shortened the length of duration. Our results cast a new light on firm-level export survival issue and FTA policy, and provide implications for both agricultural exporters and policymakers.

Responses of exporters to trade protectionism: Inferences from the US-China trade war

This paper investigates how exports respond to trade protection by studying the US-China trade war in 2018. Using monthly customs data in China from January 2017 to May 2019, we find that the launch of the trade war against Chinese exports by the US on average reduces Chinese total exports to the US by 16.47%. Further decomposition shows that the reduction in exports is mostly explained by a decrease in quantity, with prices relatively unchanged. Meanwhile, negative trade shocks cause export diversion to countries that are closer and have larger economies, and exports in R&D-intensive, skilled-labor-intensive, high-capital-income-share, and upstream industries have been diverted even more. Heterogeneous analyses show that industries with a comparative advantage, high export growth, large export value, and high elasticity of substitution are more responsive to trade protection.

Will temperature affect the export quality of firms? Evidence from China

PurposeThis study aims to investigate whether temperature affects the product quality of exporters and whether the effect is non-linear. More specifically, whether the impact of high temperatures differs from the impact of low temperatures, and whether different types of companies or industries are affected differently.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses detailed data covering all Chinese exporters from 2000 to 2016 to estimate the effects of temperature on the product quality of export firms. To clarify the relationship between them, the authors use a semi-parametric regression method, trying to test whether there is a non-linear relationship between temperature and the export quality of firms.FindingsThe increase in the number of high temperature days significantly reduces the quality of exported products, and this negative effect increases as the temperature rises. High temperature has the most significant negative impact on export quality for firms with low technical complexity, private firms and firms with no intermediate imports and located in historical hot cities. Product quality of both labor-intensive and capital-intensive firms will be affected by heat. High temperatures have the greatest negative impact on the export quality of newly entering products, followed by exiting products, with the least negative impact on persisting product.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the impact of temperature on the quality of economic development. The findings of this paper again show that the potential economic impacts of global warming are huge. In addition to some potentially devastating impacts in the future, global warming is already causing imperceptible impacts in the present. Public and economic agents need to fully understand the possible adverse impacts of climate change and take corresponding adaptation measures to cope with global warming.

The impacts of carbon tariffs on international trade flows and carbon emissions: An analysis integrating trade elasticities with an application to US-China trade

Carbon tariffs have been widely studied as a prominent climate policy in terms of their influences on the economy and the environment. However, previous studies of their effectiveness did not incorporate into the analysis of some key factors, including, notably, trade elasticities. This paper aims at reducing the gap between trade economics and environment studies by integrating trade elasticities into the analysis of carbon tariffs' impacts on trade flows and carbon emissions embodied in exports. We start by adopting the gravity trade model and constructing a panel data set of 63 countries from 2005 to 2015 to calculate the trade elasticities across 13 industries. With a simple model that translates carbon tariffs into tariffs, we evaluate the cross-country and cross-industry impacts of carbon tariffs. A model to forecast the effect of carbon tariffs on China-US trade under different scenarios is also provided. We discover that industries' trade elasticities and carbon intensities play an essential role in determining carbon tariffs' impacts. Furthermore, our estimations show the threshold carbon tariffs for the 13 industries with an average of $42/tCO2. We found out that if the U.S. stopped importing from China by replacing all Chinese exports with its domestic productions, it would emit 88.8% fewer carbon emissions than China does, which would contribute to a 0.65% decrease in world carbon emissions. Other scenarios of replacing all Chinese exports with Canadian, Japanese, or Mexican exports show similar results. This paper illuminates the critical importance of incorporating trade elasticities when designing carbon tariffs.

Export Liberalization and Firm’s Energy Efficiency: Theory and Evidence

ABSTRACT Since international trade is developing rapidly and the world is facing serious problem of energy shortages, this paper focuses on analyzing if export liberalization can help to improve the country’s energy efficiency. In this paper, we establish the theoretical trade model at micro-level and study how export liberalization affects energy use performance of the firm. Then, we employ data of Chinese exporters to conduct empirical analysis. Our results suggest export liberalization can improve energy use performance of the firm, which shows that export liberalization has positive effects on firm’s energy use performance. The results of mechanism test suggest that export liberalization can improve firms’ productivity and increase firms’ innovation ability, which can further help to increase firms’ energy use efficiency. Altogether, this paper gives evidence on the effects of export liberalization on energy use performance, which reveals the importance of trade liberalization in solving the global energy problems.

Environmental Regulation and the Innovation Performance of Chinese Export Firms: A Quasi-Natural Experiment based on the Law of Promoting Cleaner Production

As China’s export products have been pollution-intensive in recent decades, stringent environmental regulations have been applied to export products. Environmental regulation will squeeze out a firm’s expense on innovation and impact its productivity through the cost effect and innovation offset effect. However, the overall impact on productivity change is uncertain because of the trade-off between the two effects. This study explores the relationship between the innovations of export firms and environmental regulation using the panel data of export firms in 18 industrial industries. The impact of the implementation of the Law of Promoting Cleaner Production on the innovation of export firms in industries with different pollution intensities has been studied using the difference-in-differences method. The findings show that environmental regulation has a negative impact on the innovation of export firms. Export destinations create a difference in innovation performance. Environmental regulation tends to have a positive impact on the innovation of firms whose major markets are developed countries. Compared with light pollution-intensive industries, the Law of Promoting Cleaner Production has reduced the innovation ability of export firms in heavy and medium pollution-intensive industries. Therefore, when formulating environmental policies, regulators should consider the impact of such policies on the innovation of export enterprises and formulate a reasonable intensity of environmental regulations to achieve a win–win situation vis-à-vis improving the ecological environment and enhancing the innovation ability of export enterprises.

EU’s ‘Distorted Economy’ Antidumping Approach Towards China: Improvement of Legal Certainty or New Legal Distortions?: Some Overall Observations

In 2017, the EU introduced the ‘distorted economy’ rules in EU antidumping law. The new rules target in particular China. The question is whether the new rules and their application by the Commission provide an improvement of legal certainty for Chinese exporters and EU importers compared to the old antidumping regime of non-market economy treatment of China. This article makes a comparison between the new and old rules and their application by the EU institutions. The article argues that the new rules slightly improve legal certainty but that new uncertainties emerge as well. For example, the context of international labour law and international environmental law raises new questions. antidumping, distorted economy, EU, China, WTO, legal certainty

Effects of CPEC on the Economy of China and Pakistan

CPEC is a huge investment that will bring prosperity and will heal the economic condition of Pakistan. It will also give China the shortest proximity to the rest of the world. It's a project which will benefit both of the countries as well as Europe and the Gulf. Descriptive analysis is used in this research study to investigate the effects of CPEC on Pakistan and China's economy. Diverse literature was found on this topic and is cited in the literature part of this research study. This study shows that Pakistan and China both of the countries will be better off and will achieve good economic results. Pakistan will get the maximum benefit from CPEC because its infrastructure and energy structure is less developed. And by the injection of this massive CPEC project, the Pakistani economy will boost up, and the mutual trade between China and Pakistan will be enhanced. GDP growth and welfare position of Pakistan will take more benefit from CPEC than China. Chinese export of non-agricultural products will increase more than the Chinese export of agricultural products. While in the case of Pakistani exports, the situation is the opposite one. Agricultural exports will be increased more than the increase in non-agricultural exports of Pakistan.

A novel machine learning approach to predict the export price of seafood products based on competitive information: The case of the export of Vietnamese shrimp to the US market.

Predicting the export price of shrimp is important for Vietnam's fisheries. It not only promotes product quality but also helps policy makers determine strategies to develop the national shrimp industry. Competition in global markets is considered to be an important factor, one that significantly influences price. In this study, we predicted trends in the export price of Vietnamese shrimp based on competitive information from six leading exporters (China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Ecuador, and Chile) who, alongside Vietnam, also export shrimp to the US. The prediction was based on a dataset collected from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) (May-1995 to May-2019) that included price, required farming certificates, and disease outbreak data. A super learner technique, which combined 10 single algorithms, was used to make predictions in selected base periods (3, 6, 9, and 12 months). It was found that the super learner obtained results in all base periods that were more accurate and stable than any candidate algorithms. The impacts of variables in the predictive model were interpreted by a SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis to determine their influence on the price of Vietnamese exports. The price of Indian, Thai, and Chinese exports highlighted the advantages of being a World Trade Organization member and the disadvantages of the prevalence of shrimp disease in Vietnam, which has had a significant impact on the Vietnamese shrimp export price.

Stakeholder preference and strategic corporate social responsibility

This paper investigates the role of stakeholder preference on corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Using a staggered difference-in-difference approach, we show that Indian firms increase CSR expenses when trade restrictions (Antidumping) are initiated against competing Chinese exports from countries with a high stakeholder preference for CSR. However, when these shocks emanate from countries with a lower stakeholder preference, CSR expenses remain unchanged. Capital expenditure and R&D of Indian firms increase following AD shocks, irrespective of their country of origin. Finally, CSR increases firm value only when the demand shocks originate from countries with a higher CSR preference. Collectively, we provide evidence for consumer-driven CSR strategies.

Government subsidization and corporate product strategies: evidence from Chinese exporters

PurposeThis study aims to take advantage of exporters’ product codes and examine the effects of government subsidization on corporate product strategies by focusing on the dimension of product differentiation.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses harmonized system (HS) product codes to construct a novel measure of product differentiation among a sample of Chinese exporters during 2000–2012. It uses propensity score matching to construct a comparable sample of control firms for exporters receiving government subsidies, and then a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis is conducted.FindingsThis study finds that product differentiation decreases immediately upon receiving a government subsidy. This finding suggests that in an emerging market, firms use their subsidy to imitate competitors rather than increase innovation. Further analyses show that this effect is concentrated among wholly foreign-owned enterprises and firms that focus on general trade rather than processing trade. In addition, the authors find some evidence that government subsidization leads to an increase in the number of product lines and decreases in domestic value added and export product quality.Originality/valueThis study constructs a novel measure of product differentiation for a large sample of Chinese exporters and provides insights that government subsidization can affect corporate product strategies.

How do industrial robots applications affect the quality upgrade of Chinese export trade?

This study examines the effect of industrial robots applications on the quality upgrade of China's manufacturing export products at the enterprise level. It analyzes import and export data obtained from the China Customs and Chinese Industrial Enterprises databases from 2000 to 2013. The results show that the industrial robots applications significantly promotes the quality upgrade of Chinese manufacturing export products. Moreover, the impact of industrial robots applications on the export product quality is dynamic; it initially increases and then decreases. Heterogeneity test results indicate greater quality improvement effects if robots feature applications in high-tech industries. We also show that importing more robots and for extended periods promotes the effects of industrial robots applications on the export product quality upgrades of Chinese enterprises. Mechanism tests reveal that industrial robots applications can upgrade the quality of export products by improving the labor productivity and human capital level of enterprises. Finally, spillover analyses show that industrial robots applications intensity significantly affects export quality upgrades through spillover effects.

“It's Not You, It's Me”: Prices, Quality, and Switching in U.S.-China Trade Relationships

Abstract Costs from switching suppliers can affect prices by discouraging buyer movements from high- to low-cost sellers. This paper uses confidential data on U.S. importers and their Chinese exporters to investigate these costs. I find barriers to supplier adjustments: nearly half of importers keep their partner over time. Importers switch less if their supplier offers higher quality or provides lower prices. I propose and structurally estimate a dynamic discrete choice model to compute switching costs. Cost estimates are large, heterogeneous across products, and matter for trade prices: halving switching costs reduces the U.S.-China Import Price Index by 7.6%.

Highways and firms' exports: Evidence from China

AbstractThis article investigates the impact of highway networks on Chinese firms' exports. We construct firm‐level measures of highway access using GIS information on firm locations and highway routes and adopt an instrumental variable approach to deal with the endogeneity issue. The analysis finds that improvements in highway access significantly promote firms' exports, after controlling for firm characteristics and unobservable city and industry time‐varying factors. Highway access helps firms to expand the scope of their exports and imports as well. More interestingly, the positive effects of highway access on exports are stronger for less productive firms. With greater highway access, less productive firms lower their markups while more productive firms experience an increase in average markups.

Китайский фарфор в Монголии (династия Цин)

The paper examines Chinese porcelain collected at the Chinese fortress in the Khovd city, Shar Sum monastery and two archaeological sites in the Barun Khurai Depression in southwest Mongolia. Th e sites were built for Chinese military administration and Mongolian Buddhist clergy during the Qing period. Th e study concludes that the decorative motives of the porcelain refl ect the tastes of the mentioned categories of Mongolian population and is predominantly related to Tibetan Buddhism elements of the Chinese folk culture. Th e discovered material also indicates originally “non-Han” components of the Chinese history. Th e results of the study play an important role in understanding stylistic preferences in Chinese porcelain outside China. It also serves as a reference for a better evaluation of Chinese porcelain export trajectories within Central Asia and in the territories up north.

Covid 19 시대 텍스트마이닝과 SNA 기법을 활용한 한국과 중국의 무역관계 분석

The objective of this study is to analyze international trade relation between Korea and China using text mining and SNA(Social Network Analysis) for the three Covid 19 years from 2019 to 2021. For the analysis, text mining analysis was conducted through keywords ‘China Export’ and ‘China Import’. And then, key issues were analyzed by using keyword frequency analysis. Finally, we analyzed centrality tests such as the degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, and the convergence of iteration correlation (CONCOR) using the social network analysis. As a result, Korea seems to show the most interest in internal and external trade risks in relation to Chinese imports and exports as it is highly dependent on China.

US―China Green Trade Conflict and Implications for Low-Carbon Energy Transition: The Solar Energy Trade Dispute

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causes of Sino-U.S. solar PV trade disputes by adopting research, comparative research, and case study. It also proposes relevant resolutions over Sino-U.S. solar trade conflicts and the implications for low-carbon energy transition.
 Design/Methodology/Approach - Based on green trade protectionism and comparative advantage theory, this paper combines Chinese solar products export flows to the U.S. with cases of solar trade disputes from 2011 to 2022 to analyze the causes of Sino-U.S. solar trade conflict. Thus, from the perspective of international trade law, WTO reform on the relevant renewable energy agreements, international carbon border tax regime, and a bilateral clean agreement or EGA negotiations, it purposes the resolution of Sino-U.S. solar trade conflict.
 Findings - This paper studies factors leading to the Sino-U.S. solar trade conflict, which is mainly a bilateral trade imbalance, the game of interest groups within the US, non-standard support policies for Chinese solar energy industry, and geopolitical and national green energy security. There is no doubt that trade disputes had had a larger negative impact on Sino-U.S. solar trade flows from 2011 to 2019. Meanwhile, the solar PV trade policies of the US affected the global supply chain of solar PV products, thus hindering the progress of low-carbon energy transition.
 Research Implications - In the management of this paper, this study has important practical significance for the healthy and sustainable development of solar PV trade and achieving low-carbon energy transition for both countries. It can also provide references to solar energy trade disputes among other countries in a broader sense, and propose relevant recommendations for South Korea’s solar energy.