A Empircal Research On The Impact Of Cultural Differences On China's Bilateral Trade

International trade is an important pillar of the national economic development of China,as well as one of the important research fields that Chinese and foreign scholars focus on.However,the bilateral trade partners of China have uneven levels of economic development,different geographic distances to China,and various cultural customs.Besides,it is influenced not only by the factors emphasized by traditional trading theories such as factor endowments,economy,and productive efficiency,but also by non-economic factors like the cultural differences of two countries.The existing research considers the cultural differences between two countries as a kind of distance between the two countries.Based on the pre-existing research,this paper carries out systematic theoretical summary and empirical study regarding the influences of cultural differences on the bilateral trades of China.After summarizing the mechanism of action of cultural differences on bilateral trades,the paper finds that cultural differences exert influences on bilateral trades through two ways.On the one hand,cultural differences can reduce the flow through increasing the trading cost;on the other hand,cultural differences can impact consumers' demand preference,and then influence the flow in bilateral trades.it is found that the scale of bilateral trade between China and its major trading partners is increasing from 1999 to 2015,but the growth rate tends to decline.The products structure of bilateral trade has been escalating.Capital or technology-intensive commodities become the mainstay of bilateral trade in China.China's bilateral trade is also showing a distinct country difference,and China tend to have greater trade scale with trade partners,which has similar culture with to China.On the aspect of empirical research,based on expanded mode of trade gravity,the present paper brings in the variable of cultural differences,and constructs measurement models.Through the research on the industrial data between China and its 40 major trading partner countries(or areas)from 1999 to 2015 classified according to SITC REV.3,the paper finds that compared to traditional resistances against trading:geographic distances,cultural differences also have obvious negative effects on the bilateral trades of China.Larger cultural distance between two countries leads to greater resistance against bilateral trade.This indicates that in international exchanges,more attention should be paid to the cultural communication and fusion with other countries,so as to create better cultural environments for the bilateral trades of China.