A Study On The Effects Of Cultural Distance To Trade Under The Belt And Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by the Chinese government,plays a significant role in the course of human history as well as the development of society,with the intention of promoting social and economic development together with the collaborative development of politics,humanities,infrastructure construction and other aspects at the same time.Along with the deepening of researches in the economic field,more and more scholars and researchers are committed to research the influence of cultural factors on international trade,so as to propose suggestions for making relevant policies.In which,culture is a broad concept and plays an important role in the economic development.The most intuitive and basic factors that can reflect the differences between different cultures are language,ethnicity and religion.Within the 71 countries along the Belt and Road,all of the 11 Southeast Asia countries are involved.The Southeast Asia cultural circle is highly similar to Chinese culture,while it is various for that of respectively.Also the Southeast Asia countries have frequent trade with China for centuries,and therefore they are representative and research worthy.Taking qualitative analysis as the basic research method,the subject thesis studies the effect of culture on the trade volume between the two countries from aspects of language,ethnic group and religion.Firstly on the basis of China,through the number of common languages used by both China and the Southeast Asian countries,the percentage of common ethnicity,the percentage of practice for common religions as well as the importance respectively,design a calculation to calculate the Cultural Distance,i.e.the cultural difference and compare it with trade volumes between China and the Southeast Asia countries from the year 2000 to 2016 to figure out their interrelationship.Due to the decisive role of communication in trade,analyze the effect of language in communication by applying Linguistic Relativity,conclude that the larger difference of language the harder for trade communication,and analyze the effect of ethnicity and religion in trade communication by applying Transactional Analysis Theory,namely the individual's communication style is affected by their parents and even grandparents,similar communication style is easy for better understand the deep meaning behind the language,which will promote the trade process.According to the literature of previous research,scholars devoted themselves to the quantitative analysis of the effect of Cultural Distance to the trade volume between countries,which is the most mature and universal research method.Relatively,the related qualitative research is rarely involved.This quantitative analysis applied Hofstede's(1980)famous cultural dimensions theory which score the cultural dimensions for each country,apply the cultural index calculation formula put forward by Kogut and Singh(1988)the to calculate the comprehensive Cultural Distance between the two countries.Then use the trade gravity model for process the correlation and regression analysis to get significant results.After qualitative analysis in the thesis,the classical quantitative analysis method will be used to verify the research results in order to ensure the reliability of the sub research.Through the above research,put forward related suggestions to the enroute countries of The Belt and Road according to the specific conditions by language output,national exchanges and religious guidance,so as to promote the trade and economic development between Chinese and other countries.