The Impact Of Infrastructure Construction Of The "Belt And Road" Countries On China's Export

Today,the "Belt and Road" initiative has made significant progress:the scope of policy communication among countries has been expanding,the level of infrastructure connectivity has been improved,trade and investment cooperation has reached a higher stage,financial capacity has been enhanced,and cultural exchanges have been closer.Infrastructure is the priority area and key direction of the "Belt and Road" construction.Since the "Belt and Road" initiative has been put forward,a series of transnational projects on infrastructure such as transportation,communication and energy have been brought to the agenda,such as the China-EU railway,China-Laos railway,China-central Asia natural gas pipeline line D,China-Russia crude oil pipeline,CMI transit optical cable,SMW5 submarine cables,etc.As an indispensable carrier of economic activities,infrastructure connectivity cannot only promote the personnel flows,but also strengthen the economic ties between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road" and promote the economic development of all parties.In recent years,with the acceleration of the shift of global value chains and supply chains from developed countries to developing countries,the formation and development of the global logistics system and its corresponding transportation and communication infrastructure network are also accelerating.At the same time,the transportation method in international trade is also changing from ocean transportation mainly to an organic combination of sea transportation,land transportation,air transportation and other transportation modes.A complex infrastructure network is taking shape.Therefore,the research combined with infrastructure and the "Belt and Road"initiative,which can not only further explain the relationship between infrastructure and trade,but also provide theoretical guidance for China to promote trade liberalization and realize interconnected development in the countries and regions along the "Belt and Road".Firstly,this paper has reviewed the existing literature,and found that the present research on infrastructure mostly focus on transport infrastructure only,and port infrastructure especially.Although part of the literature has considered the communication infrastructure,the energy infrastructure has been rarely involved.Besides,some research apply infrastructure as a whole,and the consideration of the infrastructure category is not comprehensive,so that most research can't fully reflect the influence of infrastructure construction on international trade under the background of the "Belt and Road" initiative.Secondly,this paper reviewed relevant international trade theories,including transaction cost theory,integration economics,the theory of international economic integration,and factor endowment theory,and then analyzed the affecting approaches of infrastructure construction of the "Belt and Road”countries upon China's export trade accordingly.Thirdly,this paper described the present trade condition between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road" and the infrastructure situation of the countries along the "Belt and Road".Through contrastive analysis,this paper found that China's export has shown the tendency of expansion in general since 2001;The trade between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road" focuses much more in some certain countries;The trade mode and export structure are relatively simple;The modes of transportation vary,air freight proportion presents a rising trend,but shipping is still the main form;In the field of trade-related infrastructure,the transportation infrastructure coverage of the countries along the "Belt and Road" surpasses the world average level,communications infrastructure users also exceeds the world average level,but far less than the European Union.Besides,many countries along the "Belt and Road" have rich energy resource endowment,but their infrastructure backwardness leads to power shortages,thus,the infrastructure construction remains to be promoted.On this basis,this paper expanded the original gravity model,refined the infrastructure to the transportation,communication,and energy scope to analyze the impact of export trade between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road",based on the panel data of 71 countries from 2001 to 201 7.At the same time,this paper analyzed the different impact of different infrastructures,and introduced outward foreign direct investment,free trade agreement and financial environment as control variables.The conclusions are as follows:The promotion of the integral infrastructure level can significantly promote China's export trade;Transport and communication infrastructure has significant positive effects on China's export trade;But because of the limited investment,long construction period and other reasons,the influence of energy infrastructure has not appeared.Finally,this paper summarized the analysis,and suggested to promote diversified transportation infrastructure,take effort to build communication infrastructure,strengthen energy cooperation designedly,facilitate cultural exchanges,and guide enterprises to participate in infrastructure construction.The innovation of this paper lies in updating the scope of the "Belt and Road"countries and the time interval,taking the impact of the combined influence of three types of infrastructure of the "Belt And Road" countries on China's export trade into account,and further exploring the different effects of different types of infrastructure,and introducing the new variable of financial environment.However,since there is no perfect evaluation system of infrastructure indicators at present,this paper has only consulted to the existing literature to select some variables to measure the infrastructure situation for simple calculation,which has certain limitations in the representativeness and completeness of the evaluation of infrastructure construction,and there may be some missing measurement factors.