The Impact Of International Air Routes Openness On China’s Foreign Trade

As an expensive but fast mode of transportation,air transportation can make up for the shortcomings of sea transportation,and its development is bound to have an important impact on China’s foreign trade.The opening of international air routes provides a new opportunity for the advantages of air transportation and the comparative advantages of Chinese product structure.Based on flight data,air transport data and total trade data of China’s provinces and other countries,we find that China’s air transport has been growing steadily from 2000 to 2013,and the number of international routes opened and the number of countries and regions connected with each other continued to increase.However,there are obvious imbalances in regional development.Advanced products represented by machinery are the main component of China’s air export growth.Through empirical research of the influencing factors of the bilateral trade volume between China’s provinces and other countries,we also find that opening international flights can significantly increase the total export and import trade of Chinese provinces,and can significantly increase the surplus of foreign trade one year after air routes openness.Specifically,the stable opening of an international route can bring an average of US $ 1.009 to US $ 1.111 billion in export growth and an import growth of US $ 393-477 million.And the comparative advantage of the industry have a positive regulatory effect on the promotion effect.These conclusions are obvious consistent in different income levels,different continents,different provinces,different transportation,and different transportation distances group.Based on the test results,we believe that China can actively develop international routes,build transit hubs in inland areas,and actively develop routes with Russia,Europe,South Asia,Africa and other countries to achieve balanced development of China’s air transportation and stimulate trade growth.And take advantage of China’s comparative advantages in export of air transport products to make China’s industrial structure grown to a higher level.We hope these research results can provide a reference for accurately assessing the economic benefits of airlines and developing the industrial economy of airspace.