A Study On The Impact Of Language Barriers On Import And Export Trade Between China And Participating Countries In CIIE

As a new opportunity and window for China to build a new development pattern,the China International Import Expo(CIIE)will enable exhibitors from more countries to see the development opportunities of the Chinese market and have a better understanding of the development trends of the Chinese economy.Leading companies from around the world are actively participating in the CIIE,showcasing cutting-edge products and new and innovative services.Many countries participate in the Expo,seeking investment and cooperation opportunities.International trade is the international exchange of goods and services.Scholars are beginning to pay attention to the influence of language on international trade.The language barrier index can quantify the language variables in international trade.Language economics itself is a newly emerging interdisciplinary field,and has not yet formed a unified research paradigm and research methods.In addition,the source of research data for exhibitions is limited,so research combining language and exhibitions is very limited.China International Import Expo has just been held for five years,but it has not been held for a long time.Most scholars are still in the process of exploring the political significance of CIIE itself,and there is still a lack of relevant trade studies on CIIE.On the basis of language economics and trade cost theory,numerous scholars have found that language factors have a non-negligible impact on international trade.This paper takes the countries or regions exhibiting at the CIIE as the research object and uses the data on trade flows between the exhibiting countries and China from 2017-2021 to explore how language barriers affect the trade flows between China and the exhibitors.This paper uses an empirical analysis method,using a trade gravity model,and draws on authoritative scholars’ language barrier index calculation to obtain the language barrier index between the official language of the participating countries in the CIIE and Chinese,and uses it as the core variable for regression analysis,further dividing the exhibitors into developed countries or regions and other countries or regions according to their GDP per capita,and exploring whether language barriers have different effects on exhibitors with different levels of development.The regression analysis was further divided into developed countries or regions and other countries or regions according to GDP per capita,to investigate whether language barriers have different effects on exhibitors with different levels of development.The results of the study show that:(1)There is a positive relationship between language barriers and trade flows in the scope of the participating countries in the CIIE,the greater the difference between the language of the participating countries and Chinese,the greater the trade flows between China and that country.(2)The greater the difference between the official language of the more developed exhibiting countries or regions and the Chinese,the closer the trade flows between China and that country,and the less economically developed countries or regions,the impact of language barriers on trade flows is not significant.Therefore,this study makes recommendations that the government should improve the openness and service of the CIIE;participating countries should collect CIIE inquiries in advance and improve the participation.By exploring the impact of language barrier index on trade flow between China and the countries or regions participating in the CIIE,this paper investigates the facilitating effect of language barrier on trade flow and makes incremental contributions to relevant studies.At the same time,this paper investigated the relationship between language barrier and trade volume by empirical study,which has certain reference significance for future relevant research.