Research On The Impact Of Trade Facilitation In RCEP Countries On China’s Agricultural Exports

In recent years,with the WTO as the core of the multilateral trading system encountered "governance dilemma",global economic and trade rules entered a period of reshaping,highstandard free trade agreements become the "best path" for the reconstruction of international economic and trade rules.At the same time,economic and trade rules are gradually extending from "border measures" to "measures within borders",and trade facilitation has become a key area of concern for all countries.The trade facilitation in RCEP countries not only has an important impact on China’s agricultural exports,but also has implications for China to connect to higher-level trade facilitation rules.The existing literature mainly focuses on the measurement of trade facilitation and China’s agricultural exports to RCEP countries,and there are fewer studies on the impact of trade facilitation in RCEP countries on China’s agricultural exports.Trade facilitation mainly reduces the cost of agricultural exports through four aspects: transportation facilities,financial and market environment,government and rule of law environment,and information and communication technology,and thus expands the scale of agricultural exports.Based on the existing studies,a trade facilitation level measurement system including 4 primary indicators such as transportation facilities and 19 secondary indicators is constructed,and the weight of each secondary indicator is determined by using principal component analysis to form a comprehensive evaluation model of trade facilitation level,and the comprehensive trade facilitation level scores of RCEP member countries from 2009 to 2019 are measured,and the overall level scores and single indicator scores are compared and analyzed.The differences of trade facilitation among countries are compared and analyzed at two levels: the overall level score and the single indicator score.Based on the steadily expanding scale of China’s agricultural exports to RCEP countries,the relatively concentrated export markets and the single product structure,the variables such as trade facilitation level are added to the trade gravity model to obtain an extended trade gravity model,and the impact of the overall trade facilitation level score and the scores of the four primary indicators of RCEP countries on China’s agricultural exports are analyzed empirically.After this,heterogeneity analysis was conducted based on the differences in the types of agricultural products and country categories,the endogeneity issue was treated by using the instrumental variables method,and robustness tests were conducted by adding control variables and other methods.A mechanism test was conducted using a mediating effects model,and the agricultural export trade potential between China and RCEP countries was further analyzed based on the regression estimation results.The study concludes that the trade facilitation level of RCEP member countries is generally on an upward trend,and the trade facilitation level varies greatly among countries,with China’s trade facilitation level in the middle and upper reaches of the RCEP region.The financial and market environment scores,government and rule of law environment scores,and ICT scores of RCEP countries have a positive effect on China’s agricultural products.The promotion effect of trade facilitation level on China’s agricultural exports to developing countries is more obvious.The robustness test results support the conclusion that the level of trade facilitation in RCEP countries has a positive effect on China’s agricultural exports.The mechanism test indicates that trade costs play a mediating effect in the influence mechanism of trade facilitation,and China’s agricultural trade potential with most RCEP countries is still large.Therefore,China should promote the quality and efficiency of agricultural exports by promoting facility connectivity,optimizing the institutional environment,promoting high-quality agricultural development and building a network of high-standard free trade zones.