Research On The Impact Of Free Trade Agreements On The Quality Of China's Manufacturing Export Product

China has actively advocated regional trade liberalization,elevated the construction of Free Trade Zones to a national strategy,signed Free Trade Agreements with more countries,and launched a new round of opening up.Driven by Free Trade Agreements,the import and export scale of China’s goods trade continued to expand.In 2021,the total import and export volume of China’s goods trade was 39.1 trillion yuan,of which the total export volume of manufacturing industry was 14.5 trillion yuan,accounting for 67% of the total export volume of China’s goods trade.China’s manufacturing industry exports took an absolute advantage.Whether the signing of Free Trade Agreements has an impact on the quality of China’s manufacturing export products while driving the growth of the export scale of China’s manufacturing industry.The research on this issue has important theoretical and practical significance,helps enrich the research on Free Trade Agreements and the quality of China’s manufacturing export products,and helps China build a regional value chain and achieve high-quality economic development.Based on the HS6 quantile China’s manufacturing products export trade data under HS2002 from 2002 to 2019,firstly,using the post estimation method to measure the quality of export products of each sub sector of China’s manufacturing industry from2002 to 2019;secondly,using Difference in Differences model(DID)to empirically analyze the impact of signing Free Trade Agreements on the quality of China’s manufacturing export products;thirdly,exploring the specific paths of the impact of Free Trade Agreements on the quality of China’s manufacturing export products;finally,from the two dimensions of industry and country,analyzing the heterogeneity of the impact of Free Trade Agreements on the quality of China’s manufacturing export productsThe results show that:(1)Signing Free Trade Agreements can significantly promote the quality of China’s manufacturing export products,Free Trade Agreements can improve the quality of China’s manufacturing export products by factor allocation optimization and improving the concentration of export markets;(2)The scientific and technological innovation level of each sub sector of the manufacturing industry has a significant positive regulating effect,the improvement of the scientific and technological innovation level will strengthen the role of Free Trade Agreements in improving the quality of China’s manufacturing export products.At the same time,it is found that manufacturing industries with low environmental protection level can benefit from Free Trade Agreements,and low environmental protection level will,to a certain extent,strengthen the role of Free Trade Agreements in improving the quality,however,under the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals,it is not sustainable;(3)The impact of Free Trade Agreements on the quality of China’s manufacturing export products is heterogeneous in industry and country.Free Trade Agreements have different improvement effects on the quality of export products in different sub sectors of manufacturing industry,have more obvious improvement effects on the quality of export products of China’s low technology manufacturing industry,light textile industry and resource processing industry.China’s signing of Free Trade Agreements with low-and middle-income countries and countries along the "the Belt and Road" is more conducive to improving the quality of China’s manufacturing export products.Based on the above conclusions,the following suggestions are put forward: China should actively improve the quality of China’s manufacturing export products by signing and upgrading the Free Trade Agreements,especially by optimizing the allocation of factors and improving the concentration of the product export markets under the Free Trade Agreements.China’s manufacturing industry should actively carry out scientific and technological innovation,strengthen the quality improvement role of the Free Trade Agreements.The manufacturing industries with low environmental protection level should pay attention to the environmental protection provisions of the Free Trade Agreements to realize the "green" transformation.