Impact Of RCEP On China’s Cross-border E-commerce Industry

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP)constitutes the free trade area with the largest population,the most diverse membership structure and the greatest potential for development in the world today.The implementation of the RCEP has brought about unified rules and various institutional benefits within the region,significantly reducing trade uncertainties among member countries and facilitating cross-border e-commerce exports.As an important participant in regional economic cooperation,China’s high-quality implementation of the RCEP and collaboration with all parties to promote regional economic integration,as well as its vigorous promotion of cross-border e-commerce exports to countries around the world with the assistance of the RCEP,has become one of the most important topics this year.This article focuses on the positive effects of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP)on China’s cross-border e-commerce exports.After a detailed review of the RCEP provisions and related research by scholars at home and abroad,a theoretical model is established to analyze the comprehensive trade effects of RCEP and the promotion of cross-border e-commerce exports through the reduction of trade uncertainty and facilitation of trade.Three theoretical hypotheses are formulated and empirical verification is conducted using the DID model.For the empirical part,a panel data set is constructed at the national-industry-monthly level based on the waybills data of Shunyou,a leading cross-border e-commerce logistics company in China,from January 2021 to December 2022.The implementation of RCEP is used as the treatment variable for the DID and PSM-DID regression analysis,which includes multiple fixed effects to eliminate interference from time,country,industry and other factors.The empirical results show that:(1)during the sample period,the implementation of RCEP led to an average growth of about 7.1% in cross-border e-commerce exports in various industries in China;(2)the above export promotion effect is more significant in the samples of consumer goods,low and medium-tech and low-tech industries,textile and clothing industries,and developing countries;(3)the research on trade margin analysis shows that the implementation of RCEP significantly increased the expansion and intensive margins of China’s industry exports while reducing the price margin;(4)in the mechanism analysis,the growth effect of cross-border e-commerce exports induced by RCEP is closely related to the two paths of reducing trade uncertainty and increasing trade facilitation.The above conclusions remain highly significant after robustness tests,such as changing the time interval,handling outliers,changing the explained variables,and conducting permutation tests.The positive effects of the RCEP implementation on China’s cross-border e-commerce exports,specifically the reduction of trade uncertainty and the enhancement of trade facilitation,underscore the significance of the agreement to China.China should seize the trade dividend released by the RCEP and further lower the trade uncertainty and institutional barriers with other countries.Both the government and cross-border e-commerce enterprises at all levels should focus on improving the domestic business environment and enhancing their understanding of policies.Additionally,governments of all countries should actively improve trade facilitation,enhance supervision efficiency,improve infrastructure,and perfect the e-commerce environment,jointly promoting the new environment for cross-border e-commerce exports.This study has made certain innovations in research methods and data selection,employing the DID method and utilizing the backend data of a leading cross-border e-commerce logistics enterprise in constructing a panel data set describing China’s cross-border e-commerce exports at the national-industry-month level before and after the RCEP implementation.Thus,this study provides a more scientific and objective assessment of the impact of RCEP implementation on China’s cross-border e-commerce exports,which has significant implications for the future development of China’s cross-border e-commerce exports.