国家间政治关系对行业贸易的影响：基于中国的经验研究

The Heterogeneous Effect of Political Relations on Trade:An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Sectoral Data

利用国际关系学的研究成果——中外关系定量指数及2000—2006年海关月度贸易数据,本文考察了国家间政治关系对中国行业进口,尤其是国企主导行业及战略性行业、上游行业进口的影响。研究发现,平均而言,中国与其他国家间的政治关系波动对中国的行业进口并没有显著影响。在进一步考虑国家差异及国企占比与战略性行业的交互作用后,发现政治关系对贸易的影响仅在特定情况下显著,且在不同贸易伙伴国间存在结构性差异:就中国从日本的进口而言,在上游(或战略性)行业,国企较为主导行业的进口受政治关系影响更大,在下游(或非战略性)行业,情况则相反;而就中国从美国的进口来看,在各类行业均未观察到政治关系的显著影响。本文通过规范的实证研究,证实了中国以经济建设为中心,与其他国家的政治关系服务于对外开放与经贸发展的政策。在这一时期,中国与他国的政治关系并非影响中国行业进口的重要因素,现有研究提出的国家控制渠道仅在特定情况下,对特定的贸易伙伴国有显著作用。

Using the Dataset of China＇s Foreign Relations with Major Powers developed by Chinese leading scholars on international relations and monthly trade data from 2000 to 2006 from China Customs, this paper explores the effect of international political relations on sectoral imports of China, especially imports from industries dominated by state-owned enterprises and imports of strategic and upstream industries. We found that on average, changes of the political relations between China and the partner country does not have significant effect on disaggregated imports of China. After considering the heterogeneity of partner countries as well as the interaction between state-owned-enterprise dominance and strategic characteristic of industries, we found that on what conditions is political relations likely to affect trade varies among partner countries. As for the Chinese imports from Japan, in upstream sectors, imports by industries dominated by state-owned enterprises are more vulnerable to political relations than imports by industries dominated by non- state-owned firms, while in downstream sectors, this result is reversed. For imports from the U. S. , we do not find significant effect on imports by different sectors. This paper, by utilizing rigorous empirical methods, first provides evidences for the policy of China that focuses more on the economic development, with political relations serving the opening-up and the development of trade relations with other countries. Political relations with other countries do not play significant role on sectoral imports of China and the state-control mechanism suggested by existing studies is only significant for specific partner countries and under specific conditions.