The Global Financial Crisis and China’s Export in Belt and Road Countries: An Analysis Using Product-Level Data

ABSTRACT

Using SITC-3 product-level data from the CEPII-BACI database, we find that the share of imports from China by countries in the one-belt region slowed down significantly after the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008, which predates the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while there was no slowdown in the one-road region. Analysis using the difference-in-differences (DID) method reveals that the GFC inhibited China’s export to countries in the one-belt region and this effect has become stronger over time. This conclusion remains robust for other control groups over various time segment points and different product dimensions. Further analysis shows that the slowdown of China’s export expansion in landlocked countries, and in Europe, and the Middle East is the main contributing factor to the post-crisis slowdown in Chinese exports in the one-belt countries. Mechanism analysis shows that shrinkage in the geographical import networks of the one-belt countries, which has been aggravated by countries’ concentration of import sources and relative trade proximity with China, explains the slowdown in general. Heterogeneous analyses reveal that after the GFC, the share of imports from China fell least in primary and resource-based products, then in medium-tech and high-tech products, and fell most in low-tech products.

KEYWORDS:

• Global financial crisis
• the belt and road
• belt and road initiative
• trade networks

JEL:

• F14
• F42
• N70

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support from the Major Project of National Social Science Foundation of China (22&ZD061).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2023.2213378.

Notes

1. In Chinese history, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (about 200BC) sent a voyage to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), marking the beginning of the Maritime Silk Road, which gradually formed from that time.

2. Yang and Lin (2021) examine the impact of the BRI on machinery production networks. Bo et al. (2021) focus on China– Myanmar energy cooperation with the background of “one belt one road.”

3. Several studies also explore the policy implications after the GFC based on cross-country experiences (Claessens et al. 2010; Gourinchas & Kose, 2011).

4. Shi et al. (2012) noted that the differences in regional trade development caused by geographical factors are not unique to China. According to CEPII-BACI data, the average export value for 178 coastal economies worldwide in 2009 was USD59.1 billion, but was only USD19 billion for 32 inland economies. CEPII-BACI database: http://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37.

5. Shi et al. (2020) reveal that China’s import ban on plastic wastes issued in 2017 led to a dramatic shrinkage of the plastic waste trade network. Hu et al. (2023) show that the exports decline in China’s Rare earth elements primary materials (REEs-PMs) have led to the shrinkage of the REEs-PMs trade network.

6. Equation 9 presents the specific definition of trade proximity.

7. The product list is provided inhttps://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/classifications/correspondence-tables.asp.

8. According to the latest research released by the Industrialization Blue Book Research Group in the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in January 2016 (Huang et al. 2016).

9. The15 landlocked one-belt countries are Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Nepal, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. The 24 coastal one-belt countries are Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Timor-Leste, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Georgia, Turkey. The data defining landlocked countries come from CEPII.

10. See the list of countries inthe Supplementary Appendix.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Key Project of The National Social Science Foundation of China [22AJY018].