A Quantitative Analysis of Trade Flow Determinants Between China and Belt and Road Initiative Partner Countries

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_41How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Belt and Road Initiative; Gravity Model; Trade Flows; Outward Direct Investment; Random Effects

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has significantly reshaped the global trade landscape. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the changing macroeconomic factors that drive bilateral trade flows. This study focuses on identifying the main determinants of trade flows between China and its major BRI partners, particularly Pakistan and Kazakhstan, from 2015 to 2025. The study collects relevant data from the World Bank, the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade), and the Ministry of Commerce, and conducts an analysis. A random effects gravity model is adopted, and the outward direct investment (ODI) is subjected to an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation. Three main conclusions are drawn from this study. First, the growth of a partner country’s economic scale is the most important driving force for expanding bilateral trade. Second, despite improvements in transportation infrastructure, geographical distance remains a structural barrier to the growth of trade volume. Third, although China’s GDP, ODI, and free trade agreements have a positive guiding effect on bilateral trade, their immediate statistical significance in this specific group of countries is weak, indicating policy lags and investment implementation cycles.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yijia Peng
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/02
TI  - A Quantitative Analysis of Trade Flow Determinants Between China and Belt and Road Initiative Partner Countries
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 4th International Conference on Digital Economy and Management Science (CDEMS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 386
EP  - 391
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_41
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_41
ID  - Peng2026
ER  -