Do Higher-Quality Regional Trade Agreements Improve the Quality of Export Products from China to “One-Belt One-Road” Countries?*

Abstract

The paper examines the impact of the quality of regional trade agreements (RTA) on the quality of China's exports to the ‘Belt and Road' countries. We use enterprise and product data from China and from 11 Belt and Road countries that have signed RTA with China. The quality of the RTA, as measured by clause coverage and law commitment indexes, significant impact in the quality of export products. In RTAs, the commitment rate plays an overall important role; however, the clause coverage rate of the new generation of WTO-X agreements has a greater effect than for WTO+ agreements, especially for medium and high-technology products, which must meet the high standards. The effect of high-quality RTA is greater in improving the quality of Chinese state-owned enterprises' products exported to Belt and Road countries when compared with those of private and foreign-holding companies.