Impacts of visits by heads of states on China’s merchandise imports from members countries of the Belt and Road Initiative

Since 1990s, economic diplomacy has been a more attentive and important topic in global economy studies. Among other instruments, visits performed by heads of states have been studied as one of main indicators for economic diplomacy. Papers by Nitsch (2007), Zhang et al. (2014) show that visits performed by heads of states do matter in economic relations with other countries under scenarios of advanced and emerging economies. Taking into account the “number of visits by heads of states a year” at state level and nonstate level as instruments for economic diplomacy, the research paper employs bilateral gravity model to examine the relationship between the instruments and China’s merchandise import under the Belt and Road Initiative. The research paper’s findings are from 2013 to 2018, “one general visit by heads of states a year” could tentatively increase China’s merchandise imports from 5.6 per cent to 20.7 per cent. “One state-level visit by heads of states a year” could increase the BRI’s countries’ merchandise export to China an amount of from 6.4 per cent to 32.9 per cent. Similarly, “one state-level visit by the BRI heads of states a year” could increase China’s merchandise imports from the BRI’s partners an amount of around 39 per cent. Surprisingly, the research paper finds no relations between “one state-level visit by Chinese heads of states a year” and China’s merchandise imports during the research period and scope. Those findings are well in line with the findings of Nitsch (2007), Head and Ries (2009), Fuchs (2016).