Can Cultural Affinity Promote Trade ? HSK Test Data from the Belt and Road Countries

• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12245
• Author: Mengjun Xie
• Date: 01 May 2018

©2018 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China & World Economy / 109–126, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2018

109

*Mengjun Xie, Associate Professor, College of International Education, Shandong Technology and Business

University, China. Email: mjxie3@163.com. The author thanks the Chinese Testing International Limited

Company for the data. This study is supported by the Shandong Natural Science Fund (No. ZR2018QG004)

and the Shandong Social Science Fund (Nos. 18CGLJ44 and 15CGLJ19).

Can Cultural Anity Promote Trade ?

HSK Test Data from the Belt and Road Countries

Mengjun Xie*

Abstract

As Chinese culture is “going out,” more and more non-native Chinese speakers are

beginning to study Mandarin and are taking the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) test.

Mandarin has become a very important trade language for the Belt and Road countries.

This paper uses the dierence-in-dierence model and the Mahalanobis distance and the

nearest neighbor distance matching methods to study the internal relationship between

culture “going out” and foreign trade. We find that cultural affinity is an important

factor in promoting trade, and that the HSK project has expanded China’s exports to

the Belt and Road countries. Culture’s promotion eect in Asia is stronger than that in

Europe. Culture’s promotion eect shows the characteristics of regional dierences, a

time-lag and a uctuating upward trend. Therefore, further enhancing the international

inuence of its culture would help China to nd a new source of export growth.

Key words: Belt and Road Initiative, dierence-in-dierence model, export, HSK

JEL codes: E61, F15, F41

I. Introduction

The “going out” development strategy, which was proposed in 2000, is an important

component of China’s opening-up policy. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the

contemporary and specific “going out” strategy involved. Since it was proposed, it

has received considerable attention and recognition from the international community,

and has injected a new vitality into the leapfrogging development of China’s exports.

The concept of the BRI is derived from the ancient Silk Road, and this strategy was

ocially proposed by China in October 2013. Specically, we are referring to the Silk

Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road. The strategy aims to

Mengjun Xie / 109–126, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2018

©2018 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

110

strengthen cultural communication among countries, and to promote economic and trade

cooperation and regional economic growth. At present, the BRI includes 65 countries,1

comprising 63 percent of the world’s population and 29 percent of the world’s economic

aggregate. Since ancient times, China and the countries along the BRI have maintained

friendly cultural communication and good trade relations. Today, the BRI is a very

important trade conduit for China.

With the sustained and rapid economic growth, China’s merchandise export

volume reached US$209.76bn in 2016 (NBS, 2017), so that China has continually

ranked as the world’s largest exporter of goods. At the same time, China’s culture

“going out” has developed rapidly. Increasing numbers of people have begun

to study Mandarin and take the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) test, which is an

international standardized test of Chinese language prociency for non-native Chinese

speakers. According to the data from Hanban (the ocial organizer of HSK), there

are 1066 HSK test centers in 125 countries, and more than 6 million people took

various Chinese tests in 2016.2 Around 21,000 candidates sat the examination for the

International Chinese Language Teacher Certificate of Qualification. According to

the data from Chinese Testing International Limited Company, more than 1 million

people from 49 countries along the Belt and Road took the HSK test in 2016. The

HSK has played an important role for cultural communication among Asian, European

and African countries. As noted, the Belt and Road is an important conduit of China’s

exports and cultural communication, and provides many potential trade partners

to China. Culture “going out” and commodity “going out” are both very important

components of China’s “going out” strategy. Are there some internal relationships

between them? Can culture affinity promote trade? Does the increasing number of

HSK candidates promote China’s exports to countries along the Belt and Road?

Much of the published literature analyzes the impacts of economic, political,

geographical and other traditional factors on exports. Very few study the impact of

culture on exports from the perspective of economics. New institutional economists view

culture as an important part of the informal institution; it has an important inuence on

trade. Various global and regional trade cooperation agreements have made tari and

1The 65 countries include Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan,

Bosnia, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Egypt, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary,

India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Laos, Lebanon, Lithuania,

Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan,

Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia,

Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates,

Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

2Data are available from: http://www.hanban.edu.cn/report/index.html.