Assessing the displacement effect of exports with gravity trade model: China’s textile and clothing case and OBOR implications

This paper employs the gravity model to investigate how the growth of China’s textile and clothing (T&C) exports is displacing the exports of other Asian developing countries over the 1990-2015 period. Aggregate analyses were undertaken, and the endogeneity of Chinese exports were accounted by applying instrumental variables with country fixed effects. It was found that there was a negative impact of China’s emergence on T&C exports from other Asian developing countries. Further, we explored if the displacement effect varies across Asian countries and the result showed that a more pronounced effect was found in low-income than in high-income Asian countries. Therefore, the export competitiveness of China’s neighbours, both more and less developed Asian countries, are affected by the emergence of China in T&C Trade. The implications for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative are also discussed