Ladder Evolution and Structure Decomposition of China's Import Quality

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责任编辑：陈诗静

（School of Finance and Economics，Chongqing Three Gorges University，Wanzhou 404000，Chongqing，China）

Abstract：The gains of import trade mainly depend on import quality. In order to fully reveal the temporal characteristics， interval distribution and quality span of China's import quality，the authors use the relative unit value method to measure the quality of China's import products based on the CEPII- BACI database from 2000 to 2017；they construct ladders of China's import quality from three dimensions，which are global import destination，China’s import products and import source countries； and they also decompose the changes of China's overall import quality. The results show that，after China's accession to the WTO，China's import trade has achieved "quantity increase and quality improvement”. China’s ranking in the global import quality ladder is constantly improving，and China has become an important sales market of high-quality products in the world；the quality diversity of imported products is enhanced，and the average quality of imported products increases obviously；the quality heterogeneity among the import source countries is weakened，and the main cause of the quality gap has been transformed from the middle-low quality gap to the high-medium quality gap；the internal effect of products is the leading factor to promote the quality of China's imports，and the effect of resource reallocation is very limited. Based on this，to further improve China’s import quality，we should，first，carry out structural adjustment of import tariff，give priority to eliminating trade barriers for high- quality product import，and optimize the structure of imported product；second，we should attract more developed economies to participate trade arrangement led by China with the help of our advantages in import market，lead the development of export with the help of import，and seek for more bargaining chips；third，we should continue to explore more driving mechanism for import quality upgrading，give full play to the role of resources redistribution effect，lead the exiting of the imported products with low quality and the entering of imported products with high quality，and increase the market share of imported products with high quality；and fourth，we should try to avoid increasing import tariff against consuming products and high-tech products，and prevent tax transfer to domestic consumers and producers，which will lead to missing the significance of optimum tariff.

Key words：import