Abstract:
Over the past four years, China and ASEAN have been each other’s largest trading partners. Yunnan Province, serving as a crucial conduit to ASEAN, explores the factors influencing the export of agricultural products to this region, which contributes to the diversified development of China’s agricultural product trade and the integration of regional economies. This study focuses on the agricultural product export trade between Yunnan Province and the ten ASEAN countries from 2010 to 2022, employing an improved gravity model for empirical analysis. The results show that the proximity effect, the level of trade facilitation and revealed comparative advantage all contribute to promoting Yunnan Province’s agricultural exports to ASEAN countries to varying extents. The strength of these effects depends on the market size, population density, and geographical proximity of the trading partner countries. In light of these results, this paper proposes several policy recommendations: leveraging Yunnan’s geographical advantages to promote regional trade development, enhancing cooperation on trade facilitation with ASEAN countries to optimize the bilateral trade environment, and improving the international competitiveness of Yunnan’s agricultural products to expand the scale of export trade. These measures aim to fully realize the potential of bilateral agricultural product trade and achieve sustainable, high-quality development.