Study on the current situation and influencing factors of corn import trade in China – based on the trade gravity model

Abstract With the rapid development of China’s economy and society, the income level of Chinese residents is increasing day by day, and the dietary consumption structure of domestic residents is constantly optimized and upgraded. The consumption demand for livestock products such as meat, eggs and milk, and corn starch industrial products is increasing day by day. Therefore, as the main raw material of feed industry and deep processing owners, the consumption scale of China corn market is constantly expanding. However, the corresponding domestic corn production scale has not expanded, and the domestic corn production presents an obvious problem of insufficient supply scale, which leads to a sharp and rapid increase in the number of corn imports in China, which seriously impacts the domestic corn market and affects China’s healthy development of corn industry. In recent years, the continuous spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has seriously affected the global grain production and trade. The fierce military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the two major grain exporting countries, has once again brought a serious adverse impact on the supply and price of the global grain market, resulting in an increase in the import cost of corn in China and a change in the import pattern of corn in China. In this regard, this study analyzes the current situation of corn production and import trade in China, and based on the relevant trade data between China and major corn importing countries from 2013 to 2022, establishes a trade gravity model to quantitatively evaluate the main factors affecting China’s corn import trade, and analyzes the trade potential of sample countries. It was found that in 2022, China’s import and export trade volume and trade value were 20.62 million tons and 7.11 billion US dollars, respectively, compared with 2013, trade volume and trade volume increased by 6.3 times. Statistics on the potential types of various trading countries showed that the proportion of potential countries was 14.2%, and Brazil had the greatest potential in China’s corn import trade. The proportion of potential expanding countries is about 71.4%, and Laos is a mature country with less opportunities for further development. In order to promote the benign development of the domestic corn industry and the development of China’s corn import trade, this paper puts forward a series of countermeasure suggestions based on the above research.