The Impact of China’ s Environmental Regulation of the Pig Industry on Pork Imports

Using the dynamic panel data between China and its 17 pork trade partners, this paper established an extended trade gravity model for China’ s pork imports. It estimated the dynamic effects of differences in environmental regulation levels on the scale of China’ s pork imports by applying a systematic GMM method. The empirical results showed that, there was an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between the environmental regulation of China’ s pig industry and the scale of its pork imports. In the early phases, environmental regulation increased the cost of pig production and the price of pork, which encouraged pork imports of China. In the later phases, pig raising enterprises adapted to the environmental regulation, improving their industrial competitiveness through the environmental protection technology innovation and scale effect of production, which reduced pork imports of China.