Research on the Impact of the Construction of Overseas Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones on the Innovation Level of Countries along the "the Belt and Road"

: From the perspective of the host country, this paper studies the impact of the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones on the innovation level of countries along "the Belt and Road" based on the national level panel data of 42 countries from 2003 to 2019. The research finds that the construction of cooperation zones has significantly improved the innovation level of countries along "the Belt and Road", and the national cooperation zones passing the assessment of the Ministry of Commerce have a stronger role in improving the innovation level of the host country. This conclusion is still valid after a variety of robustness tests. The conclusions of this study provide empirical evidence that the overseas economic and trade cooperation zone is a win-win "China" model, and has important reference significance for China to improve the function of the opening platform through the cooperation zone and promote the high-quality development of the "the Belt and Road".


Introduction
At the beginning of the 21st century, China's accession to the WTO, the wave of "going out" of enterprises has promoted the introduction of China's overseas economic and trade cooperation zone policy [1]. The proposal of "the Belt and Road" initiative in 2013 triggered a boom in the construction of the zone and gave it a new strategic position of "important undertaking point" [2]. By the end of 2021, the cooperation zones included in the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce of China have provided 392,000 jobs for local people and paid $6.6 billion in taxes and fees for the host country. The Zone can not only be an engine for promoting trade and economic growth of countries along the route, but also has the potential to help the Belt and Road Initiative achieve high-quality development [3]. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that China firmly pursues the open strategy of mutual benefit and win-win situation, promotes high-level opening up, and promotes the high-quality development of the Belt and Road to better benefit the people of all countries. However, there have always been doubts in the national community about China's intention to build overseas parks, which is considered to be only for "transferring excess capacity" and more of a political intention for the countries along the route. Is it really a mutually beneficial and win-win 'China' model to build overseas economic and trade cooperation zones?
From the perspective of the host country, this paper selects the national panel data of 42 countries along "the Belt and Road" from 2003 to 2019, empirically tests the impact of the construction of the cooperation zone on the innovation level of the countries along "the Belt and Road", and conducts instrumental variable test and robustness test.

Measurement
Model Settings, Variables and Data

Construction of model
This paper constructs the following model: INO it α 0 βCOCZ it μ i λ t X it ε it (1) Where i denotes the country under and t denotes the year; the explained variable INO is the innovation level of the host country; the core explanatory variable COCZ is the stock of cooperation zones established by China in country i in year t.

Explained variable: National innovation level: INO
In this paper, the number of scientific and technical journal articles in the host country is selected as a proxy variable for its innovation level and logarithmized.

Core explanatory variables: overseas economic and trade cooperation zone: COCZ
The core explanatory variable of this paper is the number of cooperation zones established by China in countries along "the Belt and Road", which is expressed by the stock of cooperation zones established by China in i countries in t years.

Control variables
Referring to the existing research [4], this paper selects the urbanization rate of the host country(ubr), the proportion of Internet users(inp), air passenger volume(lnarp) and the proportion of government fiscal expenditure(gof) as control variables. Taking into account the integrity and availability of data, this paper finally selects the data of 42 countries along the

Benchmark regression analysis
According to the setting of Equation (1), this section tests the effect of cooperation zone construction on the innovation level of the host country. The results are shown in Table 1. In Table 1, column (1) does not add any control variables; Add all control variables in column (2); Column (3) controls both country and year fixed effects. It can be found that the construction of the cooperation zone has a significant positive effect on the innovation level of the host country as a whole. t statistics in parentheses, * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01

Heterogeneity test
In 2015, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Finance issued the "Assessment Measures for Overseas Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones". As of 2019, there are 20 'national overseas economic and trade cooperation zones' confirmed and assessed by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Finance. In order to further study whether the size of the cooperation zone will affect its effect on the innovation level of the host country, the sample countries are divided into two categories according to whether the cooperation zone is national. Heterogeneity results are shown in Table 2. As shown in table 2, there are national cooperation zones in the sample countries in column (1), and there are no national cooperation zones in the sample countries in column (2). It can be found that the coefficient in column (1) is significantly greater than that in column (2), that is, the national cooperation zone has a stronger positive effect on the innovation level of the host country. This is because after passing the assessment, the cooperation zone can apply for special funds from the central government. In addition, local government support policies are generally biased towards such cooperation zones. t statistics in parentheses, * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01

Instrumental variable test
In order to further ensure the reliability of the empirical results and solve the endogenous problem, this paper selects instrumental variables to re-estimate the above model. The selected instrumental variables need to meet the following two conditions: first, the instrumental variables are related to the overseas economic and trade cooperation zone; Second, it is not related to the disturbance term of the original equation. Based on this, this paper selects whether China and the host country sign "the Belt and Road" cooperation document as the instrumental variable. On the one hand, during the preparation of the cooperation zone, the Chinese government needs to communicate and negotiate with the host country at the political level. Most of the host countries are countries with good diplomatic relations with China. China has always been firmly committed to expanding the "the Belt and Road" circle of friends. Therefore, the establishment of cooperation zones is closely related to whether the host country has signed cooperation documents with China. On the other hand, whether China and the host country sign "the Belt and Road" cooperation document is not directly related to the domestic innovation level of the host country, and has certain exogeneity. The results of the instrumental variable test are shown in Table 3. The estimation results are still consistent with the previous ones, so the estimation in this paper is robust.

Robust test
In order to further ensure the credibility of the benchmark regression results, this paper uses the substitution variable method to test the robustness, and replaces the explained variable with the number of patent applications in the host country. The estimated results are shown in Table 4. The results show that the coefficient is significantly positive at the level of 1%, which further verifies the robustness of the regression results.

Conclusions and policy recommendations
This paper mainly draws the following conclusions: the construction of the cooperation zone has significantly promoted the innovation level of "the Belt and Road", and the national cooperation zone has a stronger role in improving the innovation level of the host country. This conclusion is still valid after the instrumental variable test and the robustness test. Therefore, this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations: First, in view of the fact that the cooperation zone model has a significant positive effect on the innovation level of " the Belt and Road", the Chinese government should continue to deepen and promote this new investment model, vigorously promote Chinese enterprises to "go global", promote bilateral mutually beneficial and win-win development, and demonstrate the responsibility of a major country. Secondly, scientific and technological innovation should be taken as the construction goal of the cooperation zone to better play the role of innovationdriven. The government should better promote the implementation of "the Belt and Road" science and technology innovation action plan, guide and encourage enterprises to establish high-tech parks overseas, and increase the proportion of high-tech parks; The park should guide the settled enterprises to take the park positioning as the goal, encourage enterprises to achieve breakthroughs in technology research and development, product development and other aspects, and enhance the market value and brand value of their products.