Impact of the Opening of the New Suez Canal on the China-EU's Forest Products Trade Potential Under the Background of Belt and Road Initiative

China is a major exporter of forest products in the world, while Europe is one of the important markets for the export of China's forest products. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the China-EU trade of forest products. The Suez Canal is an important hub of the "Maritime Silk Road" in the China-EU trade of forest products. The improvement of the navigable capacity of the new Suez Canal will surely have a huge impact on the potential of China-EU forest products trade. In this paper, we use the stochastic frontier gravitation model to empirically study the impact of the opening of the new Suez Canal on the potential of China-EU forest products trade, and reach the following conclusions: the enhancement of the navigational capacity of the new Suez Canal has a significant impact on the decline of the potential of China-EU forest products trade and such impact has weakened over time; the new Suez Canal has a greater impact on the export of forest products to China compared with import. The drop in the potential for Sino-EU forest products trade is mainly caused by the drop in the export trade potential, accounting for 76.92% to 86.6% of the total volume. In the long run, the development potential of China-EU forest products trade is not as promising as we expect.