From trade expansion to green growth: agricultural trade and sustainable development in the China–South and Southeast Asia corridor

Against the backdrop of deepening global climate governance and the accelerated advancement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the green and low-carbon transformation of the agricultural sector has emerged as a core strategic issue in regional economic and trade cooperation. As a critical nexus connecting regional economies, the green effects of agricultural product trade on agricultural green performance have attracted considerable scholarly attention. Drawing on the Antweiler–Copeland–Taylor (ACT) framework—which decomposes trade–environment effects into scale, structural, and technological effects—this study conducts a systematic analysis of the green effects of agricultural product trade between China and countries in South and Southeast Asia, examining the far-reaching implications of bilateral trade expansion for agricultural green performance and agricultural green performance across the region. The findings carry significant theoretical and practical relevance for countries along the Belt and Road Initiative in achieving coordinated regional agricultural green performance. To this end, this paper employs panel data spanning 2000–2023 for China and 19 major trading partners in South and Southeast Asia. By measuring the regional level of agricultural green performance, the study empirically investigates the role of bilateral agricultural product trade in driving agricultural green transformation. The results indicate that: (1) agricultural product trade between China and South and Southeast Asian countries has significantly enhanced regional agricultural green performance; the expansion of trade scale has not caused environmental deterioration but has, through optimised resource allocation, generated significant net emission-reduction characteristics; (2) significant heterogeneity exists in the green effects of trade structures—export trade plays a pronounced role in promoting the greening of agricultural production methods in exporting partner countries, whilst the contribution of import trade is comparatively smaller in magnitude; (3) the policy environment serves as a key moderating factor—although China's "Dual Carbon" strategy and regional ecological programmes exhibit certain crowding-out effects in the short term; (4) mechanism analysis reveals that improvements in government governance capacity and digital infrastructure development constitute the core transmission channels through which trade achieves green effects. On this basis, four policy implications are proposed: first, optimise the trade structure by employing differentiated policies to guide exports towards low-emission, high-value-added transformation, thereby strengthening the green orientation of trade expansion; second, enhance cross-border policy coordination to promote the convergence of regional environmental standards and technical cooperation, mitigating the short-term crowding-out effects of environmental policies; third, consolidate institutional and digital foundations by deepening inter-governmental governance cooperation and increasing investment in digital infrastructure to facilitate the transmission of green effects; fourth, promote the coordinated upgrading of industrial chains through mutual recognition of green certifications and the development of low-carbon logistics, so as to enhance the long-term green benefits of trade.