Abstract: The stability of a country’s trade relationship with other countries will be affected by the level of trust between the two sides; transaction cost is an important factor to determine whether a bilateral trade can be maintained for a long time in the international market with widely existed information asymmetry. On the basis of the export product data of China to 45 countries between 2006-2013, this paper adopts the results of BBC global influence survey to measure the country image and employs the survival analysis method and the binary dependent variable analytical method to check the influence of China’s country image in the eyes of its trade partners on the export duration of China’s products. The findings show that in addition to the factors related to the traditional trade trust, the better China’s country image judged by the trade partners, the longer the duration of its export and the fewer the risks of export failure will be, namely, the lack of trust in the transaction of export products can be offset by trust of a country. In addition, the positive effect of country image on the duration of export is much more significant in homogeneous goods, consumer goods, lower-evaluated countries and developed countries.

Key words: duration of export; survival analysis; country image; trust in transaction