Abstract: This paper is the first one to empirically examine the impact of the bilateral political relational distance on China’s export trade based on the bilateral political relational distance estimated according to the UNGA vote data. The findings show that: firstly, to shorten the bilateral political distance can significantly promote China’s export; secondly, a sound bilateral political relationship can create better external conditions for China’s export through the three specific channels, i.e., construction of culture mutual trust among the trade partners, establishing the regional free trade cooperation mechanism, and strengthening the political cooperation at the top level; thirdly, the export promoting effect from the improved bilateral political relationship is somewhat different towards the enterprises with different ownership, towards different export destination countries, and towards different types of export products. Moreover, the improvement of bilateral political relationship can promote the export of China’s products with comparative advantages, which have reinforced the advantageous of China’s export products in developed countries.

Key words: bilateral international political distance; export trade; ownership; comparative advantage