Abstract: The rapid development of China′s Internet and the implementation of the concept of “Internet plus” provide strong impetus for China′s economic growth, especially the expansion of the scale of domestic and foreign trade.An interesting question is: under the premise of a certain growth in total demand, does the rapid development of China′s Internet promote import demand or domestic trade?Based on the panel data of 31 provinces and cities from 2002 to 2018, this paper examines the impact of Internet development on China′s import rate from the perspective of time and space by taking the import rate as an index to measure the degree of export-oriented regional demand.The results show that the development of Internet in China in recent years has significantly inhibited the import rate of provinces and cities, and is more inclined to promote domestic demand;regional regression shows that the inhibitory effect is most significant in eastern provinces, followed by central provinces and western provinces.The 10-year rolling regression shows that, with the development of time, the Internet′s inhibition on China′s import rate gradually weakens, turns into a positive role, and the promotion effect gradually increases;taking the freight exchange between national railway administrative regions as a measure of domestic trade, the reverse robustness test also draws a more consistent conclusion.In the context of COVID-19 that may lead to global trade recession, the government should strengthen the construction of Internet infrastructure, provide a good policy environment for the Internet industry and e-commerce enterprises, and give full play to the role of Internet development in stimulating domestic demand.

Key words: Internet development, import rate, e-commerce