Would the Transformation of Processing Trade Build China into a Manufacturer of Quality？ Based on the Technical Structure of Product Space

Abstract

Abstract: Processing trade is an important part of China's foreign trade and open economy, which has a positive impact on economic development, attracting foreign investment, promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, driving and stabilizing employment. After the outbreak of the international financial crisis, problems of processing trade such as low economic benefits, insufficient product innovation, and unbalanced regional development gradually become prominent. In this regard, China has continuously strengthened the graded management of firms and processing trade products, and the policy orientation of processing trade has changed from “introducing investment and technology” to “improving quality and efficiency”. China propose to upgrade the processing trade by promoting the technological content and added value of products, prolonging industry chain, diversifying business entities, and guiding the coordinated development of the eastern, central and western regions. Whether the development of the scale, spatial distribution, and business entities of processing trade promoted transformation and upgrading of export product structure since China's accession to WTO? How does the transformation and upgrading of processing trade promote China's development from a “world factory” to a “manufacturer of quality”?
To examine the accumulation of capacity endowment and the improvement of export competitiveness in product space from the perspective of technical structure, this paper uses product density and product complexity to construct the index of the technical structure of product space. Based on the export data of HS6 products in the China Customs database from 2000 to 2014, this paper carries out theoretical analysis and empirical test on how the scale, spatial distribution, and business entities of processing trade affect the upgrading of the technical structure of product space. The results of baseline regression show that the development and transformation of scale, spatial distribution, and the business entities of processing trade can promote the upgrading of the technical structure of product space. Mechanism analysis shows that the development of processing trade in inland regions promotes the increase of regional export concentration, and accelerates the upgrading of the technical structure of product space through agglomeration economic effect. The export of processing trade undertaken by state-owned enterprises and private enterprises is conducive to the transformation of the production mode of processing trade from commissioned processing to processing with imported materials, thus promoting the upgrading of the technical structure of product space.
The existing research fails to provide quantitative indicators of the national competitiveness of product space, and there is a relative lack of research on factors influencing transformation and upgrading ability based on product level.AIso, most of the studies exploring the impact of processing trade on the upgrading of China's export products are based on firm-level data from 2000 to 2006, which fail to include the transformation stage of the processing trade. The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First, this paper uses product density and product complexity to construct the index of the technical structure of product space, re-examines the technical structure of national product space based on product complexity, and provides a new perspective for the study of export product structure and industrial competitiveness; Second, using HS6 product-level data from 2000 to 2014, this paper investigates the impact of the development and transformation of processing trade on the “structural competitiveness” of product space, provid a micro research basis for the transformation and high-quality development of processing trade.

Key words: Processing Trade, Business Entity, Spatial Distribution, Product Density, Product Complexity

摘要： 本文利用产品密度和产品技术复杂度构造产品空间技术结构指标,基于2000—2014年中国海关6分位出口产品数据,考察加工贸易转型升级对产品空间技术结构竞争力的影响。研究结果表明,加工贸易规模、空间分布和经营主体的发展和转型对产品空间技术结构升级具有促进作用,引导内陆地区承接产业梯度转移时通过发挥集聚经济效应为产品空间技术结构升级提供支撑动力。国有企业和私营企业承担产品层面加工贸易有利于增强内资企业在加工贸易生产控制模式中的主导权,从而促进产品空间技术结构升级。

关键词: 加工贸易, 经营主体, 空间分布, 产品密度, 产品技术复杂度

CLC Number:

F752.62

DING Yibing, SONG Chang. Would the Transformation of Processing Trade Build China into a Manufacturer of Quality？ Based on the Technical Structure of Product Space[J]. Collected Essays on Finance and Economics, 2022, 38(7): 3-14.

丁一兵, 宋畅. 加工贸易转型能否推动“制造强国”建设——基于产品空间技术结构的视角[J]. 财经论丛, 2022, 38(7): 3-14.

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