Foreign Value-added in China's Manufactured Exports:Implications for China's Trade Imbalance

作     者：Jun Zhang Dongbo Tang Yubo Zhan 

作者机构：China Center for Economic StudiesFudan University Department of EconomicsShanghai University 

出 版 物：《China & World Economy》 (中国与世界经济（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2012年第20卷第1期

页      面：27-48页

核心收录：

学科分类：0202[经济学-应用经济学] 02[经济学] 1202[管理学-工商管理] 0201[经济学-理论经济学] 020206[经济学-国际贸易学] 020205[经济学-产业经济学] 0701[理学-数学] 

基　　金：under the research project "The Opening Policy and Industrial Upgrading in China:Theory,Empirics and Policy"(10JJD790009) sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China 

主　　题：processing trade trade imbalance value-added vertical specialization 

摘      要：Economists have recently become interested in weighting how much domestic value-added is actually included in China＇ s exports. Formally, the proportion of foreign and domestic contents could be identified by calculating the vertical specialization share using noncompetitive input-output tables. Applying such a method to the Chinese case, however, would result in a big measurement bias because China has a large share of processing exports, which utilize a disproportionately high percentage of imported intermediates. This paper, by directly employing 2008 trade data for which imported intermediates in both processing and non-processing trade could be identified by means of various trade patterns, provides a simplified way to estimate the share of foreign/domestic value-added included in industry-level manufactured exports. This paper finds that the vertical specialization share of China＇ s processing exports was about 56 percent in 2008, compared to about 10 percent for ordinary exports. It also finds that the sectors that experienced fast expansion of processing exports have a much higher share of foreign contents. Since processing exports accoant for about half of Chinese exports, the prevailing trade statistics, which focus on gross values rather than the value-added of exports and imports, has obviously overstated the bilateral trade imbalances, especially between China and the USA.