سرمایه گذاری مستقیم خارجی، پردازش تجارت ، و پیچیدگی صادرات چین

China's export structure has shown a rapid shift towards more sophisticated industries. While some believe that this trend is a result of processing trade and foreign direct investment, the evidence is mixed. This paper examines variations in level of export sophistication across China's manufacturing industries. We find that an industry's level of export sophistication is positively related to the share of wholly foreign owned enterprises from OECD countries and the share of processing exports of foreign-invested enterprises, and negatively related to the share of processing exports of indigenous Chinese enterprises. Evidence from the relative export prices of Chinese goods, which measure within-product export sophistication, shows a similar pattern.

China's export structure has shown a rapid shift from labor-intensive industries to capital- and skill-intensive industries.1 As China builds up its technological capacity and skilled labor force, its exports are expected to be increasingly sophisticated. However, studies find that the level of sophistication of China's exports is already exceptionally high. Rodrik (2006) illustrates a cross-country relationship between the sophistication level of exports and the per capita income; he finds that “China is an outlier in terms of the overall sophistication of its exports: its export bundle is that of a country with an income-per-capita level three times higher than China's” (pp. 3–4). Schott (2008) measures the overlap of a country's exported products with that of OECD countries using the export similarity index (ESI) of Finger and Kreinin (1979); he finds that “China's overlap with the OECD across products is substantial and increasing over time” (p. 9). Why is China's export sophistication level so exceptionally high? Some believe that it is due to the size and nature of China's processing trade. Processing exports are significant to China's foreign trade, accounting for 55% of China's exports to the world in 2005 (Ferrantino et al., 2007, p. 10). Moreover, processing exports of Advanced Technology Products (ATP) accounted for more than 92% of China's total ATP exports every year since 1996, and over 95.5% every year since 2002 (Ferrantino et al., 2007, p. 37). Branstetter and Lardy (2006, p. 38) pointed out that “China is able to export huge quantities of electronic and information technology products only because it imports most of the high value-added parts and components that go into these goods.” Using production data rather than export data, Van Assche and Gangnes (2008) constructed a product-sophistication index similar to Rodrik's (2006) and argued that their measure is less subject to the influence of processing trade. Applying this measure, they found no evidence that China's electronics production activities are exceptionally sophisticated, which implies that Rodrik's (2006) finding of an exceptionally high level of export sophistication in China may be a result of the high sophistication of China's imported parts and components in the processing trade. In a recent study of the characteristics of China's exports, Amiti and Freund (forthcoming) showed evidence of a significant skill upgrade in China's total exports from 1992 to 2005, but no evidence of a skill upgrade after excluding processing exports from total exports. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is believed to be another important reason for China's exceptionally high level of export sophistication. Exports by foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) accounted for more than half of China's exports since 2001, and more than 85% of China's ATP exports every year since 2003 (Ferrantino et al., 2007, p. 40).2 The FDI explanation is reinforced by the role of FIEs in China's processing exports, especially in high-tech processing exports. Branstetter and Lardy (2006, p. 39) pointed out that “most exports of electronic and information products are assembled not by Chinese owned firms but by foreign firms that are using China as an export platform.” Given the strong arguments discussed above, it is important to estimate how significant a role processing trade and FDI play in determining the level of sophistication of China's exports. If they play a major role, then China's exceptionally high level of export sophistication may not imply that China has developed its own technological capacity for producing the highly sophisticated goods that would enable it to compete directly with advanced countries. On the other hand, if they are not major determinants of China's high level of export sophistication, then we need to find out what makes China so special in having the exceptionally high sophistication of exports documented by Rodrik (2006) and Schott (2008). For China's policy makers, it is important to know if domestic human capital has played a positive role in China's rising export sophistication, and if government policies towards FDI and processing trade have promoted the upgrade of China's export structure in ways benefitting China. Thus, research on the determinants of the sophistication of China's exports is of both academic and policy value. In a recent study, Wang and Wei (forthcoming) investigated the determinants of China's export sophistication level by examining its variations across different cities in China.3 Surprisingly, they found that neither processing trade nor FDI seem to have played an important role in raising China's export sophistication. Instead, they found that improvements in human capital and government policies in the form of tax-favored high-tech zones have been key determinants of China's rising export sophistication. One reason for Wang and Wei's (forthcoming) surprising finding on the role of FDI may be that they did not distinguish between the FDI from more technologically advanced OECD countries and the FDI from less technologically advanced sources such as Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan. Without such a distinction, an aggregate measure of FDI may prevent its positive effect on the level of sophistication of exports from being identified. In their assessment of the role of processing trade, Wang and Wei (forthcoming) found that the estimated effect of processing exports on the sophistication level of a Chinese city's exports is actually negative for exports produced outside policy zones. Additionally, they found that although the estimated effect of processing exports is positive for exports produced inside policy zones, it is smaller than that of non-processing exports. Wang and Wei (forthcoming) did not distinguish processing exports of foreign firms from those of indigenous Chinese firms. Such a distinction is important as the positive contribution of processing trade to China's rising level of export sophistication is often associated with the processing trade activities of multinational enterprises.4 In this paper, we carry out an industry-level analysis that examines variations in level of export sophistication across China's manufacturing industries. In contrast to Wang and Wei's (forthcoming) city-level study which provides an in-depth analysis of the variations in FDI and processing trade across Chinese regions, our industry-level study allows an in-depth analysis of industry variations. Thus the two studies are complementary. Moreover, our data distinguishes between FIEs funded by Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (HMT) and those funded by non-HMT (mainly OECD) countries, as well as between processing exports of FIEs and those of indigenous Chinese firms. This allows us to estimate the effects of the distinctive parts of FDI and processing trade, which generates new results contributing to the literature. To preview our results, we find that overall FDI and processing trade have no statistically significant effects on the sophistication of China's exports, which is in line with Wang and Wei (forthcoming). However, once FDI and processing trade are broken down into distinctive parts, two results emerge. First, the presence of wholly foreign owned enterprises (WFOEs) from OECD countries positively affects the export sophistication level of Chinese industries, while the presence of other types of foreign firms has no effect. Second, the export sophistication level of a Chinese industry depends positively on the share of processing exports of FIEs in the industry, and negatively on the share of processing exports of indigenous firms in the industry. Thus, the evidence from our study highlights the importance of dividing FDI and processing trade into different categories in identifying their impacts on the sophistication of China's exports. Like Wang and Wei (forthcoming), we also perform an analysis of unit values of exports to examine variations of export sophistication within the same product category. Schott (2008) observed that while China's product-mix overlap with the OECD is substantial and increasing over time, China's export prices (unit values) are “consistently lower than the prices of countries at a similar level of development, and this disparity increases over time in most industries” (pp. 9–10).5 Using the relative unit value of a Chinese industry's exports as measure of within-product export sophistication, we find that the measure is positively related to the share of WFOEs from OECD countries and the share of processing exports of FIEs, and negatively related to the share of processing exports of indigenous Chinese enterprises. Thus our results from within-product export sophistication are consistent with those from across-product export sophistication. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 defines measures of export sophistication and displays some characteristics of the sophistication of China's exports. Section 3 discusses several theoretical hypotheses on determinants of the sophistication of China's exports. Section 4 describes data and empirical specifications. Section 5 reports empirical results and provides interpretation. Section 6 concludes. An Appendix contains the detail of data sources and variable construction.

China's export structure has shown a rapid shift towards more sophisticated industries. Some studies find that China's overall export sophistication level is exceptionally high (Rodrik, 2006 and Schott, 2008). What explains the high sophistication level and the rapid upgrade of China's export structure? This question has drawn much attention but has not been adequately studied. This paper examines variations in level of export sophistication across China's manufacturing industries, focusing on the role of FDI and processing trade. Several authors argued that China's high export sophistication is mainly a result of FIEs exporting from China as well as processing trade in which sophisticated intermediate goods are imported to assemble final goods for exporting (Branstetter and Lardy, 2006 and Gilboy, 2004). There is evidence supporting such arguments (Amiti and Freund, forthcoming and Van Assche and Gangnes, 2008), but also evidence against them. In an analysis of variations in level of export sophistication across Chinese cities, Wang and Wei (forthcoming) found that neither processing trade nor FDI seems to have played an important role in generating the increased overlap between China's export structure and that of advanced countries; they identified human capital and government policy of high-tech zones as key explanatory variables of the differences of export structure sophistication among Chinese cities. Our study provides new evidence to the literature. Consistent with the findings of Wang and Wei (forthcoming), the overall presence of FIEs and processing exports shows statistically insignificant effects in our industry analysis. We find, however, that a Chinese industry's export sophistication level is positively related to the presence of OECD-WFOEs in the industry, but is not related to the presence of other types of FIEs including HMT-WFOEs. We also find that a Chinese industry's export sophistication is positively related to the share of processing exports of FIEs, but is negatively related to the share of processing exports of indigenous Chinese firms. The distinction between OECD and HMT firms, which was not drawn by Wang and Wei (forthcoming), allows us to identify a positive effect from OECD-WFOEs but no effect from HMT-WFOEs. Our data also distinguishes between processing exports of FIEs and of indigenous Chinese firms, which allows us to identify a positive correlation between the export sophistication level and processing exports of FIEs, and a negative correlation between the export sophistication level and processing exports of indigenous Chinese firms. We also perform an analysis on the relative export prices of Chinese goods, which is used as proxy for within-product export sophistication; the results from this analysis are consistent with those from the analysis of across-product export sophistication. Our results provide a useful first step to exploring the deeper reasons of China's rising export sophistication. In our sample period of 2000–2005, there was a pronounced compositional shift of FDI in China towards the form of WFOEs; we estimate that this shift contributed 63% to China's rising export structure sophistication in the period. The sample period also witnessed a declining trend of the share of processing exports in total exports, especially of the processing exports of indigenous Chinese firms; we estimate that this trend contributed 25% to China's rising export structure sophistication in the period. The two trends were facilitated by changes in Chinese government policies towards FDI and processing trade, in particular policy changes related to China's WTO entry in 2001.24 It would be useful for future research to investigate the effects of such policies on the sophistication of Chinese exports. Identifying the sources of China's export sophistication has important welfare implications. If China's rising export sophistication is driven by WFOEs, we must ask how much China benefits from this rising export sophistication. If China's export structure upgrading is driven by processing trade in which firms import sophisticated intermediate inputs to assemble sophisticated final goods, we must ask if there is any skill upgrading in China's value added. This paper is not able to address such questions as it requires more detailed data, but there is no doubt that exploring answers to these important questions should be at the top of future research agendas.