On The Optimization Path Of China’s Export Structure

With the accession to WTO, China’s economy has more tightly integrated into theworld economy, and China’s foreign trade has also made remark achievement. China hasbeen the largest goods exporter and the second largest goods importer of the world, in theyear2012the trade scale of China has amount to$388.68billion, the first time overtakethe America and become the country possessing the largest trade scale of the world. Withthe expansion of trade volume, the export structure has also been continually improvedand the share of electromechanical products and high-tech products in the export hasbeen increasing over years. By the year2012the electromechanical products andhigh-tech products has respectively accounted for57.56%and29.34of the export. Theexport structure is a comprehensive embodiment of a nation’s production, technology andeconomy development level, and the optimization of export structure had also showedthe improvement of the general industry competitiveness of China. But compared withmain developed countries of the world, China’s export still lies in the low level of thevalue chain of international specialization, in the meanwhile the pressure of the transitionof domestic economy growth pattern has become increasingly obvious, the restraint ofresource and environment also demands the upgrading of the traditional extensive exportgrowth pattern which mainly depends on the labor cost advantage. So to study therelevant theories and influencing factors of the optimization of export structure, andmake sound policies to promopt the export structure is important to both the sustainabledevelopment of China’s export and the transformation of the economy growth mode.The dissertation studied the involved issues about the optimization path of exportstructure by the way of combining the theoretical research and empirical analysis. Itsummarized the related theories of export structure optimization, and utilized RCA, TCand ESI indices to study the evolution of the comparative advantages of China’s exportproducts. The dissertation also used economic theories and analysis instruments toanalyze the main paths through which the evolution of factor endowments influence onthe export structure, and tested the relations by econometric analysis. On the basis of theanalysis result of the factor endowments evolution the dissertation studied to what theorythat the export structure optimization should adhere, also the rationalized suggestions on how to prompt export structure optimization were proposed.The main contents of the dissertation can be divided into four parts:The first part consists of chapter one and chapter two. It mainly reviewed the relatedliteratures from the perspective of determination factors of export structure, relationsbetween export products with economy growth, the evolution of export structure,theoretical suitability of comparative advantage to export structure optimization and thecountermeasure study on export structure optimization. In this part the related theoriesincluding static comparative advantage, dynamic comparative advantage and enterpriseheterogeneity theories were summarized and reviewed.The second part is chapter three. This chapter studied the evolution of China’sexport structure and classified it into three phases. It also analyzed the main problemsthat China’s export is facing, and used RCA, TC and ESI indices to compare thecomparative advantages evolution both in a vertical way and in a horizontal way amongrepresentative countries. This part also studied theoretical suitability of comparativeadvantage theories to export structure optimization and analyzed the evolution of China’sfactor endowment.The third part includes chapter4and5. The part analyzed the mechanism throughwhich factor endowment impact the export structure and gave the empirical study. Theresult shows that capital accumulation, human capital promotion and technologicalprogress are main paths that have effects on export structure. It then choses above indicesas independent variables and the share of capita-technology intensive products inexport as dependent variable, using the data from1990to2010, to analyze the correlatedrelations. The co-integration analysis result confirmed the before-mentioned conclusion.The fourth part is chapter six. This part analyzed the path to take to prompt theexport structure optimization. The main conclusions of the paper were proposed andcountermeasures and suggestions were proposed such as increasing investment on humancapital to enhance its level, encouraging technology innovation and guiding thetransformation of export pattern to a low-carbon development mode.