China's Manufacturing Industry And Its Governance And Upgrading In The Era Of Digital Economy

Since the reform and opening up,China's manufacturing industry has rapidly integrated itself into the Global Value Chain production division by virtue of factor cost advantages and excellent infrastructure support,mainly working on the low-tech,labor-intensive activities as process,manufacture and assemble along the value chain,which has brought about the rapid growth of the manufacturing industry and the rapid expansion of the trade volume.However,with the significant increase in factor costs,especially labor costs,and changes in the economic situation at home and abroad in recent years,China's manufacturing industry can no longer rely solely on low-value-added production activities to sustain the growth of trade.China's manufacturing industry is facing a transformation and upgrading and is in urgent need of leaping to the high end of the global value chain.On the other hand,since the1990 s,with the development of the Internet and its widespread reference in economic life,the digital economy has gradually emerged in western developed countries such as Europe and the United States and has become an important driving force for promoting economic restructuring and upgrading.Especially after the 2008 financial crisis,the major economic powers started to rethink manufacturing policies and realize the importance of the manufacturing industry.The realization of the digital transformation of manufacturing industry has become the key to power competition by the big powers for the new strategic high point in the world.China has also issued "Internet +" action,"Made in China 2025" plan and other related documents,the digital economy embedded in the traditional manufacturing industry is the "golden key" of China's manufacturing transformation and upgrading.The degree of innovation in manufacturing determines China's manufacturing can it no longer rely on cheap labor,capital investment and other factors to maintain its global competitiveness and achieve the global value chain upgrade.At the theoretical level,the global value chain analysis framework aims to help us understand how global industries are organized by examining and studying the structure of specific industries and the dynamics of their internal actors.In the digital economy,digitalization has become the key production factor that drives economic development.As a result,various industries including manufacturing industry have shown a new dynamic of the global value chain.New features and forms have emerged in the areas of upgrading,governance and added-value allocation,which are particularly evident in the major manufacturing countries and whose evolution needs to be thoroughly examined and better understood.In addition,the evolution of these GVC characteristics poses both opportunities and challenges for actors that were previously located in different locations along the "smile curve," and it is important for the economic sectors in less underdeveloped regions to integrate themselves into the global economy and access to global value chains,these new developments may bring more insights and paths.Based on this,this paper intends to make a realistic understanding and theoretical supplement to China's manufacturing industry and its governance and upgrading during the digital economy by comprehensively applying the interdisciplinaryresearch methods of economics,statistics and sociology.Firstly,this dissertation applies the global value chain decomposition model(WWZ model),vertical specialization index,the dominant comparative advantage index based on added-value,the global value chain participation index based on the forward(producer angle)linkages and the backward(terminal user angle)linkages to measure China's manufacturing industries.In general,since 2000,China's manufacturing industry has effectively participated in the global value chain,deepening its participation and benefiting from it,indicating that some achievements have been made in industrial upgrading.However,compared with developed countries,we must see that the manufacturing industry as a whole is still in the middle of the "smile curve" and is more engaged in low value-added activities.Then,this paper studies the relations between digital input and Global Value Chain participation.This section demonstrates that digitization has played an important role in driving changes in sectoral positions in the global value chain.The econometric model shows that in the era of digital economy,China's manufacturing industry needs to seize the new opportunities of informationization and digitization in order to achieve the goal of leaping to the high end of the global value chain.After that,this dissertation innovatively extends Gereffi's "Buyer-Driven" and "Producer-Driven" global value chain governance theories and defines the "consumer feedback-driven" GVC governance structure in the digital economy era.It points out that under the new governance structure,the original linear governance structure is segmented and embodied in the form of platform integration.Then taking China 's textile and clothing manufacturing industry as an example,this paper proves the upgrading of the real way from the departmental level-how the digital economy promotes the transformation of the global value chain and the governance structure of the traditional manufacturing industry,especially the labor-intensive manufacturing industry.The conclusion of this section is that digital input is the enabler to achieve functional upgrade and end-market upgrade for the SMEs,digital input also facilitates end-market upgrade of large companies.This paper continues to explore from the international level the realistic way to digitally upgrade the manufacturing industry and reshaping dynamics of the global value chain.In this section,this paper firstly proposes a new "smile curve" theory,namely,a new smile curve of complementary type and alternative type.Then taking the 3d typing industry as an example to examine the application of digital economy in the manufacturing industry and the path to upgrade.The conclusion shows that there are mainly process upgrading,product upgrading and inter-industry upgrading in the pre-production stage;the main process upgrading in the middle of production;There are mainly process upgrades and product upgrades in the late-production stage.In the whole production process,there are opportunities for inter-industry upgrading.At the same time,the conditions for the two kinds of value-added distribution modes are presented.This section reaches a conclusion that in the Digital Era,the developing countries are facing only two projections: precious opportunity to achieve in shoot along the GVC or creep down to lower stage along the GVC.Finally,this dissertation examines the role of government policy in amplifying the positive effect of digital economy brings to manufacturingupgrading from the perspective of Local Institutional Context by comparing the experience of German,Japan and US to give enlightenment to our country in implementing digital strategy of manufacturing industry.