Study On The Influencing Factors Of The Role Change Of Foreign Trade In China’s Economic Growth

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008,China’s foreign trade growth rate has continued to decline,falling below the double-digit rapid growth over the past 20 years.Meanwhile,the role of foreign trade in China’s economic growth has also dwindled from being the “engine” of economic growth to a weaker role,or even a negative one.At present,the development of China’s foreign trade is facing a complex and changeable internal and external environment.It is characterized by five overlaid periods,the development force transformation period,the economic structure adjustment period,the global value chain reconstruction period,the period of uncertain external demand and the foreign trade policy turning period.Great changes have taken place both at home and abroad,how to look at the changes in the role of foreign trade in China’s economic growth has become an important theoretical and practical proposition.Given the fact that the development force of China’s foreign trade has changed from traditional comparative advantage to scale economy and “big country market”,and China is constantly accelerating the process of industrialization and the reconstruction of global value chain,this paper analyzes the influencing factors of the changes of the role of foreign trade in China’s economic growth.On this basis,this paper also studies the prospects of foreign trade development,which bears a strong theoretical and practical significance to the question whether China should vigorously develop foreign trade and especially strive to expand exports in the future.This paper is divided into eight chapters.The first Chapter is the introduction.The second chapter combs the relevant theoretical basis of the role of foreign trade in economic growth.The third chapter reviews the changes of the role of foreign trade in China’s economic growth over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,which is divided into four stages.The role of foreign trade in China’s economic growth during different periods also slightly differs.At the same time,this paper analyzes the current academic debate about the role of foreign trade in economic growth.As the core chapters of this paper,the following three chapters makes a systematic study on the impact of the role of foreign trade in economic growth from the perspective of internal factors—the development force of the foreign trade,the development stage of industrialization and the external factors — reconstruction of global value chain.The research arguments are as follows.The fourth chapter studies the relationship between the evolution of development force and the change of the role of China’s foreign trade.Through the comparison of the trade surplus structure before and after the financial crisis in 2008,this paper identifies the changes of China’s comparative advantage.By observing the degree to which the data points deviate from the trend line in the graph,the changes of comparative advantage of specific products are measured.This paper reexamines some products that belong to the division of labor in global value chains with the help of(TSI)distribution map of trade specialization index.Then it analyzes the new development force of China’s foreign trade growth from the perspective of “ big country market”.Through the analysis,it is found that the traditional comparative advantage of our country is weakened,capital accumulation has become an important source of comparative advantage,and capital-intensive products gradually occupy the dominant position of the basket of comparative advantage products in our country.At the same time,with the economic development and the improvement of residents’ income,China’s large country market will gradually become a new driving force for the development of foreign trade.In a word,the traditional development force is weakened,and the new development force is still in gestation,which has become an important reason for our country entering the new stage of foreign trade and the change of the role of foreign trade in economic growth.The fifth chapter studies the relationship between the development stage of industrialization and the change of the role of China’s foreign trade.First of all,the relationship between industrialization and foreign trade is explained.Secondly,an international comparative study is carried out,which analyzes the changes of the role of foreign trade in each stage of industrialization development in the US,Germany and Japan.Then it makes an evaluation of the stage of China’s industrialization,analyzes the foreign trade situation of each stage of China’s industrialization development,and finally explains the significance of the experience of those countries to our country.Through the analysis,it is found that China is still in the process of industrialization,and just enters in the middle and final stages,the proportion of manufacturing industry exceeds that of the service industry,and the trend change of economic structure means that the development of China’s foreign trade has entered a turning point.Although this does not necessarily mean that the share of China’s foreign trade in the world market will decline immediately,it will certainly have a significant impact on the medium-and long-term development of China’s foreign trade.In a word,industry is the foundation,trade is the flow,the stage of industrialization development and the structural changes of the economy are the important reasons for the changes of China’s foreign trade and its role.Chapter 6 studies the relationship between the reconstruction of global value chain and the change of the role of China’s foreign trade.It is trendy among the international academic circles to analyze the causes of the contraction of global trade from the perspective of the global value chain and its changes,which naturally has a significant impact on the development of China’s foreign trade.First of all,this paper briefs the impact of the reconstruction of global value chain on the development of foreign trade.Secondly,it analyzes the changes of the role of China’s foreign trade in economic growth from the perspective of global value chain.Finally,on the basis of theoretical mechanism analysis,referring to the global value chain index established by OECD,based on the basic data provided by OECD database,this paper makes an empirical analysis on the relationship between the reconstruction of global value chain and the changes of China’s foreign trade role.The results show that the structural factor of global trade,that is,the reconstruction of global value chain,is an important reason for the major changes in the development of China’s foreign trade.Chapter 7 makes an empirical study on the development prospect of China’s foreign trade in the future based on the above three factors.This chapter brings the above three factors into the statistical analysis,and makes an empirical analysis of the development potential of China’s foreign trade through stochastic frontier model.Based on the empirical analysis of the data of 34 representative countries from 2000 to 2015,it is found that China’s per capita GDP,foreign per capita GDP,the proportion of foreign industrial value added in GDP,the proportion of China’s imports of intermediate goods in trade exports,and the proportion of foreign intermediate goods in trade export,the degree of international economy freedom,the control system of corruption,the efficiency of government and the quality of supervision play an important role in promoting the export potential of China’s foreign trade.However,the proportion of China’s industrial value added in GDP,the geographical distance between China and the target country,civil speech freedom and accountability,political stability,the level of the legal system,and the signed free trade agreements have a certain inhibitory effect on the improvement of the export potential of foreign trade.In addition,through the analysis of the average efficiency,it is found that whether it is seen from the overall or individual point of view,the developmentpotential of China’s foreign trade is far from being realized,and there is still big room for further exploitation.Chapter 8 is the conclusion and policy recommendations.Through the study of the development force of foreign trade,the stage of industrialization development and the reconstruction of global value chain,from the point of view of the foreign trade development force,China’s large country market has gradually become a new source of comparative advantage and a new driving force for the development of international trade.From the stage of economic development,the industrialization process of our country is yet to finish,the manufacturing industry is still the foundation of the development of the real economy.From the point of view of the reconstruction of the global value chain,China’s position in the global value chain will not change in the short term,and it will remain the “factory of the world” for a long time.This determines that foreign trade will still play an important role in economic growth.In the overall development strategy of the national economy,which focuses on quality improvement and structure adjustment,foreign trade still plays the role of “stabilizer” in the economic growth of our country.