The Measurement Of Foreign Investment Opening In China’s Service Industry And The Analysis Of Its Economic Effect

In recent years,the development potential of service trade is gradually emerging,developed countries and some emerging economies have gradually formed an industrial structure dominated by the service industry.Especially after the global outbreak of COVID-19,service technologies such as information transmission,remote interaction,data storage and conversion have been further innovated,and more new formats and models of the service industry have been gradually derived.Against such an international background,Chinese government leaders have repeatedly put forward the development orientation of ’expanding the opening up of the service industry’,and further clarified the task of ’actively utilizing foreign capital and setting up pilot projects for the opening up of the service industry’.Expanding the opening up of the service industry is not only a powerful measure to further mature the industrial structure of China’s service industry,but also an important channel to help build a new development pattern of international and domestic dual circulation.Under the dual role of such an international background and domestic demand,China has launched a series of opening-up policies for the service industry from the central to the local level,actively expanding the opening-up of the service industry by providing tax incentives,giving investment incentives and simplifying administrative examination and approval.Improving the scale and quality of investment promotion,and promote the upgrading and structural optimization of China’s service industry.With the strong support of these policies,China’s service industry has achieved remarkable results in opening up,and the service industry’s contribution to the national economy has gradually increased.At the same time,under the influence of regional differentiated opening-up policies,various regions have gradually formed an echelon-style opening of the service industry.Nevertheless,compared with developed countries or regions,China’s service industry liberalization process is still relatively slow,and restrictions on opening up the service industry have gradually become the focus of developed countries’ criticism of China.Therefore,some Chinese scholars and institutions have conducted research on issues related to the opening of the service industry,trying to find a way to open up the service industry with Chinese characteristics.However,after sorting out and summarizing relevant research,this paper finds that the existing research cannot respond well to the criticism of international public opinion on the opening of China’s service industry,and does not highlight the fact that the central government and local governments gave foreign capital ’ultra-national treatment’ in the early years.It also did not pay attention to the differences in the opening of the service industry in various regions of China,and there is a certain room for improvement in the quantification and effect analysis of the opening of the service industry.Therefore,based on the existing research foundation,this paper focuses on the’institutional’ opening perspective of China’s service industry,and constructs an index measurement system for the opening of foreign investment in China’s service industry from macro to micro perspectives.This system including multi-level perspectives,and it is the first time to quantify the policy texts involved in a large number of foreign investment in the service industry.It not only expands the measurement scope and time dimension of this indicator,improves the scoring principle and classification weight of this indicator,but also more clearly reflects the fact of the ’ultra-national treatment’policy and the differentiated characteristics of regional service industry foreign investment opening.Further,this paper uses the measured level of openness to foreign investment in China’s service industry to theoretically and empirically analyze the impact of openness to foreign investment in the service industry on regional economic growth,manufacturing productivity,service productivity,and performance of enterprise in the service sector.Finally,according to the main conclusions obtained in each part,this paper puts forward targeted policy recommendations from many aspects.The main contents of this paper are summarized as follows.Firstly,this paper expounds the theory and mechanism of a series of economic effects of the opening of foreign capital in the service industry from macro to micro levels,that is,the impact on regional economic growth,manufacturing productivity,service productivity and service industry enterprise performance.And putting forward a series of theoretical hypotheses to be verified by the empirical part later.This paper finds that the opening of foreign investment in the service industry has a positive effect on economic growth,and the development of the tertiary industry and the scale of foreign investment are its main channels of influence.The opening of foreign investment in the service industry has a positive effect on manufacturing productivity,which is mainly achieved by improving the quality and expanding the quantity of intermediate input services.The opening of foreign capital in the service industry has a positive effect on the productivity of the service industry,and this positive effect is not only reflected in the impact on the opened industry,but also on other service industries that use the open industry as an intermediate input.The type and quality of the intermediate service is the mechanism of this effect.The opening of foreign capital in the service industry has a positive effect on enterprise performance,but there may be differences in the size of the effect of different scales and types of enterprises.This effect is mainly achieved by enhancing the level of industry competition and promoting enterprise innovation.Secondly,in order to verify the above theoretical analysis hypothesis in the subsequent empirical analysis,this paper constructs an index measurement system for the level of openness to foreign investment in China’s service industry.The system not only includes independent measures at the four levels of GATS,free trade agreements,central government and local government,but also aggregates the measurement results of the four levels under various weighting models.Finally,the foreign investment opening level of 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions in China from 2003 to 2020 in 11 service industries under the national economic industry classification was obtained.In the measurement system of this paper,not only the measurement scope and measurement time of each independent level are expanded,but also the ’institutional’ opening that has been overlooked in the existing measurement research is measured,and efforts are made to improve and deepen related research on the measurement of foreign investment openness in China’s service industry at all levels.According to the measurement results,this paper conducts a comparative analysis of each independent level and the aggregate level,and finds some characteristics of China’s service industry foreign investment opening at each level and the aggregate level,which are mainly manifested in the continuous improvement of the level of foreign investment opening in the service industry,large differences in the level of foreign investment opening in sub-sectors,and the opening of the service industry between regions presents an echelon-like development.Thirdly,based on the measured indicators of the openness of foreign investment in China’s service industry,this paper empirically tests the impact of the openness of foreign investment in the service industry on the regional economy growth,manufacturing productivity,service productivity,and service enterprise performance after collecting and sorting out the available regional,industry,’region-industry’ and enterprise data.The theoretical hypothesis proposed above is verified,and sub-sample analysis,endogeneity test,robustness test,and influence mechanism analysis are carried out for each effect,and strive to empirically test the comprehensiveness and robustness of the conclusions.In particular,in the aspect of service industry productivity effect,this paper tests both the horizontal and vertical effects of foreign investment opening in service industry.In terms of micro-enterprises,the existing research perspective has been expanded to the field of service industry enterprises.And attention has been paid to the performance of service industry enterprises of different scales and types after being impacted by foreign investment opening.To a certain extent,it enriches the existing research on the effect of service industry opening.Finally,based on the research conclusions of various parts,this paper puts forward targeted policy suggestions from the aspects of expanding the market access of the service industry,paying attention to new issues of service trade,formulating policies for opening up foreign investment in the service industry,evaluating the effect of opening up the service industry and preventing risks.The purpose is to combine the research content and research conclusions of this paper to provide a possible path for further improving the level of opening up of China’s service industry,seizing the right to speak in service trade negotiations,smoothing the domestic and international circulation,and accelerating the construction of a high-quality opening pattern.