Dongguan is one of the earliest cities that attracted foreign investment to develop processing trade in China. Since the reform and opening-up, Dongguan has taken good advantage of its location and attracted large amount of foreign capital to invest in the industry of processing trade which introduced a swift development into Dongguan's economy and society, and made Dongguan degenerate from an agricultural country into a modern industrial city and an important national base for processing and manufacturing. However, restricted by its characteristics, the development of processing trade brought many problems to Dongguan, such as the low added-value of processing trade products, weakness in independent innovation, etc. Furthermore, in the extensive mode of economic growth and with the limits of land resources, environment pollutions and so on, Dongguan's processing trade mainly relying on foreign investment becomes unsustainable on its development and comes to the historical turning point of transformation and upgrading.The experience of South Korea and Taiwan tell us that, after two decades'development of low-value-added export-oriented processing trade, the government must vigorously promote transformation and upgrading to enable economic development into a higher level. Therefore, in accordance with the policy of"further developing processing trade, introducing the processing and manufacturing sections and R&D institutions of higher technical and value-added level from multinational companies, leading the transformation and upgrading of processing trade"in "the decision of a number of issues about perfecting the socialist market economic system by CPC Central Committee" in the party's third plenum, Dongguan are progressively in search of the paths to promote the transformation and upgrading of processing trade and practice to expedite the implementation of the adjustment and upgrading of city's industrial structure.The thesis firstly focuses on the meaning and relevant theories of processing trade, then analyses the current situation of processing trade in Dongguan, its contribution to the economic and social development of the city and the problems it confronts, and identifies the obstacles to be figured out in the transformation and upgrading of Dongguan's processing trade. Followingly, the thesis refers to the experience of the transformation and upgrading in Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and review the pilot practice in Dongguan, then brings forward the countermeasures which promote the transformation and upgrading of processing trade. |