A Study Of Industrial International Competitiveness Of Raw Silk In Late Qing Period

With the impact of capitalism of the Europe, China had involved in the international markets, raw silk trade had changed dramatically. With the opening of Shanghai, the raw silk exports expanded rapidly. China's silk industry changed from manual production to factory production. While compared with China, Japan's silk industry was more internationally competitive. In the early 20th century, the superpower status in raw silk exports of China eventually claimed by Japan. On the subjects of the export and the development of raw silk industry, scholars have drawn a very thorough discussion about the technical differences as well as the role of government. This paper analyses the situation of late Qing Dynasty silk industry by using the model of "international competitiveness", to analyze the reason for the decline of the exports of the traditional superior industries, which represented by the raw silk industry. Industries with international competitiveness compared with other countries have higher industrial productivity to produce more competitive products and have greater benefits. From macro perspective, the industrial competitiveness comes from the four basic factors, which are factors of production, domestic demand, related enterprises and business strategy, as well as the government and opportunities. In this comparison of the six aspects, we found that two countries are different in the technology transfer of localization, the main demand of raw silk, the organization of raw silk production, the acquisitions of the cocoon, the role of government, and the sense of crisis.