A Study On The Export Sophistication Of China Machinery And Transport Equipment Industry

Since the reform and opening up, the implementation of the export-orienteddevelopment strategy has resulted in the rapid expansion of China’s export scale. Thetotal export of China has ranked No.2in the world in2007, rising from No.28in1980, and in2009, China has overtook Germany as the world’s largest exportingcountry, becoming a veritable big trading nation. But the continuous enhancement ofChina’s competitiveness in the future does not depend on the quantity of the export,but the quality of the export.Based on the export sophistication index model defined by Rodrik (2006), thequality index of China and seven other countries’ export products of machinery andtransport equipment industry under the SITC3classification during2001-2011ismeasured in this paper. It is found that in the past11years in China, the exportsophistication of machinery and transport equipment industry has shown a rapidincrease; the export product quality has improved significantly in the industry, andthere is a continuous optimization in the export structure, with significantlyimprovement in international competitiveness. Although there is still a gap comparedwith the United States and the major developed economies in Europe, China hasexceeded the developing countries of the same level and has reached the average levelof developed countries.Second, in accordance with the factors those affect the export sophistication ofmachinery and transport equipment industry, on the basis of theoretical analysis, byselecting the2001-2011data of China and other seven countries, the influencingmechanisms of export sophistication of machinery and transport equipment industry isinvestigated. It is found that: a country’s level of economic development is the mostimportant factor that impacts the export sophistication of a country; the level offoreign direct investment has quite significant impact on the improvement of acountry’s export sophistication; there is still plenty of room for the level of financialdevelopment to increase a country’s export sophistication; the level of science andtechnology has little effect on the improvement of a country’s export sophistication.Last but not the least, on the basis of the empirical analysis, a four-point proposalis put forward in the paper: promote China’s export sophistication on the basis of economic development; continue to maintain the role of foreign direct investment onChina’s exports; pay more attention to the financial impact on exports; improve thecapability of independent innovation, to increase the impact of technology on theexport sophistication.