The Role Of Imports In Industrial Upgrading And Implementation Path

In the long term, China’s foreign trade policy mainly focuses on the development of export and its promotion effect on economic growth. It not only ignores how to play the role of import to promote domestic industry upgrading theoretically, but also doesn’t pay attention to the guide for import practically. Undeniably, the rapid development of exports has made great contribution to China’s economic growth, but export-oriented foreign trade policy led to the unbalance between import and export, which is also the main characteristics of China’s foreign trade operation. Accumulation of huge surplus causes rising trade frictions, and the RMB faces pressure of appreciation. Besides, based on cheap labor costs and overdraft of resources and environment, the bold development of outward-processing trade is not conducive to the sustainable development of economy and industry upgrading.Since the financial crisis, China’s economic development has entered a new phase. It is a theme of this new stage to realize upgrading of industrial structure on the basis of innovation. First thirty-year trade development, the promotion of export ability as well as the accumulation of foreign exchange provide favorable and specific conditions for new development. According to the theory of multinational direct investment, international investment can help host country develop emerging industries. However, the development of domestic industries relying on international industry transfer and division of labor among multinational corporations’value chain is different meaning from which is based on domestic investment and innovation. Recently, it is an important subject to study how to improve the function of import in China’s industry upgrading, realizing secondary innovation and how to provide necessary equipment for the development of strategic emerging industries.This paper mainly studies the effect of import on industry upgrading, emphasizing the importance of the second innovation after introduction. Import has significant influence on industry upgrading because it can introduce the foreign advanced products and technologies to push technological advance by absorption and innovation. Meanwhile, combining with the actual situation, it analyzes the problems in the process of the function of imports on China’s industry upgrading, respectively from the perspective of commodity and technology import. And the successful case about introduction, absorption and innovation is studied. Finally, in this paper, it points out that the foreign trade policy should be appropriately adjusted, improving the balance development of import and export as well as moderately expanding the scale of imports. And it is necessary to strengthen the general trade, optimize the import structure, and encourage innovation to promote the domestic technological advance and industry upgrading.This paper consists of seven chapters. Chapter1introduces the background, significance, research methods and innovation points of the paper. Chapter2reviews relative theories and literatures about the effect of import on technological advance or economic growth. Chapter3analyzes the mechanism of import promoting industry upgrading, namely technological advance effect. It studies both direct and indirect effect and influencing factors. Chapter4studies commodity import of our country, and empirically tests the different impact from different modes of import on industry upgrading. Besides, it analyzes the reasons by taking the import of high-tech products as an example. Chapter5discusses China’s technology import, and measures the technology dependency and the effective technology dependency of foreign trade in China, studying the ability of absorption and innovation. Moreover, the successful case of China’s high speed railway demonstrates the significance of technology induction, absorption and secondary innovation. Chapter6analyzes influencing factors in import promoting industry upgrading of China one by one, finding problems and deficiencies. Chapter7concludes with overall summary and policy recommendations.