Research On The Technological Upgrading Of China’s Manufacture Enterprises In The Context Of Global Value Chain

Since1990s, the mode of international division of labor, which reflects theintegration and utilization efficiency of global resources, has changed significantly.With the rising of competence, more and more multinational enterprises find that it’shard to keep their dominant position in it. In order to respond to the competitionefficiently, they have to adjust their strategy, such as outsourcing some low valueadded processing assembly activities, and at the same time, they control those highvalue added activities which on behalf of their core competence strictly, such asresearch and development, branding, service and marketing. And Global value chainprovides a great interpretation of the mode of international division of labor, for themeaning of the integration of global value chain is that:(1) every enterprise in thevalue chain can play their comparative advantages well; and (2) they can pay moreattention to the development of their core link and the expansion of their core businessafter the outsourcing of non-core link and business. Meanwhile, the abundant resources,cheap labor and strong desire of developing economy in developing countries providesconvenience to the outsourcing business of developed countries’ multinationalenterprises. Thus, multinational enterprises outsource those low profitability and highresource consumption manufacturing activities, and engage in R&D, branding, andmarketing so that high monopoly profits and economic rent are seized. Generallyspeaking, developed economies can control developing economies easily through thisway.With the expansion of breadth and depth of embedding global value chains,China’s manufacture enterprises have obtained huge development and played more andmore important roles in global economy. However, one thing we have to realize is thatour manufacture enterprises is still at the bottom of the global value chain. Thus,technology breakthrough has become a job that we have tried our best but fruitless.Therefore, how to explain such phenomenon and solve this problem have been thefocuses of Chinese and foreign scholars. Starting from the past literature, this paperdiscusses our manufacture enterprises’ technological upgrading in the context ofglobal value chain by theoretical research, current situation analysis and empirical test. In the theoretical analysis, this paper starts from the international division oflabor to discuss the forming process of global value chain and the necessity ofenterprises’ technological upgrading. Then, it concludes the natures of the labordivision of global value chain and analyzes the upgrading approaches of ourmanufacture enterprises based on the relative theory of global value chain. In thecurrent issues analysis, this paper analyzes our manufacture enterprises’ presentdevelopment situation and its position in global value chain through our RCA index,IIT index and VAR. Then, it researches the reasons of “low-locked”. In the empiricalstudy,31provinces’ panel data from2008to2012in China is used to discuss thequestion of our manufacturing industrial enterprises’ technological upgrading after theglobal financial crisis in2008. Finally, some countermeasures are given based on theempirical conclusions.