Empirical Study On China And Japan’s Competitiveness Of Export Commodities Structure From 1995 To 2013

China has emerged as the world’s second largest economy and the first trading power at present. Up to 2013, China’s GDP has reached 91,850 trillion US dollars, with total import and export goods reaching to 41,600 hundred million US dollars and export of goods reaching to 22,096 hundred million US dollars respectively. In addition, international market share was 11.72%. China’s export of goods has caught with Japan since 2004 and was three times the amount of Japanese exports in 2013. Judging from the total amount, China’s global market share is far more than Japanese, but it does not show that China’s competitiveness of export structure has been stronger than Japan’s. To evaluate the competitiveness of export commodities structure of China and Japan accurately and comprehensively, this paper analyzes the competitiveness of export commodities structure based on existing theoretical framework and the evaluation index system of export structure competitiveness.This paper aims to evaluate export commodity structure competitiveness of China and Japan comprehensively so that the keys are construction of evaluation index system and choice of analysis model. First of all, this article uses international market share and export dependence index to conduct an overall comparison of export between China and Japan; Secondly, we divide export goods in the three-digit level of SITC into ten categories by Lall technical content and study the competitiveness of China’s and Japanese exports structure using export commodity structure similarity index, trade competition power index as well as revealed comparative advantage index; Finally we make a comprehensive evaluation of export competitiveness of China and Japan export structure of ten categories using principal component analysis model. Results of Sino-Japanese export similarity index calculation show that the structural similarity between the two countries export commodities tended to rise before 2008. After the global financial crisis in 2008, the two countries’ exports differentiation accelerated and export commodity structure similarity declined; The principal component analysis finds that Sino-Japan primary products (PP) overall competitiveness are poor, but the Japanese primary products overall competitiveness surpasses China; China’s agricultural class resource-based products (RBI) overall competitiveness has been caught up by Japan potentially. Japan’s other resource-based products (RB2) overall competitiveness has been stronger than China and just in 2013 was slightly driven by China; Japanese low-tech products (LT1, LT2) overall competitiveness is still far behind China, but shows the upward momentum; Chinese all kinds of technical content (MT1, MT2, MT3) are weaker than the overall competitiveness of Japan, in which the gap of automation equipment (MT1) is the largest; China electronic and electrical products (HT1) overall competitiveness has come from behind, far more than Japan. China other high-tech products (HT2) overall competitiveness falls behind Japan, but these products’ competiveness are also uncompetitive.Based on empirical results and combined with the relevant economic theory and Japanese experiences and lessons during export structure’s upgrade process, we propose the following policy recommendations to enhance the competitiveness of China’s export structure:establish institutional arrangements to encourage innovation and support business-oriented research and development activities especially fundamental research from legislation, taxation, financial subsidies and other aspects; design personnel training of high-level and make full use of financial resources and a variety of social resources to develop vocational education to deepen cooperation with enterprises and universities which can create favorable conditions for open-end talent training mechanism; promote financial market reform and multi-level capital market vigorously to support the development of venture capital and build financial support for upgrading of the structure of export commodities benign mechanism.