The Impact Of Producer Service Imports On China’s Manufacturing Growth

As a manufacturing giant,China is faced with difficulties in manufacturing transforming,upgrading,innovation and growth,while manufacturing industry is the main part of China’s economy.To cope with the problem,China’s State Council has unveiled "Made in China 2025”plan and designed the strategy of further promoting service-oriented manufacturing.As a form of manufacturing servitization,input servitization means the increase of service input ratio in production,which shows the important role of producer services in manufacturing growth.Some of the producer services consumed by China’s manufacturers are imported from foreign countries.Different imported producer service has different impacts on China’s manufacturing growth.Knowing these impacts can help promote manufacturing growth by means of producer service imports.By adopting data from 2000 to 2014,this paper analyzes six producer services,including transportation services,communication services,computer and information services,finance and insurance services,consulting services and R&D services.Producer services data are collected from WIOD,including imported service inputs as well as domestic service inputs in each manufacturing unit.By conducting empirical analyses with panel data,this paper finds that transportation and communication service imports hamper China’s manufacturing growth,while computer and information service imports as well as finance and insurance service imports promote the growth,and imports of the other two services show no evidence of impacts as a result of few inputs.Thus,this paper concludes that capital-intensive producer service imports or the imports of monopolistic services in China have negative impacts on China’s manufacturing growth,while imports of knowledge-intensive producer services have positive impacts,according to which this paper provides several suggestions.It is suggested that China import producer services strategically,optimize importing structure,create an integrated,open,free and equal market environment for producer service trading,and develop domestic producer service industry through innovation and talent acquisition.