Trade Technology Sophistication And China's Urban Productivity

In recent years,with the development of foreign trade and the transformation of economic growth patterns,the research focus of the academic community on China's foreign trade has shifted from focusing solely on the expansion of trade scale to focusing on the progress of trade technological content,and the technical sophistication of import and export products has also become a new research hotspot.The direction of research changed from the quantity of trade to the quality of trade,which has brought a series of new questions: How is the development trend of the technical sophistication of import and export products in China in recent years? Does the upgrading of trade technology structure play a role in improving urban productivity? Whether there is a spatial spillover effect on trade or not? How do Chinese cities formulate development plans to seek economic growth and productivity improvement? These issues are of great significance for China's economic transition and are yet to be studied one by one.This article uses the import and export commodities data encoded by 4331 kinds of HS6 bits in 111 countries,and adopts the Hausmann(2005)method to calculate the technical sophistication and import technical sophistication index of the cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2000 to 2012.To distinguish the differences,the trade method and the type of ownership of the company have been conducted into detailed analysis at various levels.The study finds that during the sample period,China's export technology sophistication and import technology sophistication are on the rise as a whole,and the import technology sophistication is always higher than exports'.The technical sophistication of foreign companies is generally higher than that of state-owned enterprises' and private enterprises';the export technology of processing trade.The technical sophistication of exporting processing trade is higher than that of general trade.The technical sophistication of import of capital goods is higher than that of consumer goods and intermediate goods.From a regional perspective,the technical content of import and export products in the eastern coastal economic zone and the southern coastal economic zone are higher than that in other economic zones,while the technical sophistication of import and export in the Southwest Economic Zone and the Great Northwest Economic Zone is at the lowest level in the country.On the basis of combing the theoretical mechanism of export technology sophistication and import technology sophistication affecting urban productivity,this paper uses the spatial dubin model to examine the panel data of 264 cities in China,and validates the theoretical mechanism of the impact of trade technology sophistication on urban productivity,and studies its effects.The empirical results show that during the sample period,the increase in China's export technical sophistication significantly promoted the progress of urban productivity,and there was a clear spatial spillover effect;the spatial spillover effect of imported technology sophistication was significant,and its effect on the productivity of surrounding cities was higher.The control variables of the region,such as regional economic level,foreign direct investment,and diversified agglomeration,had more significant positive effects on urban productivity.At the same time,the accumulation of urban material capital,infrastructure construction,and industrial specialization showed a “siphon effect” for the development of neighboring cities.According to the research of this article,in the future social and economic life,the government should pay more attentions to the improvement of the technological sophistication of export products,encourage enterprises to participate in international competition,pay attention to the introduction of foreign investment,improve the infrastructure construction,and guide the rational flows of imported high-quality resources.The import of high-tech and complicated commodities and the introduction of foreign capital encourage enterprises to increase their ability to absorb advanced foreign technologies;to exert local comparative advantages and reduce the impediments to the economic development caused by the “siphon effect”.In addition,cities should strengthen communication,cooperation and resource integration,and make full use of their positive spillover effects to build a new regional economic structure.