An Empirical Study For The Impact Of Intelligence On Manufacturing Industry Global Value Chain Upgrading From The Perspective Of Labor Demand

Intelligent manufacturing is the primary focus in transforming China into a manufacturing power and a significant channel for upgrading the value chain of the manufacturing industry.At present,China’s manufacturing industry develops rapidly,and its scale ranks first in the world.In the global value chain division,China’s industrial value-added in 2020 reached 31.3 trillion yuan,an increase of about 16.4 percent over 2019,contributing about one-third of the world’s manufacturing sector.However,as an important participant of global value chain,China’s manufacturing industry is still in a lower position compared with other countries on the whole with problems such as lack of independent innovation capacity,low-end overcapacity,and insufficient high-end capacity.The transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry has become an inevitable trend.Accelerating the integration of information technology and manufacturing upgrading plays an important role in promoting the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry and moving towards the middle and high end of the global value chain.From the perspective of infrastructure,service guarantee,platform development and comprehensive benefits,this paper constructs a comprehensive provincial index of intelligence and matches it with China Customs Database and Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database from 2003 to2013,aiming to build an econometric model of intelligence affecting the climbing of global value chain in the manufacturing industry from empirical research.First of all,the paper summarizes the measurement methods of intelligent level and manufacturing value chain climb,and investigates the status and evolution characteristics of intelligent development and manufacturing value chain participation in China from all-round and multi-angle aspects.Secondly,the theoretical mechanism of how intelligentization affects manufacturing value chain climbing is sorted out,and the causal relationship among intelligentization,labor demand and manufacturing value chain climbing is systematically tested from an empirical point of view.Then,a series of robustness tests and heterogeneity analysis are used to refine the differences of intelligence on enterprise value chain climbing.Finally,the mediation mechanism test method is used to test how labor cost and labor quality indirectly affect the improvement of manufacturing value chain status from the perspective of labor demand.The analyses lead to the revelation that,on average,for each unit increase in the intelligence composite index,the domestic value-added rate of enterprises’ exports gain about 0.0705.The mechanism test shows that this elevation is realized through two paths: first,to reduce labor costs by decreasing labor employment and improving labor productivity;second,to promote human capital accumulation by improving the quality of labor force.Besides,intelligence helps upgrading manufacturing value chain more significantly in labor-intensive industries,foreign and private enterprises and eastern enterprises.Further study finds that the impact of intelligence on labor force vary with different skill levels.With the improvement of intelligence in manufacturing,the proportion of lower-skilled labor decreases,while that of skilled labor increases.Therefore,in the current trend of intelligent manufacturing,it’s urgent for Chinese manufacturing enterprises,with less labor cost and higher labor quality,to get transformed and upgraded in climbing up the global value chain.This paper puts forward policy suggestions from the three aspects of reconstructing the competitive advantage of manufacturing industry,high-quality development of regional industry and improving the quality of labor force,which not only enriches the research scope and direction of the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry chain under the background of digitalization and intelligence,but also helps clarify the driving mechanism of manufacturing industry’s climb,which has certain theoretical enlightenment and practical significance.