The Trade Structure of Chinese Manufactured Exports: 1999-2009

Abstract

Based on the classification of 144 kinds of manufactured products, we make an analysis on the technological structure of Chinese manufactured exports from 1999-2009. We find that: (1) the trade structure of Chinese manufactured exports are totally changed in both world and US markets, the share of Low Technology (LT) products in the total exports shrank while the share of High Technology (HT) products expanded. The development of HT1 products (electronic and electrical products) contributed a lot to the rapid growth of the share of HT exports. (2) Compared with other BRICs and select Asian countries, China had absolute advantage in the US import market. However, in contrast to Canada, Mexico, Japan and Germany, China has no revealed comparative advantage except in LT and HT1 products. (3) The trade structure for Chinese exports manifests the tendency of optimization, the best example is Medium Technology (MT) products and the least is HT products.