Technological Innovation, Industrial Upgrading And Trade Competitiveness

Innovation, industry and trade, is no doubt three important dimensions to study the development of a country’s economy. At present, our country’s economy are in transition period in the three dimensions. Based on the three setting of transformation, technology innovation, industrial upgrading and trade competitiveness are extracted as three key words, corresponding to the dimension of innovation, industry and trade. From the manufacturing industry level (including all levels and labor-intensive, capital-intensive, technology-intensive industry level), and regional level (including the national level and the eastern, central and western regions provincial level), panel data of the corresponding level are used to carry on the systematic study of effects of the technology innovation and industrial upgrading on trade competitiveness.Research conclusions are as follows:(1) The direct effect of technology innovation on trade competitivenessFrom the industry level, increase of the innovation output will directly promote and improve the trade competitiveness on the whole. While the direct influence of the innovation input to the trade competitiveness depends on the characteristics of the industry itself. Specificly, directly effect of innovation input in labor-intensive industry is negative. While it is positive in the capital and technology intensive industry, and is larger in technology intensive industriey.From the regional level, except a slightly unusual influence showed in the western provinces, innovation itself shows to a direct promotion effect to the development of international trade and trade competitiveness on the whole. Specificly, across the national, the eastern and the central provinces, innovation input shows a direct role in promoting trade competitiveness, while in the western provinces it is not obvious, even there is a negative effect. At the same time, across the national and the eastern, central and western provinces, innovation output shows a direct effect to promote trade competitiveness.(2) The direct effect of industrial upgrading on trade competitivenessFrom the industry level, in all of the manufacturing industry and capital-intensive industry, industrial upgrading generally shows a direct effect to the promotion of trade competitiveness. While in the labor-intensive industry and technology-intensive industry, is not obvious.From the regional level, the secondary industry upgrading itself has a direct positive effect to the development of international trade and trade competitiveness on the whole, while the influence of the tertiary industry upgrading varies from area to area. Specificly, across the national, the eastern and the central provinces, the secondary industry upgrading itself has a direct positive effect to promotion of trade competitiveness, while is not obvious in the western provinces. At the same time, across the national and eastern provinces, the tertiary industry upgrading has a direct role in promoting trade competitiveness, while in the central and western provinces, the direct effect is negative.(3) The indirect effect of technology innovation on trade competitiveness by driving industrial upgradingFrom the industry level, the indirect effect of the input and output of innovation on trade competitiveness by driving industrial upgrading is not obvious in the labor-intensive industry and technology-intensive industry. While in the capital-intensive industries, increase of innovation output will help to promote the efficiency of the industrial structure, thus indirectly improving the trade competitiveness, which is the same as in manufacturing industry as a whole.From the regional level, except for the western provinces, technological innovation usually has driving effect on industrial upgrading, which will in turn promote the development of international trade and trade competitiveness indirectly on the whole. Specificly, across the national, the eastern and the central provinces, the increase of the innovation input and output, usually has driving effect on the upgrading of the secondary industry or tertiary industry, which will in turn shows positive effect on trade competitiveness. However, in the western provinces, genernally, neither of innovation input or output has significant indirect effect on trade competitiveness.(4) The indirect effect of industrial upgrading on on trade competitiveness by inducing technology innovationFrom the industry level, in all manufacturing industry, labor intensive and capital intensive industry, industrial upgrading produces a significant indirect role in promoting and improving the trade competitiveness by inducing the increase of innovation output, while it is not obvious in technology-intensive industry. Accordingly, in capital-intensive industries, industrial upgrading will have inducing effect on the innovation input to improve trade competitiveness, while there is no this indirect effect in other industries.From the regional level, across the national provinces and eastern provinces, industrial upgrading will have positive inducing effect on innovation, and thus to promote the development of international trade and trade competitiveness indirect on the whole, which is different from the central and western provinces. Specificly, across the national, the eastern provinces the upgrading of the secondary industry and tertiary industry will induce innovation to increase the its input and output, which will in turn have indirect positive effect on the development of international trade and trade competitiveness. Secundiparity and the upgrading of tertiary industry will be induced by innovation, increase the innovation input and output, and the development of international trade and trade competitiveness of ascension indirect positive effect. While the indirect effect is not obvious in the central and western provinces.(5) The comprehensive effect of technology innovation on trade competitivenessFrom the industry level, in capital-intensive industries and technology-intensive industry, the comprehensive effect of innovation input and output on trade competitiveness is positive, which promote and improve of trade competitiveness on the whole. In all manufacturing industry and labor-intensive industry, only the comprehensive effect of the innovation output on trade competitiveness is positive.While the comprehensive effect of innovation input is not obvious, even is negative in the labor-intensive industry, which is harmful to trade competitiveness on the whole.From the regional level, across the national provinces, central and eastern provinces, the comprehensive effect of the increase of innovation input and output on trade competitiveness is positive, which promote the development of international trade and trade competitiveness on the whole. While it is slightly different in the western provinces, the comprehensive influence of innovation output on trade competitiveness is positive, however, the comprehensive influence of innovation input is not significant, which may even be negative.(6) The comprehensive effect of industrial upgrading on trade competitivenessFrom the industry level, in all manufacturing industry, labor-intensive industries, under the situation of using innovation output to measure technology innovation ability, the comprehensive effect of industrial upgrading on trade competitiveness is positive, which promote the improvement of trade competitiveness on the whole. While in capital-intensive industries, comprehensive effect of industrial upgrading is generally positive. In technology-intensive industry, however, the comprehensive effect of industrial upgrading is not obvious.From the regional level, across the national provinces and eastern provinces, the comprehensive effect of the upgrading of the secondary industry and tertiary industry on trade competitiveness is positive. While in the central province and western provinces, the comprehensive effect of tertiary industry upgrading is negative, which is harmful to the development of international trade on the whole.nThe comprehensive effect of secondary industry upgrading in the central province is positive, while it is not obvious in the western provinces.The policy implications of this thesis are:Overall, technology innovation and industry upgrading have both direct and indirect effects on trade competitiveness, which also varies between industries and regions, leading to the comprehensive influence of technological innovation and industry upgrading on trade competitiveness also exist differences between different industries and different regions.Therefore, when we encourage innovation, accelerate the industrial upgrading in order to promote the development of international trade and improve trade competitiveness in the overall manufacturing industry level and national level, at the same time, we should also take the industry difference and regional difference into consideration, adjusting measures to local conditions, suiting the remedy to the case.(1) In order to promote the development of international trade and trade competitiveness, innovation policy should not only pay attention to different incentive effect of the structure of itself, namely the innovation input and output, but also distinguish the industry differences and regional differences.(2)When using industrial upgrading policy to improve trade competitiveness, one also need to distinguish between industry difference and regional differences, and take the mediating effect of technology innovation into consideration as well.