| The most eye-catching happening in the 21st century of the global economic development is the rise of China's economy. The 30-year of China's reform and opening up has opened up the most exciting chapter of the global economic history. Its economic aggregate has kept breaking new records, its economic structure is being constantly optimized, and its foreign trade in particular is blooming in every index, depicting an extraordinary process of growth and evolution.After its entry to the WTO, China has been the first choice of investment from developed countries owing to its special and constantly growing economy, vast and infinitely expanding market, and low-cost and abundant labor resources. More than 100 kinds of made-in-China products have ranked first in the global market share.However, while China has become an"economic power"and"trade power"because of its total economic volume and foreign trade volume, contradictions between speed and benefit, scale and structure, quantity and quality, and extensive development and sustainable development are becoming prominent.Behind those"shinning numbers"of trade volume and trade structure development are three inconsistent logics:1)The inconsistent logic between the soaring of China's foreign trade volume and the upgrading of China's domestic industries;2)The inconsistent logic between the upgrading of China's export structure and the dynamic evolution of China's comparative advantage;3)The inconsistent logic between the uplift of China's export structure and the change of China's trade conditions.Behind the inconsistence are the trade surplus dominated by processing trades, the market expansion shared largely by foreign invested companies, the labor-intensive export structure, and the little say in international trade, which all indicate the current situation of China's foreign trade: big volume with little strength, and increasing volume with declining price. The contradiction of economic development also shows between the image of a trade power and the weak international competitiveness of China's industries.Convincing explanations for the contradictions cannot be made merely through data of trade and investment in a macroscopic manner. Traditional trade theories are challenged.Rational thinking will lead to the discovery of the intrinsic relations between the development of a country's industry and the international specialization. For China's foreign trade, either the tremendous achievements or the existing problems depend on the way in which China participates in the international specialization and the mode of trade development.As a result, it has become an important topic for the global trade sector and even for the development of China's economy to focus on the new international specialization, to introduce new theoretical framework, to interpret the special phenomena of China's trade development and to uplift the international competitiveness of China's industries.The global value chains specialization is the most outstanding new concept, method and mechanism in the sectors of international specialization and international trade against the background of economic globalization. It takes the transnational corporations as its dominating role-players and the value chains of production and operation activities as its objects. Each link of the value chains including the production, sales, R&D etc as well as their sub-links are deployed to any place of the world where maximum benefit can be achieved. The allocation process is accompanied with the import of semi-finished products and the export of finished products.Because of such specialization system, a country's competitiveness lies no longer on the final products or certain industries, but on the links the country dominates in global industrial value chains.As a result, it is of theoretical and practical significance to study and discuss the characteristics and patterns of the global value chains specialization for interpreting the deepening of international specialization and expansion of trade, in particular for interpreting the contradiction between the"powerfulness"of contemporary China's foreign trade and the"relative weakness"of its industrial international competitiveness.This thesis is intended to discuss the development of China's industrial international competitiveness in the process of economic globalization from the angle of global value chains specialization with the economic globalization and international specialization as the background, the scientific outlook on development as the guidance, combining the international trade theory, international specialization theory, international industry-transferring theory and the evolution of China's industrial international competitiveness, taking China's foreign trade as the starting point. Analyses will be preceded in line with the following steps:First, raising the problem studied in this thesis and making a practical investigation on China's industrial international competitiveness under the name of"trade power", which starts from a calm pondering of China being a trade power. Through the comparative analysis of the total volume and structure of China's domestic industrial development, and the comparative analysis of the typical indexes representing the comparative advantage including both the competitiveness index of China's export products and their dominant comparative advantages, as well as through the comparative analysis of the three conditions of China's price trade, income trade, and element trade, the phenomena of the three inconsistent logics hidden behind China's high-speed growing of foreign trade can be clearly showed. The important evaluation indexes of industrial competitiveness will then be analyzed to point out the contradiction lying beneath between'trade power"and"tiny country in industrial international competitiveness"of China's economic development.Consequently the following questions are lead to be further thought over: why should such phenomena exist in China's economic development? What are the logic relations between such special phenomena of China's trade development and China's industrial international competitiveness? Why the traditional trade theories are unable to make reasonable and effective explanations for such phenomena? Second, the basic theoretical framework of this thesis will be discussed and established. This part first analyzes the background, intrinsic mechanism and economic analysis of the new international trade value chains specialization-global value chains specialization; then starting from the comparative advantages– the theoretical basis for trade and specialization, a simple model of the global value chains specialization will be established by expanding comparative advantage connotation, and a conclusion can be drawn that the basis of global value chains specialization is the general comparative advantages (cost comparative advantage + added–value comparative advantage) with expanded connotation.Analyses of the trade benefits, structure transformation and the trade development mode of global value chains specialization will follow, with essence of unfair distribution of global value chains specialization pointed out. Finally, based on the basic analysis of the global value chains specialization, the transmission mechanism model, with which global value chains specialization functions on a country's industrial international competitiveness, is established, thus laying down the theoretical foundation for lifting China's industrial international competitiveness in the opening-up conditions.Next, this thesis will combine theories with practices and analyze the theory of global value chains specialization, to theoretically and practically analyze and interpret the three inconsistent logics existing in China's trade sector, as well as the contradiction of China's economic development between"trade power"and"weak country with small industrial international competitiveness."From this, we will discover that China's high-speed growth of trade volume and structure upgrading of export products are mainly based on the expansion of processing trade dominated by FDI in the global value chains specialization system; that the uplifting of China's export products structure is mainly based on the increasing proportion of the"two lows and one high"(low technological content, low value-added, and high-tech products) export products in the global value chains.In the global value chains specialization, the contradiction of China's economic development comes directly from the main trade structure dominated by foreign invested companies and the trade style dominated by processing industry. Behind the seemingly contradictory phenomena of China's trade development lies the intrinsic inevitability of global value chains specialization.Then this thesis will apply the global value chains specialization theory to China's situation, to analyze how China, by repositioning its place in the global value chains specialization, can better participate in the global value chains specialization to uplift the country's industrial international competitiveness.While creating rare element and space of development for developing countries to uplift their industrial international competitiveness, global value chains specialization also brings a serial of risks. To overcome these risks, not only do these developing countries need to increase the speed and ability of modern element advantages besides their bestowed labor advantage. It also depends on how profound both governments and companies understand the concept of industrial international competitiveness in the background of global value chains specialization, and which kind of thinking they choose to participate in the industrial development choices of global specialization.As a result, based on the analysis on the new connotation of industrial international competitiveness updating in the global value chains specialization, this part concludes the pressure China is faced in upgrading its industries in the background of global value chains specialization, pointing out the dilemma between China's industrial upgrading and employment expansion, putting forward, based on the above-mentioned analyses, the bases on which China can reposition itself in the global value chains specialization: combination of comparative advantage, latecomer advantage, and big country advantage, and analyzes the structure of China's industrial development after it has been repositioned.Finally, the strategic idea of China's industrial international competitiveness upgrading against the background of global value chain specialization will be put forward, which is the industrial transfer strategy based on the value chains integration. This thesis holds the view that, in the global value chains specialization, the contradiction of China being a trade power with weak competitiveness forces us to reexamine and regulate China's foreign trade development strategies and related industrial development policies, to further explore China's industrial development strategies matched with global industrial models in the transformation process, so as to uplift China's industrial international competitiveness.In the background of the global value chains specialization, the uplifting of industrial international competitiveness should subject to the operational mechanism of global value chains specialization, start from the integration of industrial value chains, focus on increasing the added value of the whole industry, and combine technological advances, industrial integration, and transformation of element input.With the expansion and integration of industrial value chains, technological advances, economic benefit, sustainable development, and full employment will be effectively combined to maximize the added value of the whole industrial value chains, to eventually realize the goal of uplifting the industrial international competitiveness.The industrial transfer strategies of value chains integration include four aspects: Core strategy: innovation of value chains through integration of value chains;Two ways to implement the strategies: the way based on the expanding intensive takeover of international manufacturing industry and orderly takeover of international service industry; the way of both moderate moving-out of China's industry and gradient transfer of domestic industry based on independent growth.Three levels to implement the strategies: integration of industrial value system, internal integration of industrial value chains, integration of value chains inside company.Guarantee for the implementation of the strategies: a government with"limited intervention"under the government-oriented mechanism.Conclusions:The main research object of this thesis is the uplifting of China's industrial international competitiveness in the background of global value chains specialization.The theoretical basis of this thesis is the expansion of global value chains specialization theory based on comparative advantages.The logical starting point of this thesis is the contradiction of China's economic development (trade power with weak competitiveness) based on the positivistic analysis on the high-speed development of China's foreign trade volume and structure since its reform and opening up.The important indication of theoretical analysis and application consists of two aspects: the choosing of thinking methods for the development of China's element intensive industries, and the industrial transfer strategies based on value chains integration.The further expansion of this thesis is to study and explain the government's actions and related policies in the background of global value chains specialization.
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