The Research On Labor Cost And Labor Productivity To Export Competitiveness In China’s Manufacturing

In the new normal context of China’s economy,the manufacturing industry still remains to be the subject of the national economy,and the transformation and improvement of traditional manufacturing industry constitutes one of the major contents of the supply-side structural reform.China’s cheap labor force has always been consisted as an important power enhancing the competitiveness of exports of strong manufacturing industry.Owing to various factors,like the aging population,declining fertility rate,and disappearing rural surplus labor,however,the labor cost in China keeps increasing,and the advantage of low labor cost is no longer prominent.Currently,China’s manufacturing industry is still large but not strong,faced with various problems,such as weak capability of independent innovation,low product grade,lack of world famous brand,etc.Consequently,attention shall not only be paid to the quantity,but also to the structure and quality of trades in the future development of the manufacturing industry.In this paper,the influencing mechanism of labor cost and labor productivity on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry is analyzed from the mechanism.After the classification and summarization of relevant data,the status of labor cost,labor productivity and export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry is described,and lateral and vertical analysis is also carried out.The measurement index of export competitiveness consists of two types:one is export competitiveness measured by the revealed comparative advantage index,and the other is export competitiveness measured by the export technical complexity.On this basis,the impact of labor cost and labor productivity on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry is verified empirically by applying the industry-specific panel data,based on the introduction of four control variables,namely the real effective exchange rate,research and development input,enterprise scale and capital intensity.In the whole manufacturing industry,labor cost and labor productivity have a negative and positive effect on the revealed comparative advantage index respectively;while both have a positive impact on the export technical complexity.In labor-intensive industries,the two have a negative impact on the revealed comparative advantage index,and increasing labor cost and productivity will enhance the export technical complexity significantly.In capital-intensive industries,labor productivity has a positive effect on the revealed comparative advantage index,and increasing labor cost will help improve the export technical complexity.In technology-intensive industries,the two have a negative and positive effect on the revealed comparative advantage index respectively,and labor productivity has a positive impact on the export technical complexity.Therefore,much more effective policies shall be made to transform the labor-intensive traditional manufacturing industry,accelerate the industrial structure transformation and upgrading,increase the input in education and staff training,and deepen the industrial processing.Develop capital-and technology-intensive manufacturing industries,increase the supporting force,optimize the internal competitions,and learn from advanced production technologies and management methods constantly.Speed up the self-development and innovation ability,encourage enterprises to establish independent research centers,and strengthen the cooperation among governments,enterprises and research institutions,so as to forge governmental sectors and enterprises to deal with the pressure of export competitiveness confronted in the context of increasing labor cost and labor productivity.