Study On The Impact Of Technical Barriers To Trade On The Export Technological Sophistication Of China’s Manufacturing

As China’s participation in the international division of labor deepens,technical barriers to trade have become a common way for other countries to block exports of goods from China’s manufacturing,and have a significant impact on the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing.Correctly understanding the relationship between technical barriers to trade and export technological sophistication,and responding to technical barriers to trade in a reasonable manner,thus improving the export technological sophistication and promoting the upgrading of China’s manufacturing,have become urgent issues to be addressed.Based on the above,this paper explores the influence of technical barriers to trade on the export technological sophistication by taking China’s manufacturing as research object,and attempts to provide suggestions for China’s manufacturing to reasonably respond to strict foreign technical barriers to trade and achieve industrial upgrading.Firstly,this paper reviews and summarizes relevant literature,brings factors such as technical barriers to trade into the influencing factor model of export technological sophistication,and analyzes the mechanism of action.Technical barriers to trade can promote the export technological sophistication of industry through export structure effect,learning and technological innovation effect,investment substitution effect and dynamic cycle effect,but also inhibit the export technological sophistication by affecting quantity and price.Secondly,by analyzing the current situation of technical barriers to trade faced by China’s manufacturing from 2007 to 2020,it is found that the technical barriers to trade are characterized by an increase in the number of notifications,an extension to the upstream links of the value chain,and a wide range of countries of origin;By measuring the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry from 2007 to 2020,it is found that the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing shows a obvious decline on the whole,large gap between different sub-sectors and low level in the world.Then,the panel data of 14 sub-sectors of China’s manufacturing from 2007 to 2020 are selected,and the comprehensive FGLS regression and threshold regression methods are used to empirically test the effect of technical barriers to trade on export technological sophistication.Empirical results show that:(1)To some extent,technical barriers to trade can force the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing to increase.(2)From the perspective of industry heterogeneity,technical barriers to trade in the fields of technology intensive manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing play a more significant role in promoting the export technological sophistication.(3)From the perspective of source country heterogeneity,technical barriers to trade from high and upper-middle income countries have a more obvious effect on improving the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing than those from low and lower-middle income countries.(4)Innovation decision constraints play a significant threshold role in the influence of technical barriers to trade on China’s manufacturing industry’s export technological sophistication.There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between technical barriers to trade and export technological sophistication,which is promoted first and inhibited later.Finally,based on the above research,this paper puts forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions for the problems that China’s manufacturing is relatively passive in dealing with technical barriers to trade and its independent innovation ability needs to be improved.In the future,China’s manufacturing should not only deeply understand international rules and actively respond to foreign strict technical barriers to trade,but also strengthen independent R&D and innovation,and strive to improve its own export technological sophistication.