Value-Added Trade and Evolution of China's Comparative Advantages

Based on heterogeneity in firm’s sales destinations and trade patterns, this paper estimates China’s ratio of value-added exports(RVAE) using value-added trade accounting, and discusses the evolution of China’s comparative advantages from the perspective of value-added trade. Our research findings suggest that without taking into account heterogeneity in firm’s sales destinations and trade patterns,China’s RVAE will be overestimated. Conventional gross trade accounting underestimates the export competitiveness of China’s labor-intensive and capital intensive sectors, but overestimates the export competitiveness of China’s technology-intensive sectors,which leads to a significant reversal of comparative advantages. Conventional gross trade accounting method overestimates the trade surplus of China’s manufacturing and technology-intensive sectors with the US by about 60% and 85% respectively.