China's Export and Functional Upgrading in Global Value Chains

With China’s economy transitioning from high-speed to high-quality development, whether and how to achieve functional upgrading in Global value chains (GVCs) are crucial, which are yet to be demonstrated. This study provides a long-term macro-economic analysis of the functional upgrading in China’s export under GVCs. Based on the World Input Output Database together with the newly compiled Labour Occupations Database, we measure the domestic value added in export by business function, based on which we examine the functional upgrading in China’s export at the aggregate and sectoral levels. We further proposed the modified functional specialisation in export to identify China’s true level compared with other economies. We also apply the chaining structural decomposition analysis to examine the drivers of China’s functional upgrading, which would shed light on pushing the functional upgrading of China’s export