What Obscures the Skill Content Embodied in China's Net Export?

China will exert a great impact on the world market after its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its labor-intensive exports, since China has more than 20 percent of the world's population. Among which farmers make up 78.1 percent of the share. This paper intends to measure the skill content embodied in China's net exports by using Maskus' (1994) methodology. The empirical results indicate that other factors tend to overshadow ranking of the skill content. It goes against the conventional wisdom that the Chinese farmers are not regarded as an abundant factor. The paradoxical result can be explained by mismatching of resources, identical homothetic preference and quality of input. Migration from rural areas to the coastal regions within the country will accelerate after China's entry to WTO. Moreover, upgrading of the skill content becomes imperative for China in its adjustment of export structure and resource allocation. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers