Cutting-edge

The workshop provided the latest research achievements on GVC around the globe. The cutting-edge academic proceedings in areas such as trade theories of GVC, empirical studies of trade, gross trade accounting and trade policies were covered by the lectures. The following topics were involved: The Margin of Global Sourcing, Organization of the Global Value-Chain, Macroeconomic Implications of Global Value Chains, CGE and GVC Evolution, Geometry of Global Value Chains, Global Value Chains, Upgrading and Competitiveness:  The Role of Emerging Economies, How Does a Country’s Firm or Domestic Region Engage Global Value Chains?, Domestic Value Added in Chinese Exports: Firm-level Evidence, Domestic Value-added in China’s Exports and Its Distribution by Firm Ownership, Tracing China’s CO2 Emissions in Global Supply Chains, etc.

Professional

The purpose of the workshop is to cultivate young and middle-aged experts who are committed to the research on GVC in China. The attendees of the workshop are teachers and PhD students from over 40 colleges in China, such as UIBE, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Nankai University, National Chiayi University and the University of Hong Kong, global trade scholars from institutions such as Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and State Information Center as well as researchers from Ministry of Commerce, National Development and Reform Commission, etc. 50 attendees were selected out of over 100 applicants, among which were mature scholars as well as promising young researchers. The participants valued this opportunity and tried to make full use of it by actively listening to the lectures and interacting with the teachers. Prof. Wang Fei from UIBE and Meng Bo, researcher of IDE-JETRO, coached the participants with computers on Gross Trade Accounting, R Program and WIOD Database, split national IO table according to firm heterogeneity information from micro data using optimization method and GAMS，reconcile statistics from different sources using optimization method and GAMS, etc.

The workshop has important implications for the research on GVC in China, the strategic choice of the Chinese government to participate in GVC and the disciplinary development of China’s international trade. Besides, an academic circle aiming at studying GVC is taking shape by the participants of the workshop. This workshop will be held in Beijing for 5 consecutive years, building a GVC expert group in China and building UIBE into a GVC research base.

Building a Global Network

World Trade Organization (WTO), OECD, International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU) and institutes from some countries have conducted in-depth research on GVC gross trade accounting and have achieved various results. The large-scale research on GVC requires the joint efforts of the governments, academy and business as well as the researchers and institutes in all countries. 2014 GVC Training and Research Workshop provided a great opportunity for China to join the international GVC research network and Chinese scholars to participate in the global academic circle. Meanwhile, GVC involves issues such as goods trade, service trade and investment as well as the proportion of inter-country GVC, which needs to be calculated by setting up a database, and the database requires all country members’ cooperation and their data and materials of input-output, therefore, the participants of this year’s workshop will definitely become important contributors of the future international academic network of GVC.

Setting up a Preponderant Discipline Platform

The concept of GVC interacts closely with the global trade pattern and the distribution of welfare. Therefore, advancing the research on GVC and TiVA can help reflect on the objective trade conditions between a country and its major trade partners, the true scale of a country’s foreign trade, the influence of foreign trade on domestic economic development and employment, and the international competitiveness of various industries as well as their status in GVC. GVC contributes to understanding trade balance on an objective basis, calculating global trade with TiVA, restore the pattern of global trade under the context of economic globalization and international division of labor and accurately reflecting the welfare of various countries in international trade, and has already exerted a far-reaching influence on international production, trade and investment. Under these circumstances, the development of the discipline—international trade—in China should keep up with the times and conduct research on the changes GVC has brought towards international division of labor and the distribution of trade welfare, so that it can play an important role in strengthening the coordination of macroeconomic policies between China and other countries, deepening the understanding of GVC and applying it to the policy suggestions of China’s transformation of economic development pattern and upgrading of foreign trade structure.

Leading the Academic Trend

The importance of GVC research was further highlighted by the approval of APEC Strategic Blueprint for Promoting Global Value Chain Development and Cooperation, Strategic Framework on Measurement of APEC TiVA under GVCs and other agreements in 2014. In addition, GVC will be an important topic in the coming G20 Trade Ministers Meeting, which aims at driving global economic growth. Also, as Premier Li Keqiang emphasized in his report on government work this year, the development of science and technology as well as economy and society should be closely interacted so that China’s industries could lift into the higher-end of GVC. GVC is becoming a famous doctrine of applied economics and has provided the research direction for China’s economists and statisticians. Not only technical issues such as accounting methods, information collection and data processing, but also macroeconomic policies concerning finance, currency, industries, employment, exchange rate, trade, investment, competition, etc. are involved in GVC research. In order to turn into a trade power from a large trade country, China needs to change the growth pattern of foreign trade, increase its value in GVC, build a statistical system for TiVA, promote the statistics reform of international trade, and propose new top-level strategic design for the lift of China’s manufacturing sector to the high-end of GVC and accelerating the development of its service trade, especially upscale service trade. These aspects have provided the international trade economists in China with good topics to discuss, and lead them to make new contributions to trade theories, empirical studies of trade, gross trade accounting, trade policies and other fields.