The impact of de-globalization on China’s economic transformation: Evidence from manufacturing export

The economic transformation is an important policy practice of economic development in China. In the context of “deglobalization”, it is critically important to better understand the impacts of increasing trade costs on China’s economic transformation from the perspective of firms’ exports. In this study, we measure the trade costs of specific manufacturing sectors and provinces. We employ Heckman (1979) two-stage method and the data from China’s manufacturing firms to investigate the impacts of trade costs on heterogeneous firms’ exports. Based on these results, we further explore the impacts of trade costs on China’s economic transformation and discuss policy advisories. Our results indicate that the increase in trade costs have adverse impacts on China’s economic transformation. Specifically, increasing trade costs hinder firms’ export behaviors and export scales. However, these impacts are heterogeneous on different types of firms, which refers to the ownership reforms, manufacturing sector upgrades and coordinated regional development. In particular, increasing trade costs do not affect coordinated regional development in China, but they are not conducive to ownership reforms and manufacturing sector upgrades. Altogether, our findings provide the first evidence on the impacts of trade costs on China’s economic transformation from the perspective of firms’ exports, and also shed light on policy implications for promoting firms’ exports and economic transformation in the “deglobalization” period.