Technology structure of China’s export of agricultural products: empirical analysis based on technical complexity

Growing labour costs, increasing resources and environmental constraints and a desire to emphasize high-quality trade have promoted China to prioritize upgrading the agricultural export structure. This brings forth a need for further research on agricultural export technology. We measure the technical complexity and height based on the sample of 178 countries over the 2002–2020 period. The results are then compared with those of the world’s major exporters of agricultural products (APs). We find that China’s APs export exhibited a pattern of medium-technology products and slowly transitioned towards medium–high and high technology levels. The technology structure of China’s APs export was significantly lower than that of the major global AP exporters (except Brazil). The overall technical level of China’s APs exports slightly fluctuated near the medium technology grade. The evolutionary trend of the technology structure of China’s APs export differs from its export scale, showing a tendency towards a more downmarket in 2002–2012 but some improvement since 2013. There is a widening gap in the technology structure of APs export between China and major developed exporters. China’s APs export is losing competitiveness overall, and the upgrading of the technology structure of China’s APs export was slower. Therefore, the technology structure of China’s APs export can be escalated by raising standards of quality, concentrating on the export of higher technical complexity products, promoting the advances and innovations in agricultural science and technology, and further exploring the trade potential hidden behind the differences between China and other countries in export technology structure.