An assessment of trends in China's comparative advantages in textile machinery, man-made fibers, textiles and apparel

摘要

This paper analyzes China's level of comparative advantage across the four broad product sectors of the textile complex (comprising textile machinery, man-made fibers, textiles, and apparel), between 1985 and 2003 against 22 major exporting nations drawn from four income groups. The analysis utilizes a variant of Balassa's Revealed Comparative Advantage method and employs repeated measures analysis of variance to test for statistical significance. Overall, the findings show that China's competitive position is not simple and uniform across the individual product sectors or the country groups. However, it generally reflects expectations concerning the relative factor endowments that underpin the theory of comparative advantage. China continues to build a strong position in labor-intensive products but is experiencing a growing challenge from lower income countries in these categories. In technically intensive products, China's position remained weak compared to higher income countries but improved across all income groups except, paradoxically, low income countries where the trend was mixed.