Chinese Services Gaining Significance in Global Production Chains

Abstract

China has been a key participant in international fragmentation of production during the last decades. China has specialized mainly in labor-intensive manufacturing, but is striving to shift toward higher value-added production stages and production. At the same time, during recent decades, services have contributed increasing shares of valued-added to products produced through global production chains. For this reason we examine the evolving role of Chinese services in international production chains. Our results suggest that Chinese services account for an increasingly large share of production for the domestic market, and more recently have made increasing contributions to foreign production chains, which suggests that Chinese production is shifting to activities in production chains that are associated with higher value-added.