Review of the monograph: Volgina, N.A., Liu, Pengfei (2023). China in Global Value Chains. Moscow: KNORUS publ., 174 p.

Abstract

The review is devoted to the assessment of the monograph by N.A. Volgina and Liu Pengfei “China in Global Value Chains”. Based on the input-output methodological approach and the principle of decomposition of gross exports, the authors come to a number of relevant conclusions that depict the dynamics of China’s participation in global value chains. Thus, the last decades have been characterized by uneven growth of Chinese domestic and foreign value added: domestic value added has grown at a faster rate than foreign value added, and its share in gross exports has gradually increased. At the same time, there has been a drop in China’s “participation index” in global value chains, and this decrease was developing at the expense of a decrease in upward participation. The “position Index” was characterized by a different trend: its slow growth from negative to positive values was observed, which reflected the fact that China’s income from value-added trade was increasing. The authors’ calculations show that there are differences in the dynamics of “indices of participation” of individual industries in value chains: the share of labourintensive industries is decreasing and the share of capital-intensive industries, primarily engineering, is increasing. For the first time in Russian economic literature, this monograph critically assesses the contribution of Chinese economists to the study of the formation of global and regional value chains in China. In the final part of the monograph, the authors point out the contradictory effects of China’s participation in global value chains, which include both the benefits and risks of such integration.