The Global Value Chain Position and Evolution Path of China’s Domestic-owned and Foreign-owned Enterprises: Measurement Based on Industry Data

Abstract

Multinational enterprises link domestic value chains and global value chains（GVCs）, so understanding their activities is fundamental to understanding GVCs. However, few studies focus on Chinese foreign-owned enterprises’ position in GVCs. In this paper, China’s industry data are divided into domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises, and production, trade and investment are integrated into a unified framework of GVCs. Based on the global input-output model considering heterogeneity between domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises, this paper constructs forward and backward production length index, analyzes Chinese domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises’ position and evolution path in GVCs from the perspectives of production and consumption. The results show that: Domestic-owned enterprises are in a more upstream position in GVCs than foreign-owned enterprises. Domestic-owned enterprises have a more complete production chain in China, which makes a greater contribution to domestic production and consumption. Foreign-owned enterprises have a significant proportion of the GVC production chain, with obvious export-oriented characteristics. The decomposition of forward and backward production chains show that the GVC production chain is the longest, and the traditional trade production chain is longer than the pure domestic production chain for both domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises. Both of them have the characteristics of “dual production structure”, i.e. the GVC production chain is more complex, and export production is more complicated than pure domestic production. From the perspective of industries, most industrial production chains of domestic-owned enterprises are longer than that of foreign-owned enterprises, and the production chain of manufacturing industry is longer than that of service industry. The pure and traditional trade production length of foreign-owned enterprises are almost equal to 1, while the pure and traditional trade production length of domestic-owned enterprises are larger than 2, which indicates that foreign-owned enterprises play a small role in domestic production, and the upgrading of domestic industrial structure mainly depends on the production and consumption of domestic-owned enterprises. From the perspective of evolution path, most domestic-owned enterprises evolve along path 1 in GVCs, with longer production length and closer industrial links, while most foreign-owned enterprises evolve along path 2 and path 4 in GVCs, indicating that they are outflowing from China. Therefore, domestic-owned enterprises should further strengthen the separation of functions and spaces, and be more actively embedded in GVCs; China should care about the manufacturing industry which could drive and promote its upstream and downstream industries, and not abandon the processing manufacturing industry and turn to the high-tech or modern service industry blindly; it should also maintain the consistency of trade and industrial policies, and guide foreign investment in China in a rational way.