Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic aligns with the strategic intentions of the United States and the West to decouple and disrupt industrial and supply chains, aiming to hinder China’s economic rise and maintain their own hegemony, thereby exerting significant pressure on China’s exports. To address gaps in existing research, this study analyzes global changes in China’s export dependence using inter-provincial, international, and regional export data (HS-2-digit commodity codes) from 2017 to 2022. Methods such as geographic concentration, market variety index, and export specialization location entropy were employed, incorporating both geographic and commodity structure dependence. The findings revealed the following: (1) Endogenous factors, such as factor structure adjustment, industrial upgrading, and changes in comparative advantage, drive export dependence. Additionally, the spread of Western geopolitical competition in the economic sphere has, to some extent, accelerated shifts in China’s global export dependence in recent years. China’s exports to traditional developed economies show a high but unstable trend. However, strong inter-provincial and international export linkages indicate that these markets remain critical to China’s export sources. (2) Export concentration for four commodity groups follows this order: “resources>technology>labor>capital”. The overall pattern of export specialization is “resources>labor>technology>capital”. Although the geographical concentration of technology-intensive exports remains high, emerging markets, particularly Southeast Asia and European countries, have remarkably contributed to export growth and market diversification. Over time, export destinations for these commodities are becoming more balanced, although most western provinces of China remain heavily dependent on a few destinations and resource-intensive exports, posing greater risks. Developing export corridors, upgrading industrial structures, and fostering technological linkages are crucial for western provinces to mitigate export risks and restructure competitive export patterns.

Key words: export dependence, geographic dependence, commodity structure dependence, global changes