Abstract： In recent years, the servitization of the manufacturing industry has become a significant trend in industrial evolution. Increasing service inputs in the process of manufacturing products is transforming the industrial structure and becoming a new engine of global economic growth. At present, the quality of services offered by China’s manufacturing industry is insufficient and thus servitization remains at a low level. Improving the servitization level of the manufacturing industry is essential to promoting the status of China’s manufacturing industry in the global value chain and in establishing a “dual circulation” development pattern. In this article, we examine theoretically and empirically whether the China–EU service trade can promote the servitization of China’s manufacturing industry. We focus on the impact of heterogeneity in the manufacturing industry and use a threshold effect model to explore the internal mechanism of the impact of heterogeneity.
Theoretically, the China–EU service trade can promote the input servitization of China’s manufacturing industry through direct effect, competition effect, and technology spillover effect. It accelerates the output servitization via resource transfer effect, technology spillover effect, and Heckscher–Ohlin (H–O) effect. The empirical results reveal the following three conclusions. (1) On the whole, the China–EU service trade can significantly promote the input and output servitization of China’s manufacturing industry. (2) The impact of the China–EU service trade varies for different factor-intensive manufacturing industries. Although the China–EU service trade can promote the input servitization of labor- and technology-intensive manufacturing, it has no significant impact in the case of capital-intensive manufacturing. Moreover, the China–EU service trade has promoted the output servitization of labor-intensive manufacturing but has no significant impact on the output servitization of technology-intensive manufacturing, and it has even hindered that of capital-intensive manufacturing. (3) Based on industrial heterogeneity, we further explore the nonlinear characteristics of the impact of the China–EU service trade on the servitization of the manufacturing industry. We find that there are threshold effects for investment in research and development (R&D) and the level of nationalization. The contributions of this paper to the existing literature lie in the research perspective, research methods, and some new findings. First, this paper enriches the related research results by examining the China–EU bilateral trade, and simultaneously considering rapid changes in international trade and the deepening of the China–EU trade relations. Secondly, this paper focuses on the impact of the heterogeneity of the manufacturing industry and uses R&D intensity and the nationalization level as threshold variables to explore the internal mechanism governing whether service trade can promote the servitization of the domestic manufacturing industry. The third contribution is that the conclusions are explained from the perspectives of ownership characteristics, the resource curse effect, and the technological gap.
樊文静、潘娴、肖文. 中欧服务贸易与我国制造业服务化——基于行业面板数据的实证研究[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 0, (): 1-.
Fan Wenjing Pan Xian Xiao Wen. China-EU Service Trade and the Servitization of China’s Manufacturing Industry: An Empirical Study Based on Industrial Panel Data. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 0, (): 1-.
