Weighing China’s Export Basket: An Account of the Chinese Export Boom, 2000–2007 Richard Upward,

In this paper we use new, detailed and comprehensive linked firm-product data to describe various dimensions of the Chinese export boom from 2000-2007. First, we decompose the total growth in exports into an intensive and extensive margin at both the firm and the product level. We also use this decomposition to analyse the role of processing firms, foreign-owned firms and firms which benefit from export policies. Second, we evaluate the extent of value-added in China’s exports, using a modification of a method proposed by Hummels et al. (2001) which takes into account the prevalence of processing firms. Third, we provide new estimates of the technological intensity of China’s exports. Our decomposition analysis indicates that firm entry played a larger role in China’s export boom than is the case in other countries, and that processing firms were an important component of this. Our estimates of value-added suggest that the foreign content of China’s exports is much higher than previously estimated. Finally, our estimates of technological intensity show that Chinese exports had been increasingly intensive in technology, but the overall intensity is lower when the exports are evaluated by domestic value-added than by final value.