Abstract Based on the theoretical explanation of the impact of China’s service trade openness on the closeness of bilateral value chain linkages between China and foreign countries, this paper empirically tests the impact effect and mechanism by using the data of Chinese manufacturing industry. The study finds that the improvement of China’s service trade openness in service is conducive to the improvement of the correlation tightness of Chinese and foreign value chains, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism test shows that the opening of trade in services mainly affects the bilateral value chain correlation through the effects of trade cost reduction and technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the value chain correlation effect caused by the opening of service trade is more significant in low-tech manufacturing industries and developing countries, and shows strong characteristics of “ geographical proximity ”. That is, the value chain correlation effect with Asian countries is more prominent. The extended analysis shows that the level of national digital infrastructure has a significant positive moderating effect on the promotion effect of service trade openness on bilateral value chain linkages between China and foreign countries. The empirical conclusions imply that promoting the high-level opening of the service industry and improving the construction of digital infrastructure are important measures to promote China’s manufacturing industry to deeply participate in the division of labor in the global value chain and enhance the competitiveness of the international industrial chain.
HU Zhaoling,LU Yang,FAN Longfei. China’s Service Trade Openness and the External Value Chain Linkage of Manufacturing Industry. Economic Survey, 2024, 41(2): 053.
2024, Vol. 41 
