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Considerable research has been conducted on the comparative advantage of Chinese manufactured exports before 2000, but too little attention has been focused on the twenty‐first century. With this rapid growth of China's export volume since 2001, what is the change in comparative advantage? Have qualitative changes taken place? The purpose of this paper is to conduct a thorough analysis of the comparative advantage of Chinese manufactures from 2002 to 2009, not only within the world market but also in the US market.

The research is based on 144 manufactures' comparative advantage in the US and world market, displaying the distribution and variation range for the comparative advantage of Chinese manufactures at different technological levels in the 2002‐2009 period with the RCA Index. This paper classifies 144 kinds of manufactures (on Standard International Trade Classification, Rev. 3 data) by technology level into five general groups and nine small groups, which cover the majority of Chinese manufactured exports.

First, the authors found that types of Chinese manufactured products with comparative advantage in both world and US markets are increasing. Most of the products with comparative advantage are low technology (LT) products. Second, in the world market, the comparative advantage of Chinese medium technology (MT) products has largely improved, but their RCA indexes are low and their kinds of products with very high comparative advantage are small. Third, as a whole, Chinese manufactured exports are of greater comparative advantage in the world market than in the US market. Specifically, LT products have the same position in world and US markets, while MT products and high technology (HT) products obviously have a greater comparative advantage in the world market.

First, little research has been conducted on the comparative advantage of Chinese manufactured exports since 2001. This paper undertakes a thorough analysis of the comparative advantage of Chinese manufactures from 2002 to 2009, not only within the world market but also in the US market. Second, it is very important for China to stabilize the overseas market demand and secure exports, this paper shows how China could cope with a crisis.

European countries, which have many common policies and goals, are also having some disparities in their economic performance due to the existence of underlying country-specific reasons. The manufacturing sector is the key sector that promotes growth and increases the well-being of society. Thus, it is important to understand how these countries differ in engaging in industrial activities. Focusing on the manufacturing sectors of these economies, we aim to see the disparities between European Union (EU) countries in terms of their composition of manufacturing trade and the countries they are trading with. This chapter outlines some key stylized facts regarding trade over the past two decades by investigating the manufacturing data for EU countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the trade linkages and degree of export competitiveness between Singapore, China and India.

Balassa's export performance index and the dynamic RCA index was adopted, as suggested by Kreinin and Plummer to identify the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) of the above countries in industrial products by SITC 1‐ and 2‐digit levels. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is used to identify the degree of complementarity between RCA indices.

Given the abundant resources, China and India have comparative advantage in a broad range of manufactured goods as compared to Singapore. From the disaggregated analysis at 2‐digit level, the paper finds that the Singapore and China exports are complements, although the degree of complementarity has being declining over time. Meanwhile, Singapore and India exports are found to be stronger complements and stable over time. The results also show that China and India exports are strong substitutes. The paper also finds that the export specialization of China and India has experienced significant changes and shifting to new export products over time.

Given the recent trade agreements between China and Singapore and India and Singapore, it is important to examine the trade linkages (complementarity/substitutability of trade) between these countries. The paper highlights the importance of China and India in complementing countries such as Singapore as it climbs the technological ladder to maintain its competitiveness in the world market.

The export competitiveness has only calculated on only two aspects either comparatively advantageous or comparatively disadvantageous products for India or China. There is not any thorough study that has been undertaken for Indian manufacturing sector at a segregated level along with that of China. So, in the light of these shortcomings, the purpose of this study is to analyse the dynamics of export competitiveness of indian manufacturing sector vis-à-vis its emerging counterpart, china in the global market.

A modified revealed comparative advantage index has been used in two different phases of 2001–08 and 2010–18 to find the dynamic pattern of manufacturing exports of India and China in the world market.

The study revealed that India has shown a positive response in increasing its competitive positioned products from low-technology to medium-technology products during the study period. There has been a decline in the competitive positioned products of China and simultaneously China’s threatened product lines have shown an immense increment over the years. Moreover, Indian exports are concentrated to few low-technology and resource-intensive products, that share more than 50% of total exported value for its manufacturing in the global market, whereas, China is much diversified and the exported value is more scattered over its manufactured items.

The study does not include the factors that impacted the export competitiveness of the sample economies and thus adds a limitation to this study.

As there is very limited research on dynamics of export competitiveness of Indian manufacturing exports at harmonised system 6-digit level with China, this study fulfils the gap.

The article examines the impact of changing human resource endowments on the factor intensity and commodity composition of manufacturing exports in the ASEAN economies. There is evidence that skill and human capital endowments over the period 1970‐83 have increased, and that this rise in the quality of the labour force has influenced the factor use pattern in the manufacturing sector, as reflected in the shift towards relatively more skill‐intensive forms of production. The evidence on the human resource orientation of ASEAN exports is also consistent with the notion that increased human capital endowments have influenced the factor intensity of manufactured exports, although in some cases this tendency is exaggerated by the high growth in capital‐intensive intermediate imports. The findings of the article are consistent with the argument that policy directed towards the development of human capital can make a significant contribution in enabling an economy to develop the production and trade structures needed to retain its international competitive advantage.

China’s unprecedented emergence as an economic and political power has created a new geopolitical economy for semi-industrialised and developing economies in Southeast Asia. This paper examines China’s trade relationships with Thailand and Indonesia using the concepts of uneven and combined development (UCD) and unequal exchange. The mass of surplus value obtained through China’s trade with the developed economies has flowed into the considerable expansion in China’s imports from developing countries since 2000. China has maintained a consistent trade deficit with the latter. While the developing countries concerned have benefitted from this set of relationships, the extent to which they have done so has been determined by national strategies. In countries like Thailand – where manufacturing capital and a significant working class has emerged – exports expanded on the basis of mutually advantageous technologically and skills intensive goods. These are produced with a similar organic composition of capital as in China. The result has been a further consolidation of the hegemony of manufacturing capital. Indonesia, however, has a political system and economy long dominated by resource exploitation linked fractions of capital. The result has been a surge in primary goods exports. The current commodity price cycle has meant these goods exchange at prices above their value. The current looming price correction, however, may have negative repercussions. In the meantime, the concentration in raw materials exports is helping to prevent the emergence of a circuit of productive capital in manufacturing. The evidence from these contrasting cases suggests that the degree to which developing economies can benefit from China’s own historically unparalleled combined development remains highly contingent on the strength of the combined development possibilities and efforts within these other national social formations. Above all, there is the degree to which manufacturing sectors of capital can obtain hegemony.

This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and trade performance for the Indian economy through a time-series analysis with annual data over the period 1980-2016.

The study uses new econometrics techniques such as unit root tests in the presence of endogenous structural breaks and autoregressive-distributed lag bounds test for the analysis.

Empirical results reveal that the level of financial development has a significant positive impact on the exports, imports and trade balance of manufactured goods for the Indian economy.

The findings suggest that the positive effect of financial development on trade performance is a potential mechanism through which the former may affect overall income and growth rates. It also implies that standalone trade liberalisation policies are insufficient to increase Indian exports. Indian policymakers should, therefore, consider the implications of the next set of financial sector reforms on the country’s trade flows, besides their positive impact on the economic performance. The findings are particularly relevant in the present scenario when the export growth is decelerating and there is a marked slowdown in private credit flows because of the problem of non-performing assets.

This study is the first of its kind which provides a holistic analysis of the relationship between financial development and trade performance for the Indian economy and also investigates the direction of causality between financial development and international trade by considering the possible presence of multiple endogenous structural breaks in the data. Moreover, in contrast to the available literature, the present study focuses on net exports as a key indicator of trade performance rather than trade openness.

The purpose of the paper is to determine why premature deindustrialization is occurring in many developing countries.

A theoretical structure for explaining premature deindustrialization is utilized. Then the comparative experiences of a number of developing countries are used to illustrate the operation of the theory.

The results indicate that increasing inequality among a number of developing countries has reduced the domestic market for labor intensive manufactured goods, resulting in stagnation in manufacturing. Also, the increasing inequality in developed countries has reduced international demand for labor intensive manufacturing. Thus developing countries have fewer opportunities to export labor intensive manufacturing.

Data on inequality is limited and it is very difficult to determine causality. However, intuition indicates that causality is most likely bi-directional.

Strategies of economic development must concern themselves with the effects that increasing inequality will likely have on the development of labor intensive manufacturing.

Social programs that bolster the purchasing power of poor families are likely to be important (social safety net). Broad-based agricultural growth will provide a basis for labor intensive manufacturing.

The originality stems from the linking of deindustrialization with rising inequality.

Compares changes in the competitive position of six Dynamic Asian Economies (DAEs) – Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong – exporting to the USA, Japan and the European Union (EU) between 1983 and 1995. Dynamic shift‐share methods are applied to two digit data for the top five manufactured exports to the USA and the EU, and the top four in the case of Japan. Findings emphasise the magnitude of the structural transformation which occurred over this period as the emerging DAEs such as Malaysia and Thailand became more competitive across a broad range of manufactured goods relative to the older DAEs, while the latter endeavoured to switch into higher value‐added manufacturing and services or new markets, or to establish manufacturing facilities overseas as a substitute for exports.