Foreign Trade, FDI and the Upgrading of Regional Industrial Structure in China: Based on Spatial Econometric Model

Abstract

The upgrading of industrial structure is the core means of coordinating economic development and environment protection. Its spatial agglomeration can also reduce environmental pollution partly. The upgrading of China’s industrial structure has become an important issue concerned by the whole society. To better understand this issue, based on the provincial data of China (1997–2017), this paper strives to explore the spatial effects of foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the upgrading of China’s regional industrial structure by constructing the weight matrix of economic distance, and by introducing the spatial autocorrelation analysis method and spatial panel econometric model. The results show that: 1. The Moran’s I index of China’s import, export, FDI, and industrial structure upgrading has passed the 5% significance level test, displaying remarkable spatial agglomeration characteristics. 2. Foreign trade and FDI are important driving factors to upgrade China’s industrial structure. 3. Foreign trade has a significant spatial spillover effect. Imports and exports can not only promote the upgrading of local industrial structure, but also radiate to other regions, promote or inhibit the development of its industry, and further affect the national data. 4. The spatial spillover effect of FDI is not significant. Finally, some policy suggestions are put forward.

Does central environmental inspection promote the industrial structure upgrading in China? An attention-based view

“…Industrial structure upgrading is a critical factor in achieving sustainable development goals in a country and globally (Zhang and Chen, 2018;Wang et al, 2020;Zheng J. et al, 2021;Wang and Li, 2022). As the second-largest economy in the world, China is shifting its development strategy from high speed to high quality, urgently searching for solutions to industrial structure upgrading.…”

Can Corruption Facilitate Industrial Structure Upgrade in China? The Moderating Role of Government-Business Relationships

“…In addition, the coefficients of lnfdi and growth become significantly positive; this finding may imply that the dynamic GMM estimation reveals a different pattern compared to the fixed effects model after further dealing with the issue of endogeneity caused by simultaneity. Following this line of thought, the proportion of foreign direct investment in a province increases and the labor productivity of tertiary industries in a province may also increase correspondingly, indicating that the higher a region’s degree of opening up to the outside world, the more favorable it is for upgrading the industrial structure (Wang et al, 2020). As the degree of opening up to the outside world increases, the degree of interaction between domestic and overseas industries increases, the market’s grasp of the global industry’s development direction is more accurate, and the demand for advanced emerging industries is strengthened.…”

The Impact Relationships between Scientific and Technological Innovation, Industrial Structure Advancement and Carbon Footprints in China Based on the PVAR Model

“…From the perspective of scientific and technological innovation heterogeneity, scholars divided innovation into technological innovation and product innovation, and found that technological innovation and product innovation promote economic growth through industrial structure upgrading via the mediating effect model [ 18 ]. In addition, other scholars, by analyzing the experience of science and technology innovation to promote industrial structure upgrading, found that government policy intervention has limitations, which can stimulate the rapid development of supported industries in the short term, but at the same time, it can also trigger the problem of homogeneous investment and construction overheating, leading to technological convergence [ 19 , 20 ].…”