中国产业链“走出去”的驱动机制研究——基于企业投入下游度和产出上游度双重视角

Abstract

Amid rapid global industrial and supply chain restructuring, China's export-oriented strategy confronts fundamentally altered conditions, requiring proactive overseas investment to cultivate new competitive advantages. Recent scholarship increasingly emphasizes analyzing global value chain (GVC) participation and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) within a unified framework. However, existing research mainly focuses on lead firms in developed economies, overlooking how firms in developing countries leverage GVC participation to build competitive advantages and extend industrial chains abroad. Unlike the integrated global networks of multinationals in developed countries, Chinese firms' overseas investments remain fragmented with limited supply chain support. Meanwhile, declining service trade costs, which particularly benefit service-advanced economies, intensify the urgency for developing countries to deploy industrial chains overseas. This study investigates how firms in developing countries evolve from GVC embeddedness to OFDI, thereby driving industrial chain "going global". Theoretically, this study explains how firms establish global production linkages through intermediate goods trade, leveraging technical capabilities near production endpoints and market power near consumption endpoints to facilitate overseas investment. Using Chinese microdata, this study constructs firm-level input downstreamness and output upstreamness and finds that proximity to production endpoints enhances technical capabilities and promotes OFDI, while distance from consumption endpoints weakens market power and inhibits OFDI. Industrial chain linkage analysis reveals that downstream firms' overseas investment triggers upstream suppliers to either export intermediates or invest abroad, thus driving industrial chain "going global". Our findings indicate that this transition from GVC participation to global investment represents both an inevitable trend driven by deepening international specialization and industrial upgrading, and a strategic imperative for Chinese firms amid profoundly changed export conditions. Policy implications are as follows. First, we can reduce OFDI costs to facilitate overseas industrial chain deployment; Second, we can encourage firms to extend from processing toward production endpoints to build technical capabilities; Third, we can strengthen domestic demand to enable firms to approach consumption endpoints and enhance market power; Fourth, we can cultivate regional cluster lead firms and reinforce linkages between outward-investing firms and domestic supply chains. By examining how firms in developing countries evolve from passive GVC participants to proactive drivers of industrial chain "going global", this study addresses existing literature's overemphasis on lead firms in developed countries and expands the analytical framework for overseas industrial chain deployment from a developing country's perspective. These findings provide microeconomic foundations and policy guidance for China to build new competitive advantages and enhance supply chain resilience and security through strategic "going global" initiatives.