China's trade patterns and international comparative advantage / Xiao-guang Zhang.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-247) and index.

2 Reforming a Centrally Planned Foreign Trade System 5 -- Foreign trade system reform: an overview 6 -- Major trade reform measures, 1978-97 9 -- Impact of trade reforms 30 -- 3 Factor Intensity of Chinese Tradable Commodities 33 -- Aggregation of tradable commodities and their description 33 -- Commodity classification criteria 33 -- Methods of measuring factor intensity 36 -- Applicability to China 39 -- Factor intensity of Chinese tradable commodities 39 -- 4 China's Foreign Trade Patterns and Performance 51 -- Commodity composition of China's foreign trade 53 -- Measuring trade performance 58 -- China's foreign trade performance, 1978-96 64 -- 5 Measuring Comparative Advantage 75 -- Expressions of comparative advantage 76 -- Empirical measurement of a country's comparative advantage 79 -- Domestic resource cost (DRC) method 83 -- Interpretation and comparison of DRC results 86 -- 6 Tradable Goods Price Structure in China, 1978-95 91 -- Estimating relative prices 91 -- China's commodity price system and its reforms 93 -- Changes in China's domestic prices for agricultural products 97 -- Changes in China's domestic prices for industrial products 104 -- Border price trends 118 -- Direct price comparisons 119 -- An analysis of relative prices for tradables 126 -- 7 Shadow Prices of Primary Factors of Production, 1978-95 143 -- Primary-factor shadow pricing 143 -- Input-output coefficients: skilled and unskilled labour 145 -- Factors' marginal-product estimation 148 -- Shadow prices for non-tradable goods and primary factors 161 -- 8 China's International Comparative Advantage, 1978-95: DRP Results 169 -- Method and data issues 169 -- DRP estimates of China's international comparative advantage 174 -- Sources of changes in DRP measures 200 -- 9 China's Trade Patterns and Comparative Advantage 207 -- Comparative advantage and trade patterns: the DRP and the NEPR 207 -- China's trade patterns and comparative advantage 212 -- Trade reforms 223 -- Trade efficiency 225 -- Policy implications 226.