China's cost and non-cost competitiveness and its challenges for international trade.

Summary The thesis studies China's cost and non-cost competitiveness and its impacts on the rest of the world between 1970 and 2012. In the beginning, China's trade performance was based on cost competitiveness. Since the 1990s, its cost advantage has declined, especially compared to Thailand and India. On the other hand, its non-cost advantage, as measured by structural change, has been accompanied by an increase in the contribution of imported inputs to exports. This indicates, first, that China's dependence on the rest of the world has increased and, second, that China's exports have driven more exports from the rest of the world than before. Among these exporters, Asian countries are still the biggest beneficiaries of China's export expansion.