Thèse en cours : The effect of governmental subsidies on Chinese firms competitivness abroad

Université Paris Dauphine
Sous la direction de Farid Toubal, Sébastien Jean
Date d’inscription : Septembre 2021

China has experienced the biggest export growth among the countries covered by the World Trade Organisation. Chinese firms have become strong competitors in the global economy on the basis of cost advantages arising from scale effects, as well as their large pool of low-cost labour. They have also used process innovations to increase productivity and efficiency. These performances are however unusual and unexpected given China’s relative level of endowment. Thanks to targeted industrial policies, China became the world leader in a number of capital-intensive industries such as steel, solar panels or shipbuilding. This doctoral thesis aims at investigating the underlying determinants and effects of these exceptional export performances with a particular focus on the role of Chinese industrial policies. The thesis deals with three main challenges. First, I will build a new database gathering Chinese government subsidies and aids granted to targeted sectors and firms. I will collect these data from the different FYPs and from various micro-level databases and eventually on the balance sheets and income statement of Chinese firms. Second, I will assess the impact of subsidies and aids on the export performances of Chinese firms. Through backward and forward sectoral linkages, government subsidies and aids have effects beyond targeted firms which may also explain the exceptional performances of China in the above-mentioned. Third, the thesis will focus on the impact of Chinese subsidies and aids on European firms’ competitiveness. There are wealth of anecdotes and evidence that Chinese firms are reinforcing their competitive position due to received aids and subsidies.