Empirical research on the impact of international trade network of high-tech product on its global value chain

With the rapid acceleration of global industrial transfer, the complexity of world exports of high-tech products has increased significantly. This study aims to investigate the evolution of the network structure in international high-tech product trade and its impact on global value chain (GVC) indices. By analyzing the trade network and GVC indices, we explore the small-world characteristic of the international high-tech product trade (IHT) network and the significant spatial heterogeneity in its geographical pattern. While emerging industrialized countries are gradually gaining importance in the core-periphery structure, we observe that developed economies still maintain control over GVCs, as indicated by analyzing GVC indices. Furthermore, our empirical analysis reveals that network centrality has a positive effect on GVC participation and position indices, but linkage strength and power position in the network show a negative effect on GVC position index. These findings suggest that although the surge in high-tech product exports from latecomer countries is primarily driven by their focus on lower value-added functions, it does not result in higher positions for these countries within the GVCs. This discovery also provides further evidence for the dialectical debate on a spike in high-tech exports from developing countries.