Technology Spillovers Through Exports: Empirical Evidence for the Chinese Case

International trade is one of the main channels of technological diffusion as it allows countries to have access to technology developed by others in the process of buying and selling intermediate inputs and capital goods. In the 1990s, China initiated a process of major incentives for the development of new technologies and this was intensified in the 2000s. The country is now a potential technology donor, which contributes to the global diffusion of technology. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of technological spillovers from China through international trade. The analysis considered 22 OECD member countries, including China, and 17 manufacturing industries for the 2008–2014 period. The results indicate that China is contributing to the process of technological diffusion with both negative and positive spillovers. Besides identifying the spillovers from China broken down according to industries, our results also indicate that domestic and foreign spillovers are important channels of technological diffusion.