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.