New MERICS index: how internationally integrated is China's economy?

In this new MERICS report, MERICS Senior Economist Francois Chimits looks at the level of integration of China’s economy? He found that the world’s factory remains more isolated than its manufacturing prowess suggests and that China’s dominance in industrial exports can indeed lead to an overestimation of its global role. Despite years of growing international exchanges, the Chinese economy remains substantially less integrated into the world economy than the US and even Japan.

These disparities in Chinese global economic integration are the result of a selective and transactional approach by Beijing, advancing economic integration only if this promised gains elsewhere. The study is based on data from MERICS’ new China Internationalization Index. The index reveals that China’s opening up was mainly aimed at securing commodities, investment and talent for China and not so much targeted at the financial economy and its vast but intangible capital markets and related services.

Read the complete report on MERICS website here