On the afternoon of July 1, Professor Yu Zhihong from the University of Nottingham, UK, visited the Luojia Economic Management High-end Forum of Wuhan University and gave an academic lecture entitled "Growing Like China: Firm Performance and Global Production Line Position". This forum invited Professor Zhang Tianding from Wuhan University as a guest commentator. The lecture was co-organized by the Department of World Economics of Wuhan University and the Canadian Institute of Economics of Wuhan University, and was hosted by Professor Yu Zhen. Teachers such as Kang Meiling, Yang Yong, Wei Wei, Xiong Ling, Hu Hui, Guo Rufei, Yang Shubin, Wang Shufei, Geng Xinyi, Hu Xing and more than 30 postgraduates attended this academic forum.

Professor Yu Zhihong first pointed out that in recent decades, global value chains have fundamentally changed the development of international trade, making enterprises and the overall economy face new challenges, new opportunities, and new policy issues. The development trajectory of China in the past two decades provides an ideal background for explaining how Chinese companies are positioned in the global value chain, and how this positioning changes with changes in productivity during the company's life cycle. Professor Zhihong Yu found that the upstream rate of China's imports is rising, while the upstream rate of exports is relatively stable. Chinese companies have incorporated more and more production links into domestic production. Next, Professor Yu Zhihong combined the survey data of the customs database and the industrial enterprise database and China's input-output table to explain the impact of the expansion of Chinese enterprises and technological progress on their status in the division of labor in the global value chain from 1992 to 2014. Subsequently, Professor Yu Zhihong combined detailed data at the enterprise level to explain the pattern of global value chains shaping the structural transformation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. It also uses a typical model to illustrate how these models can be explained in the context of a value chain. Finally, Professor Yu Zhihong took China's CSR and CNR as an example, and put forward a micro explanation, which deepened everyone's realistic understanding of the impact of national development on the trade structure.

In the comment section, Professor Zhang Tianding of Wuhan University pointed out that Professor Yu's research framework provides a good model for existing macro and micro research in the field of global value chains. At the same time, Professor Zhang Tianding put forward his own views on the facts behind this research and the future development direction of global value chains. Teacher Yu responded to Teacher Zhang’s comments and expressed his gratitude. The teachers and students at the meeting had an expanded discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of diversified and specialized division of labor, as well as the relationship between domestic sales and foreign sales. The lecture ended successfully in a heated discussion atmosphere.

Brief introduction of the speaker:

Zhihong obtained his PhD in University of Nottingham, and has worked in UoN as faculty member since then. His main research area is international trade and investment, and Chinese Economy. His recent research interest is firm level adjustments to globalisation from both empirical and theoretical perspectives . He has published in top journals in related fields such as Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, European Economic Review, and Economic Theory. He is also now serving as the associate editor of The World Economy