The estimate of Chinese competitiveness is very high throughout the period, relative to both other Asian countries and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the mysteriously competitive ranking of China is difficult to explain. It does not appear to stem from data anomalies linked to the special relationship of China and Hong Kong. It also does not seem to depend on the size of China's exports, since China's rankings weighted by import values are broadly comparable to the unweighted averages portrayed in Figure 1. Then again, perhaps China's ranking is not anomalous at all.
Asian competitiveness is both high relative to the rest of the world and growing.
All this seems intuitive and reasonable. The data generate only one apparent anomaly. China's competitiveness is consistently much higher than one might expect. Given the importance of China and Chinese trade frictions in the world economy, this subject warrants further investigation. Andrew K. Rose Visiting Scholar University of California, Berkeley Ref erences Feenstra, Robert C., and Andrew K. Rose. 1997.