Abstract: Today, as global value chain develops in depth, any export products of a country, in most cases, is made up of many intermediate parts produced by other countries, and the technologies and values are shared by many countries. To measure the domestic value content and the technical content of the export products of one country, it is necessary to start from the input of the practical features. Based on the OECD’s country-specific input-output data issued in 2015 and combined with the trade added value forward decomposition method, this paper conducts an evaluation of the trade volume and the technical content of China’s manufactured products export as a whole and the 16 sub-sectors. The findings show that whether on the overall level or on the industrial level, the export volume of China’s manufactured products measured by this method is far lower than that of the traditional customs statistics. The complexity of export technology of China’s manufactured products is showing a clear upward trend, whether as a whole or according to the factor types, and the gap between China and the developed countries in Europe and America is gradually narrowed.

Key words: global value chain; added value of trade; processing trade; technology complexity