Abstract: The economic gap between China and the developed countries is mainly reflected in the quality of the economy, while the trade quality is an important part of the economic quality. Based on the measurement of the product quality index, this paper studies the product quality in the bilateral trade of Sino-US manufacturing industries around recent 11 years. The results show that in China-US trade relations of the manufacturing sector, China is positioned at an absolutely disadvantageous end in terms of product quality, while US holds an absolutely dominant position. Among the 28 manufacturing industries, only China’s tobacco processing industry holds a position of high-quality trade status in general, as for the rest of the industry China has to admit its trade status of low quality. As far as the development trend is concerned, the product quality of China’s resource-intensive industries presents a trend of gradual improvement compared to the US. As for the high-tech capital-intensive industries, China’s trade quality is deteriorating relative to the US; while the related product quality of the labor-intensive industry has no obvious trend of change on the whole.

Key words: product quality; trade quality; product quality index; trade types