破解中国制造业产能过剩的新路径:外资开放政策的视角

产能过剩已经成为困扰中国经济可持续增长的深层次难题,本文以中国2002年外资管制放松作为准自然实验,采用倍差法系统研究外资开放政策对制造业产能利用率的影响及传导机制。研究发现,外资开放有效提升了同行业内资企业的产能利用率,生产效率、出口扩张和对外直接投资是外资开放影响内资企业产能利用率的重要渠道。外资开放对民营企业、一般贸易企业、吸收能力强的企业以及沿海地区企业产能利用率的提升效应更大,并且地区制度环境增强了外资开放的产能利用率提升效应。此外,内资企业除了获得行业内外资进入的水平溢出效应之外,还分别从上游和下游行业的外资进入中获得正向的前向关联与后向关联效应,进而显著提升了自身的产能利用率。最后,本文还进一步考察了外资开放政策对制造业总体产能利用率的影响,发现外资开放通过资源再配置渠道显著促进了制造业总体产能利用率的增长,进一步检验显示,外资开放一方面促进了市场份额从落后产能企业向相对优势产能企业的再配置,另一方面促进了落后产能企业的淘汰,进而提高了资源再配置效率并促进制造业总体产能利用率的提升。本文从外资开放政策视角探究了产能过剩问题,对新常态下破解产能过剩困境、实现“去产能”政策目标具有一定启示意义。

A New Way to Solve China's Manufacturing Overcapacity: An Empirical Study Based on the Perspective of Foreign Investment Opening Policy

The rapid development of China's economy since its reform and opening up has also brought many deep-seated structural problems. One such problem is overcapacity, which seriously reduces the efficiency of economic operation and poses a challenge to the long-term sustainable development of China's economy. This paper takes the large-scale foreign capital liberalization triggered by the revision of the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries by the Chinese government in 2002 as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a difference in differences (DID) method to explore the impact of foreign investment on the capacity utilization rate of domestic enterprises.
The main finding of this paper is that foreign capital opening improves the capacity utilization rate of domestic enterprises in the same industry. The mechanism test shows that production efficiency, export expansion, and foreign direct investment are important channels through which foreign capital opening affects domestic enterprises' capacity utilization rate. A heterogeneity analysis shows that foreign capital opening has a greater effect on the capacity utilization rate of private enterprises, general trade enterprises, enterprises with strong absorptive capacity, and enterprises in coastal areas, and that the regional institutional environment enhances the capacity utilization rate improvement effect of foreign capital opening. This paper also examines the relationship between foreign capital opening and the capacity utilization rate from the perspective of upstream and downstream forward and backward correlation and finds that in addition to the horizontal spillover effect of foreign investment in the industry, domestic enterprises also obtain positive forward flow from foreign investment in upstream and downstream industries. The effect of backward correlation and backward correlation has significantly improved its own capacity utilization rate. Finally, this paper examines the impact of the foreign investment opening policy on the overall capacity utilization rate of the manufacturing industry, and finds that foreign investment opening has significantly promoted the growth of the overall manufacturing capacity utilization rate through resource reallocation channels. Foreign investment opening also promotes the elimination of enterprises with backward production capacity, thereby improving the efficiency of resource reallocation and promoting the overall capacity utilization rate of the manufacturing industry.
This paper makes four contributions to the literature. First, from a research perspective, this paper not only examines the impact of FDI industry spillovers on the capacity utilization rate of domestic enterprises, but also analyzes it from the perspective of correlated industries, which makes up for the sin gle perspective from which the capacity utilization effect of foreign investment opening has been studied, thus enabling a more comprehensive evaluation of the impact of foreign investment opening on the manufacturing capacity utilization rate. Second, in terms of identification strategy, this paper takes the large-scale foreign capital liberalization caused by the revision of the Chinese government's 2002 Catalogue of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investment as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a DID method to conduct empirical research, which helps overcome the endogeneity of the model in the literature and allows more reliable research conclusions to be obtained. Third, this paper deeply examines the mechanism through which foreign capital opening affects the capacity utilization rate of domestic enterprises from multiple dimensions, allowing a deep understan ding of the internal relationship between foreign capital opening and the capacity utilization rate. Finally, this paper studies the impact of foreign investment opening policies on the overall capacity utilization rate of the manufacturing industry at the industry level and finds that foreign investment opening has significantly promoted the growth of the overall manufacturing capacity utilization rate through resource reallocation channels. Foreign investment opening promotes both the reallocation of market share from surviving companies with backward production capacity to companies with relatively advantageous production capacity and the elimination of backward production capacity companies, thereby improving the efficiency of resource reallocation and promoting the overall production capacity utilization rate of the manufacturing industry. This novel discovery has important policy implications for helping solve China's overcapacity dilemma from the perspective of foreign policy adjustment.