劳动力成本上升对中国国际竞争比较优势的影响

Effect of the Rising Wages on China's Comparative Advantage

"民工荒"使得关于我国劳动力成本是否上升,以及其上升是否降低了我国参与国际分工的比较优势这一命题的讨论日益增多。本文提出观点:近年来我国劳动力成本上升显著,但我国国际竞争的比较优势却并不因此下降,原因有如下两点:一是最集中体现我国国际竞争比较优势的行业——制造业工资水平的上升幅度远远小于整体工资水平的上升幅度;二是劳动力工资水平的上升可部分归因于劳动生产率的提高,而这并不会使我国丧失国际竞争的比较优势。本文的实证分析通过梳理劳动力工资水平的变化及其与FD I流入量和出口量变化的关系,印证上述观点。这说明我国国际竞争的比较优势仍然存在,加之我国依然存在大量的农村剩余劳动力,因而不能全盘否定廉价劳动力这一比较优势,技术创新与结构升级的政策不能一刀切,应在充分利用廉价劳动力优势的基础上,使生产率提高的源泉逐步替代人口红利源泉。

The lack of rural migrant workers makes the topic about whether our country′s labor cost is rising and whether the comparative advantage is diminishing more and more heat.We suggest that although our average labor cost is rising rapidly,our comparative advantage is not affected.The reasons are that the manufacturing wage is rising at a much lower speed and that the growth of the productivity has also added to the rise of the labor cost.By analyzing the change of the labor cost and the relationship between the rise of the labor cost and our export and the inflow of FDI,we verify the above mentioned hypothesis.We then suggest that as our labor cost advantages still exist,we should not make the policies such as technical innovation and upgrade structure rigidly uniform.