The Impact of China's Global Value Chain Embedding on Bilateral Trade with Southeast Asian Countries

Under the dual background of global value chain (GVC) restructuring and a new round of technological revolution, this paper examines the effect of China's GVC embedding degree on bilateral trade with Southeast Asian countries, which have remained China's largest trading partner since 2020, accounting for 15.94% of China's total foreign trade in 2024. Combining literature analysis, descriptive data analysis, and a time-series regression on annual data from 2015 to 2023, the GVC embedding degree is measured by the share of intermediate-goods trade in total trade, following Yeats (1998). The results show that a one-unit increase in China's GVC embedding degree raises bilateral trade by 12.94 units on average, with an R-squared of 0.86, indicating strong explanatory power. Sub-country regressions reveal heterogeneous effects, with coefficients of 14.98 for Vietnam, 6.84 for Singapore, and 10.39 for the Philippines, all statistically significant. The findings confirm that high-quality GVC embedding promotes trade through technology spillovers, industrial upgrading, and deepened division of labor. Policy recommendations are accordingly proposed for the government, industries, and enterprises to enhance the resilience of regional value chains and the quality of bilateral trade.