Biography: Yuqing Xing is professor of economics at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. He worked at Asian Development Bank Institute, Bank of Finland, National University of Singapore, World Institute for Development Economics of United Nations University, and International University of Japan. He is the author of "Decoding China's Export Miracle: A Global Value Chain Analysis," and the lead editor of “Global Value Chain Development Report 2021: Beyond Production” and "Global Value Chain Development Report 2023: Resilient and Sustainable GVCs in Turbulent Times." Prof. Xing received a Ph.D in economics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in mathematics from Peking University.

Title of Speech: The Sino-US trade imbalance: an alternative view from a global value chain perspective

Abstract: The persistent trade imbalance in goods between China and the US triggered the on-going trade war between the two countries. However, conventional trade statistics are outdated and fail to accurately measure bilateral trade balances in the age of global value chains. Specifically, China’s trade surplus with the US in goods has been greatly overestimated as about 40% foreign value added was imbedded in the Chinese exports to the US, and the exports of the US to China have been substantially underestimated, because the exports by American factoryless manufacturers such as Apple and Nivida are NOT recorded in official trade statistics. In 2024, the sales of five American factoryless manufacturers in China amounted $106 billion, about 74% of the American exports to China in goods according to the official statistics. But not even one dollar of the sales was counted as an American export. A comprehensive measure of the bilateral trade balance between China and the US should consist of three elements: (1) trade in goods in value added; (2) trade in services in value added, and (3) the service exports of factoryless manufacturers. Using the comprehensive framework, it is estimated that in 2024 China had a $56.5 billion trade surplus with the US, which is less than 20% of the $295.4 billion surplus in goods estimated by the official trade statistics.

Biography: Masayuki Goto is a professor at the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, School of Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japan. He received his Dr.E. degree from Waseda University in 2000. He is studying in the field of data science, business analytics, machine learning, and Bayesian statistics. He is now a director of the Research Institute of Data Science, Waseda University. He has won several best paper awards at international conferences such as the 20th, 22nd and 23rd Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems (APIEMS2019, 2022, 2023), 16th, 19th, and 20th Asian Network for Quality Congress (ANQ2018, 2021, 2022), and the 51st International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering (CIE51). He is a member of IEEE, INFORMS, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, etc. His research interests include applied information mathematics, business analytics, data science, and machine learning and its applications.

Biography: Yanwen Dong is a professor in the Cluster of Science and Technology at Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan. He received his bachelor's degree in 1982 and master's degree in 1984 from the University of Science and Technology, Beijing, China. He also received his Ph.D. degree in 1996 from Osaka Prefecture University, Japan. He worked at the University of Science and Technology Beijing as a lecturer from 1984 to 1995 and at the Faculty of Economics, Fukushima University as an associate professor from 1997 to 2004. His current research interests include production management, supply chain management, management information system and data science. He is the president of Asian Association of Management Science and Applications (AAMSA) since 2025 and editorial board member of Asian Journal of Management Science and Applications (AJMSA) since 2014.