Obviously China is not the only country affected by such factors. De La Cruz et al.,
(2010) illustrate that Mexican exports to the US have less domestic value-added
than Chinese exports to the US. The efforts to create global databases such
as (1) WIOD, (2) Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) based databases (used by
Koopman et al., and Johnson and Noguera, among others), and (3) the WTO-OECD
database demonstrate clearly that all countries participate in global value chains and
the extent and depth to which they participate can be masked when using databases
based on traditional gross trade statistics. These new databases suggest that
traditional economic models that use databases built using simplifying assumptions
about import uses in consumption, investment and export production in the domestic
economy may not accurately capture the value chain impacts across countries.7