This paper studies the evolution of China's production and trade patterns during its integration into the global economy. We document and explain new facts concerning changes in production and exports at the industry and firm levels using microdata and a quantitative Ricardian and Heckscher–Ohlin model with heterogeneous firms. Counterfactual simulations reveal that capital deepening made China's production and exports more capital-intensive, although labor-biased productivity growth acted as a counterforce. Consistent with the data, our model demonstrates that China's trade openness peaked around the mid-2000s and fell until the 2020s, while the world's exposure to Chinese exports rose continuously.

We review theoretical and empirical work on the economic effects of the United States and China trade relations during the last decades. We first discuss the origins of the China shock, its measurement, and present methods used to study its economic effects on different outcomes. We then focus on the recent U.S.-China trade war. We discuss methods used to evaluate its effects, describe its economic effects, and analyze if this increase in trade protectionism reverted the effects of the China shock. The main lessons learned in this review are: (i) the aggregate gains from U.S.-China trade created winners and losers; (ii) China's trade expansion seems not to be the main cause of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment during the same period; and (iii) the recent trade war generated welfare losses, had small employment effects, and was ineffective in reversing the distributional effects due to the China shock.