European Manufacturing Exports and Exposure to Chinese ICT Services

This paper examines how the share of China-origin information and communication technology (ICT) services value added embodied in European manufacturing exports evolved between 1995 and 2018. The analysis has two aims. First, we document the long-run trajectory of Chinese ICT-services inputs in European manufacturing exports and benchmark it against broader shifts in foreign value added, foreign services content, and the ICT intensity of services embodied in exports. Second, we examine whether major institutional milestones – EU accession waves and the post-2013 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) era – align with changes in exposure trajectories across European economies, treating these dates as structured reference points rather than as clean causal shocks. The results show a sustained increase in China-origin ICT-services inputs, alongside substantial cross-country and cross-industry heterogeneity. Benchmarking exercises indicate that the increase is not reducible to general servicification alone but reflects a re-weighting within the foreign ICT input basket. At the same time, the turning-point analysis does not support a single common break; the evidence is more consistent with gradual, heterogeneous, and specification-sensitive trajectory differences than with one discrete post-milestone shift. The paper therefore contributes new evidence on the measurement, benchmarking, and heterogeneity of Europe’s exposure to Chinese ICT services in manufacturing exports.