【英文】欧洲对外关系委员会报告：中国受保护的市场如何威胁欧洲经济实力（36页）

In the case of China, the advantages that derive from a protected home market are further augmented  by the size of that market. This creates opportunities for significant internal and external economies  of scale. Because China is the largest market globally for many goods and services, protected domestic  firms can build greater production capacity than their counterparts elsewhere. In certain sectors,  larger production volumes facilitate repeated production cycles that encourage production  standardisation and automation, avoid waste, and help raise productivity. Larger Chinese firms might  also be able to procure inputs at lower prices or finance themselves more cheaply. These ‘internal’  economies of scale allow them to push per unit production costs down significantly – for some firms,  well below those of their European rivals. 

To be clear, it is not the size of China’s domestic market  by itself that creates distortions, but its combination with market barriers. [1] Chinese firms active in this vast and protected home market will also disproportionately benefit from  ‘external’ economies of scale available in China – namely, advantages secured by having access to a  large, vibrant, and interlinked home market, industrial network, and workforce. China’s dense  industry clusters provide local firms with direct access to networks of specialised suppliers, labour,  and demand, as well as extensive knowledge spillovers across firms, and between firms and local  academic or research institutions. Chinese firms also benefit from high-quality infrastructure and  proximity to population centres, which can facilitate hiring, procurement, or logistics activities. Where the Chinese market is open to European firms, these advantages are shared; where the market  is closed to foreign competition, they only accrue to Chinese players.