This paper examines the impacts of China's expansion in international trade on Brazilian states. The main hypothesis of the study is that such impacts vary according to the pattern of trade specialization of the several states. In this case, commodity-export regions would have benefited the most from the Chinese expansion and the consequent raise in international demand and prices of commodities in the 2000s, whereas producers and exporters of manufactured goods would tend to face competition with China, both in domestic and international markets. In order to address this issue, the export profile of the main Brazilian states was analyzed, and exports were classified according to their technological content. Based on this classification, we built indexes of export quality for each state. In addition, the pattern of export specialization of Brazilian states was analyzed in comparison to the one of China. We calculated coefficients of specialization for each state in relation to China, and investigated the correlation between these coefficients and economic growth rates for the period of 1996-2009. Results suggest that economic growth in Brazilian states has been strongly influenced by the degree of complementarity in relation to the Chinese exports, and its growing demand for agricultural and mineral commodities. Thus, states which produce and export raw materials tended to grow above the national average between 2000 and 2009.
Economic growth; exports; China
