Who leads the chain? Deciphering the trajectory of global value network in technology-intensive manufacturing and innovation effects

Amid the ongoing technological revolution and global industrial restructuring, technology-intensive manufacturing has become a core field of international innovation competition. This study adopts a network perspective to analyze the structural dynamics of global value creation, moving beyond traditional linear value chain analysis. Using global value-added trade data from 1995 to 2020, we apply social network analysis to map the evolution of the global value network and assess the impact of national network positions on innovation performance. The results reveal an increasingly hierarchical, pyramid-shaped structure centered on the U.S. and China, with the former leading input chains and the latter dominating output chains. The network also exhibits growing asymmetry and small-world properties. Fixed-effects regression results show that countries with higher weighted degree and betweenness centrality achieve superior innovation outcomes, supporting the role of network structure in shaping innovation through knowledge spillovers, integration, and filtering. These findings highlight the strategic importance of global network positioning in enhancing national innovation capacity.