Measuring the Chinese bioeconomy : a hypothetical extraction method with input–output tables

Summary

The bioeconomy has received significant policy attention globally, particularly in the United States and the European Union, where extensive studies have evaluated its economic importance and strategic potential. In contrast, Asia’s bioeconomy, despite its substantial contributions to global biomass production and biotechnology, remains comparatively underexplored. This paper presents a study on the Chines bioeconomy value added covering the period 1995–2018, using OECD input–output statistics and the hypothetical extraction method (HEM). Our findings reveal that the Chinese bioeconomy contributes 16% to the entire economy in 2018. Furthermore, we compare the bioeconomy value added and growth rates of ten countries during the same period. The two non-OECD countries, China and India, exhibit higher percentages of bioeconomy value added, both between 15 and 19%, than the other eight OECD countries, where the percentages remain below 10%. Our results indicate that, while the total value added and bioeconomy value added fluctuate for all ten countries, the two curves follow similar trends for all countries except the United States and China. Additionally, we compare the HEM results with other methodologies and observe that the HEM and the input-based method yield similar outcomes for China, while both are considerably lower than the up- and downstream approach. This has implications for assessing the contribution of the bioeconomy for sustainable development.