The International Effects of China's Growth, Trade and Education Booms

China’s international trade flows have increased by 500 per cent since 1992, far outstripping GDP growth. Likewise tertiary education enrolments have increased by 300 per cent. We simulate these changes using a multi‐sector growth model of the Chinese and USA economies. A decade of trade biased growth in China is found to raise USA GDP by approximately 3–4.5 percentage points and has a large impact on the demand for tertiary education in China. Despite these positive effects of growth, the results suggest that the expansion of China’s education sector per se has practically no long‐run impact on the USA economy.