Abstract: In view of the rapid development of China's import trade in recent years and the increasing participation of manufacturing in the global value chain division of labor, it is of great practical significance to re-research the technology spillovers in China's import trade. This paper use panel data including 16 manufacturing industries from 2000 to 2014 to study the relationship between import trade, global value chain embeddedness and manufacturing productivity development. The results show that the R&D spillover of import trade can significantly improve the productivity of manufacturing industry. The global value chain embeddness and productivity improvement have an “inverted U-shaped” relationship, and there is a “low-end locking Dilemma” ; the “low-end locking Dilemma” of global value chain is concentrated in the low-tech industry, while it is not obvious in the middle and high-tech industries. At the same time, the higher the technical level of the industry, the greater the spillover effect of import trade technology. The global value chain embeddedness is an important factor affecting the R&D spillover of import trade. There is a nonlinear relationship between the two factors, but it presents a "positive U-shaped" relationship, that is, with the deepening of the value chain embeddedness, the absorption capacity of domestic manufacturing technology is improved, and the spillover effect of import trade R&D is turned from negative to positive. Compared with developing countries, global value chain embeddedness has a much more significant impact on the R&D spillover of imports from developed countries, probably because imported products from developed countries usually contain more technical content and require more technical absorption capacity.