Restructuring the Sunan model, globalizing regional development: trajectories of development in Kunshan, China

Working PaperThis paper attempts to advance the research on globalization and regional development in China through a study of Kunshan City. We investigate the restructuring process, the structure of FDI, and the nature of global-local networks to understand trajectories and models of regional development in the context of globalization. We highlight the interactions of the Chinese state, transnational corporations (TNCs) and regional assets in shaping the trajectories of regional development

Beyond new regionalism, beyond global production networks: remaking the Sunan model, China

ManuscriptThis paper attempts to advance the research on globalization and regional development in China through a study of Kunshan City. We investigate the restructuring process, the structure of FDI, and the nature of global-local networks to understand trajectories and models of regional development in the context of globalization. We highlight the interactions of the Chinese state, transnational corporations (TNCs) and regional assets in shaping the trajectories of regional development. We argue that Kunshan's pathway to globalizing regional development is state-centered and heavily dependent on global forces, which has made Kunshan a TNC satellite district and a dual city segmented between TNCs and domestic firms. We also argue that TNCs' local embeddedness has to be positioned in their global/external networks and that the assessment of regional development has to be conditioned upon a region's specific context. The findings suggest that neither new regionalism nor GPN perspectives can fully explain regional development in China with huge domestic markets and large regional disparities. We promote an alternative, middle ground perspective to regional development to better integrate global forces, state institutions, and local contexts. Such a third approach to regional development has the potential to hold down the global and develop indigenous capacities

Restructuring for growth in urban China: transitional institutions, urban development, and spatial transformation

ManuscriptThis research examines government policies and urban transformation in China through a study of Hangzhou City, which is undergoing dramatic growth and restructuring. As the southern center of the Yangtze River Delta, an emerging global city region of China, Hangzhou has been restlessly searching for strategies to promote economic growth and survive the competition with Shanghai. This paper analyzes Hangzhou?s development strategies, including globalization, tourism, industrial development, and urban development, in the context of shifting macro conditions and local responses. We hold that urban policies in China are situated in the broad economic restructuring and the gradual, experiential national reform, and are therefore transitional. We argue that China?s urban policies are state institution-directed, growth-oriented, and land-based, imposing unprecedented challenges to sustainability and livability. Land development and spatial restructuring are central to urban policies in China. Last, while Hangzhou?s development strategies and policies to some extent reflect policy convergence across cities in China, local/spatial contexts, including local settings, territorial rescaling and land conditions, are underlying the functioning of development/entrepreneurial states. Keywords: Globalization, Rescaling, development zones, urban development, Hangzhou, China

Institutions, location, and network of multinational enterprises in China: a case study of Hangzhou

Working PaperBased on extensive interviews with local government officials and a survey of forty-four foreign-invested enterprises, this paper examines the role of local formal institutions and their constituent components in intra-urban location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and in network properties of their investments in Hangzhou municipality, Zhejiang province, China. This paper finds that, unlike previous studies based on developed economies, local formal institutions in terms of sub-municipal governments are an important factor influencing the intra-urban distribution of MNE investments in Hangzhou. The local formal institutional components that are of primary importance include financial incentives, industrial infrastructures, and government attitudes toward foreign investments. They are of greater significance than their municipal-level counterparts given the immediate administrative relationships between the sub-municipal authorities and the foreign investors. The start-up fiscal capability of sub-municipal governments can therefore partly determine the intra-urban pattern of foreign supplier investments

Location decisions and network configurations of foreign investment in urban China

Journal ArticleThis article studies location decisions and network configurations of FDI in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, located in the northwest of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Built upon the perspective that China?s economic transition can be conceptualized as a triple pr of globalization, marketization, and decentralization, this article outlines four structural changes of the Chinese economy, which are underlying the location and networks of FD decentralization and the empowerment of local states, marketization and the increasing importance of places, globalization and the emergence of globalizing city regions, and urba spatial restructuring. The study has uncovered substantial intraurban differentials existing within Nanjing and the significance of the Chinese state, location within the YRD, and intraurban context in the location decisions of FDI. We have also found that foreign ventures overwhelmingly serve as production facilities for either the Chinese or world market, and maintain close production relations with other foreign firms in the YRD. Lastly, regression models have identified the significance of national-level development zones, access to ports, and industrial land in the location of foreign ventures

Urbanization, land use, and sustainable development in China

pre-printChina's economic reforms and unprecedented growth have generated many fascinating issues for scholarly research. An understanding of urbanization and land use change in China is required for appropriate strategies and policies to facilitate future sustainable development. This paper reviews the literature on urbanization, land use and sustainable development in China with a focus on land use change. We argue that land use and environmental research are embedded in the complex economic-geographical processes and multiple trajectories of development and urbanization in China. This paper highlights the important role of space-time modeling in a multi-disciplinary setting in the study of urbanization, land use and sustainable development. It also points out potential areas for future research

Spatial-temporal hierarchy of regional inequality of China

ManuscriptThis paper advances the multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework of regional inequality in China by using the most recent statistical data. We analyze the multi-scalar patterns of China's regional inequality with GIS and statistical techniques, and demonstrate the significance of the municipality effect. The authors also apply multilevel modeling to identify the spatial structure and time dimension of the underlying forces driving regional development. This study illustrates that China's regional inequality is sensitive to the spatial-temporal hierarchy of multi-mechanisms, and reveals the relative influence of globalization, marketization, and decentralization

Urban land expansion and spatial dynamics in Globalizing Shanghai

pre-printUrban land expansion in China has attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, more work is needed to apply spatial modeling to understanding the mechanisms of urban growth from both institutional and physical perspectives. This paper analyzes urban expansion in Shanghai and its development zones (DZs). We find that, as nodes of global-local interface, the DZs are the most significant components of urban growth in Shanghai, and major spatial patterns of urban expansion in Shanghai are infilling and edge expansion. We apply logistic regression, geographically weighted logistic regression (GWLR) and spatial regime regression to investigate the determinants of urban land expansion including physical conditions, state policy and land development. Regressions reveal that, though the market has been an important driving force in urban growth, the state has played a predominant role through the implementation of urban planning and the establishment of DZs to fully capitalize on globalization. We also find that differences in urban growth dynamics exist between the areas inside and outside of the DZs. Finally, this paper discusses policies to promote sustainable development in Shanghai

Production and R&D networks of foreign ventures in China: implications for technological dynamism and regional development

ManuscriptThis paper analyzes the nature of FDI local networks in production and R&D activities in China and discusses their implications for technological dynamism and regional development. We investigate foreign ventures (or foreign-invested enterprises, FIEs) in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, based on a large-scale survey of ICT firms conducted in three mega-city regions of China: Beijing, Shanghai-Suzhou, and Shenzhen-Dongguan. Our data show that FIEs in China are gradually localizing their production, but the extent of local embeddedness is contingent upon home country effects, local specific contexts and FDI-host region relationships. We have also found significant influence of industrial agglomeration on FDI location and network decisions. Beijing tends to have broader FDI sources and better integrated global-local networks, while in those regions dominated by FDI such as Suzhou and Dongguan, FIEs are thinly embedded with local economies and tend to establish global-local networks among themselves; local embeddedness is limited by a series of technological, institutional, spatial, and structural mismatches. Shanghai and Shenzhen are in between. More efforts are still needed to better integrate FDI with local economies and strengthen China's local innovative capacities

Dynamics, space, and regional inequality in provincial China: a case study of Guangdong province

pre-printThis paper investigates the regional inequality in one of the most developed provinces in China, Guangdong, from 1979 to 2009 and follows the multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework. We have found a new round of intensifying inequality in Guangdong since the early 2000s, which is attributed to the widening gap between the core region of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the rest of the province (periphery) and between the urban and rural areas. The authors also apply a distribution dynamics approach and spatial Markov chains to identify the spatial-temporal dynamics of regional disparities in Guangdong. The results show that there has been a progressive bias towards a poverty trap in the province and the effect of self-reinforcing agglomeration is evident. Using a multilevel model, the study further unfolds that the regional inequality in Guangdong is sensitive to the core-periphery hierarchy of multi-mechanisms and reveals the relative influence of decentralization, marketization and globalization. We argue that the policies towards inequality-reducing in Guangdong have been constrained by the geographical barriers and the effect of self-reinforcing agglomeration in the PRD, while marketization has potential to mediate the uneven development driven by the spatial concentration of foreign investment