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Chinese actors have emerged as major funders and developers of large-scale transnational infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond. Despite this profound shift, geographers have not yet arrived at a clear conceptualisation of such projects. We show how the literature is overly reliant on a functional view of the Chinese state, structural economic factors, single case studies, and bilateral relations, generating monocausal explanations of outcomes. We develop a new conceptual framework emphasising variegation driven by shifting assemblages of actors, dynamic strategic coupling, and multi-scalar processes of territorialisation. To operationalise our framework, we draw on process tracing and incorporated comparisons across cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the competitive source of Chinese firms in an industrial sector of complex product systems. It helps to reveal the organizational innovation developed by Chinese firms in coping with international competition and technological challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a qualitative method of research. The evidences are mainly collected through interviews, field observation and document analysis. Findings: A pattern of engineer-centered organization is the source of competitiveness of Nanrui (NR) Electric (NREC) in this study. The firm equips its front project teams, and now its overseas branches with developmental human resources and authorizes them the power of decision-making to leverage R&D projects. It is an emerging challenge to the traditional multi-national companies (MNC) pattern, and enables the Chinese firms to build their capabilities on context-based knowledge. Research limitations/implications: As a single-case study paper, there are limitations about the external validity of its argument. Through the in-depth discussion of the NREC case, this paper aims to generate some clues for future study in the relevant academic community, which can be a useful step to formal theorizing and modeling. That is why the authors develop the paper on a single case. As future directions of research, comparative studies covering more cases not only within the power system control and protection industry but also among different complex technology products industrial sectors are really needed. Practical implications: For innovative firms from developing countries like China, they need to develop institutional arrangements to incentivize engineers in the frontline, which may help them to build competence upon successful interaction with customers. During the era of globalization, such a pattern may generate special competitiveness over giant multi-nationals or global production networks (GPNs). Originality/value: The research provides an instructive case on the Chinese rise in industrial sectors of complex product systems. Its findings can not only provide enlightenment for industrial catch-up in developing countries through organizational innovation but also help to initiate a reconsideration of the traditional theorizing of MNC and GPN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the strategic coupling between regions and global lead firms has largely assumed that the regional assets for coupling are ready made and are largely unchanging throughout the coupling process. This article takes this assumption as its critical point of departure and presents a new framework that considers how regional assets are actively (re)configured across multiple scales in ways that could redefine the prevailing mode of strategic coupling. The empirical basis of this framework is derived from a long-term case study on the formation and evolution of Sino-German production networks in environmental goods and services (EGS) in Jieyang, a relatively peripheral city in Guangdong province in China. The analysis draws from thirty-three interviews and seven focus group discussions, conducted between 2014 and 2020, with nonstate and state actors in Jieyang. Findings highlight how Zhongde, a coalition of Jieyang-based firms, transcended the limitations of structural coupling, which exemplifies uneven power relations between regions and lead firms, and attained more balanced coupling relations with German-led EGS global production networks (GPNs) through realigning interests with those of national-level institutions. Responding positively to the structural constraints and opportunities within a Chinese state structure based on experimental governance, Zhongde connected German EGS lead firms to the highly profitable but protected EGS market in China. This ability to jump between scales underscores the cross-scalar and dynamic aspects of strategic coupling: Zhongde was able to meet German-led EGS GPNs' demand for market access and enhanced localization economies through reconfiguring regional assets. Abstracting from these findings, the article enhances the explanation of the evolution of strategic coupling by conceptualizing its intrinsic dynamism and incorporating state structural effects. Finally, it presents two directions for further research on GPN reconfigurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnopharmacological relevance Combined quantitative and qualitative environmental product trade studies, undertaken in the same location over time, are instrumental in identifying plant species with commercial demand and explaining what drives temporal changes. Yet such dynamic studies are rare, including for Himalayan medicinal plants that have been large-scale traded for millennia. Aim of the study To (i) investigate changes in medicinal plant trade in the past 17 years, and (ii) identify the main factors driving changes, using a study of Darchula District in far-western Nepal. Materials and methods Medicinal plant production network data were collected from March to August 2016, for the fiscal year 2014–15, for Darchula District in far-western Nepal through 167 quantitative (58 harvesters, 38 sub-local traders, 25 local traders, 25 central wholesalers, and 21 regional wholesalers), 61 qualitative (15 sub-local traders, 19 local traders, 15 central wholesalers, and 12 regional wholesalers) interviews, and four focus group discussions. Results were compared to previously unpublished similar data for Darchula District for the year 1997–98, using quantitative and qualitative interviews with 10 local traders, 20 central wholesalers, and 53 regional wholesalers. Data analysis was guided by an analytical framework derived from Global Production Network theory. Quantitative data were used to estimate changes in 12 indicators while the qualitative information allowed identification of the factors driving observed changes in the indicators. Results The volume of medicinal plants traded from Darchula District in the fiscal year 2014–15 was 401 t with a harvester value of USD 5.5 million, representing a 2.3 fold increase in volume and 17.2 fold increase in value compared to 1997–98. Trade in the two observation years comprised 30 air-dried plant products (from 28 identified species as well as lichens and a mineral substance); 12 products were traded in both periods, while seven disappeared, and 11 new products entered the trade. The number of traders increased from 10 to 63, mainly due to the emergence of a single high value product yarsagumba ( Ophiocordyceps sinensis ), a fungus-caterpillar complex which alone contributed 85% of total trade value. Over the observed time period, harvesters and traders increased their margins at the cost of central wholesalers, indicating that market changes favoured lower tier actors, eroding the previously identified passive central wholesaler oligopsony in Nepal. Important drivers of market changes are: (i) rising incomes in China and India, expressed through demand for new products and increasing per unit prices for a range of products, (ii) expanding infrastructure (roads and telecommunications) towards and into harvesting sites, reducing transport costs and increasing market efficiency, and (iii) government interventions, causing disappearance of some species from trade. These market changes also led to increased cultivation at lower altitudes, and a sharp increase in the number of processor industries in Nepal. Conclusion Trade in medicinal plant products in far-western Nepal in the past two decades has increased substantially, doubling in volume and increasing 17 fold in value. There is a backbone of constantly traded species but also species that disappear from trade and new species that enter. Changes favour harvesters and traders at the benefit of central wholesalers whose previous passive oligopsony is disappearing. The three main drivers of change are rising incomes in China and India, expanding infrastructure, and government interventions in Nepal. Commercial medicinal plant resources are a substantial asset that appears to offer opportunities for economic development in far-western Nepal. The trade, however, may pose sustainability threats that are best understood by combining species-level biophysical, trade, and consumer studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we focus on the role of China's manufacturing in the international division of labor from the perspective of foreign direct investment (FDI). We first discuss the contribution made by China's manufacturing sector to capital accumulation, manifested internally by domestic oversaving and externally by China's trade surplus. China's output under various conditions is then measured, and the role of FDI in different manufacturing industries, differentiated according to technological type, is examined. Deconstructing the trade balance and highlighting the role of processing, the analysis provides details on the role of FDI in China's merchandise trade. The analysis also shows that China's distorted research and development expenditure in various manufacturing industries is related to lack of innovation capacity in the high-technology industries dominated by FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With this paper we explore how institutional changes have influenced the regional development of Yiwu City, East China. The regional development in Yiwu City can be regarded as constituting a specific model in transitional China, which revolves around the establishment, growth, and internationalization of the local commodity trading market. The success of the Yiwu model lies in the interaction between globalization, local institutions, and commodity trading markets. However, we argue that the strategic coupling perspective has its limitations in explaining the development trajectory of the Yiwu model. We develop an integrated paradigm of regional development located between new regionalism and global production networks by synthesizing Scott's institutional framework. We identify a pronounced and long-established cultural-cognitive element in the entrepreneurial spirit of local people, which led to the establishment of a commodity trading market at the beginning of 1980s. However, the sustainable development of the Yiwu model needs to be supplemented by normative and regulative institutional pillars. We further argue that the developmental local state remains critical to the regional development in developing countries in terms of correcting market failure, encouraging entrepreneurship, and creating a competitive business environment to accommodate globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The embeddedness of transnational corporations (TNCs) in metropolitan economies has become a central issue in the research on globalization and local development. This paper attempts to enhance understanding of FDI embeddedness by assessing TNCs' backward and technological linkages with domestic firms. Through a case study of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou, a frontier globalizing city in the Yangtze River Delta in China, it was found that strategic coupling between TNCs and domestic Chinese firms rarely exists and global production networks (GPN) have not brought substantial benefits to the development of domestic firms in the region. Regression analysis further reveals that TNCs' backward and technological linkages with domestic firms are highly selective and contingent upon market potential in the host region, TNCs' research and development (R&D) orientation and to a lesser extent subsidiary autonomy. It is also found that the booming and sizable domestic market and the development of domestic firms have potential to pave the way for upgrading. These findings suggest that there is a need to develop a broader conceptualization of the upgrading pathways of local firms beyond the notion of strategic coupling in the GPN perspective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

China apparel industry, which is deeply embedded in the global production network ( GPN), faces two urgent issues, social upgrading and economic upgrading. The study of GPN places great emphasis on the two issues. Based on the survey of Ningbo apparel industry, four key components of decent work in China apparel industry are discussed. The role of buyers in promoting decent work in suppliers can't be neglected. There are significant correlations between business type and some indicators of decent work. Though the majority of the apparel firms are engaging in processing, more and more firms are involved in marketing and branding. The upgrading trajectory of China apparel industry leads to the economic and social performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global economic restructuring and technological change are transforming the map of global production and the global division of labor. Based on the perspectives of global value chains and global production networks, this study analyzes the production networks, value chains, and spatial organization of the computer industry in China. It was found that the notion of a symmetric, bell-shaped smiling curve is a highly idealized conceptual framework, and for a developing country like China where leading firms have yet to become top-tier transnational corporations, the smiling curve more likely exhibits a flattened saucer shape. China is also increasingly being integrated into global production networks, and a new form of spatial organization, centered on emerging global cities and globalizing cities, is emerging. An investigation of the global-local networks of the computer industry showed that the embeddedness of transnational corporations (TNCs) is heavily influenced by industrial characteristics and geographical/institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research which analyzes the improvement of the shoe manufacturing industry in Wenzhou, a leading center in the world's biggest exporter and producer of footwear located in China. It mentions that the research examines how the framework of economic improvement initiated in the center has been translated in an attempt to face the challenges induced by the global economy. Findings shows that efforts of reconstruction in the center include the cycles of institutional change.

This study applies the concept of coordinating entrepreneurship to explain the emergence of global production network. More specifically, this study explains and illustrates how Taiwan-born technopreneurs move between Silicon Valley and Taiwan's Hsinchu, thereby promoting Taiwan's computer and information technology (IT) industries. With their entrepreneurial spirit and social network, Taiwan-born technopreneurs even turn Dongguan, a farming village in south China, into a modern IT industrial city. This paper concludes that as a result of the coordinating efforts of these entrepreneurs, electronics and computer plants scattered around the globe are integrated into a global production network, as illustrated by IT firms in Silicon Valley, Hsinchu and Dongguan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate Change related concerns affect multiple international and national policy forefronts. Globally, conflicts over renewables industry between the developed and emerging economies have affected the provision of green goods-thus slowing the overall welfare of global environmental governance. This article argues that the above phenomenon is a new form of green dilemma which arises from the long-lasting issue of balancing environmental protection and economic gains. It further tracks the historical evolutionary change of green dilemma, from version 1.0 to 2.0 to the current avatar of Green Dilemma 3.0. By developing the Green Dilemma Framework, the article aims to uncover the logic underlying the industrial policies and trade conflicts between the developed and emerging economies in their energy transitions. Utilizing the US vs China and US vs India conflicts in the solar PV industries as the two group of cases, the key feature of Green Dilemma 3.0 is illustrated as the conflict over status and control of the global division of labor in the new energy industry. This article offers a novel perspective on global inequality by deconstructing the unequal global production system that can act to restrict the optimization of energy use and production in tackling climate change and thus successively hindering global environmental governance in its realization of optimal results. Underneath global climate change governance, there is an unequal global production network and political system, and both these follow a core, semi-periphery, and periphery distribution of power structure. We argue that the inequality of global production system suppresses the effects of subsidy competition and erodes the economic foundation of global climate governance. • Tracks the evolutionary change of the dilemma between environment and economy. • Reveals current green dilemma to be structural conflict under unequal global production networks. • Deconstructs how inequality acts to restrict the optimization of energy use and effects in tackling climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]